Dispatches from Georgia

I was having a long distance conversation with a friend from Atlanta recently. Like me, he spins way too much time watching television and following politics (making for, as you would imagine, some deeply nerdy conversations). When the subject turned to the presidential campaign, he made a couple of observations

First, there had been a dramatic change in the lawn sign distribution of various neighborhoods. My friend has lived in Atlanta for well over 20 years now so he knows the red spots and the blue spots. Driving through neighborhoods that in the past couple of elections would have had a Trump sign in nearly every yard, he noticed only a handful. There were even a few "Republicans for Biden/Harris" signs around. By comparison, the spots where one expected to see Democratic signs had as many as normal if not a few more.

This isn't particularly surprising. Biden has field offices up and running in most if not all competitive states. At last report, Trump had none. We've known this for a while, but it's interesting to see how this translates to the ground level.

Just as striking was the disparity in television spots. He has seen well over a dozen ads for Biden / Harris and exactly zero for Trump.

This too is not surprising. The Democrats are having a very good year for fundraising. The Republicans are not. Furthermore, a substantial amount of the money they are raising has been earmarked for Trump's legal costs.

I don't care much for the phrase "must win state." Barring cases like California and New York for the Democrats or Texas and possibly Florida for the Republicans, it is possible to come up with not too outlandish paths to victory excluding any one of the swing states. That said, Georgia has got to be one of the top priorities for the Trump campaign, and if they don't have a presence there, you have to wonder what they're doing.