Editorial: Joe Biden should show why Florida still matters

Florida, a swing state only a few years ago, has turned so Republican — at least on paper — as to make some people doubt whether it’s worth President Joe Biden’s time in 2024.

They’re spooked by Donald Trump having won the state twice, by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ easy re-election two years ago, and by the GOP now leading the Democrats by nearly 900,000 voters.

Much has changed since Barack Obama won Florida twice. One factor appears to be migration of Republican voters from Democratic-leaning states where living is more expensive and taxes are higher. Another is Trump’s hypnotic appeal to resentments.

Finally, over the years, the Florida Democratic Party has been only marginally competent — a record of futility that party chair Nikki Fried promises to change.

Joe Biden's optimism

Biden is an optimist by nature, and judging by his campaign visit to Tampa last week, his optimism extends to fighting for Florida.

And it should, even though Florida’s 10 television markets make it one of the most expensive states in which to campaign. The 13.5 million people registered to vote here deserve to be taken seriously rather than for granted, especially the 3.5 million who have no party affiliation.

What could put Florida back in play is abortion rights, the issue Biden chose to emphasize in his speech at Hillsborough Community College.

No state is doing more to deny those rights. Florida’s new ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy — a time when many women don’t even know they’re pregnant — kicks in on May 1. Trump made that possible by stacking the Supreme Court — as he said he would — with justices who would repeal Roe v. Wade. He claimed all the credit when they did, and now he deserves the blame.

DeSantis did the same to the Florida Supreme Court to create the majority that effectively erased the privacy rights the voters put in the state constitution.

A daunting 60% threshold

Florida's reproductive freedom initiative, Amendment 4 on the November ballot, would overturn the Florida Supreme Court’s intellectually corrupt ruling as well as the draconian anti-abortion law it upheld.

But the 60% threshold required for an amendment's passage is daunting, and the danger persists that if it meets that test, the court would nullify it by declaring that fetuses are persons. It has already so hinted.

That's certainly no reason to fail to vote for Amendment 4 or to accept DeSantis’ hogwash that the initiative is misleading; even the court said it is not. The amendment's ratification would send an unmistakable message to those in power.

As the president made plain, however, the ultimate goal of restoring reproductive freedom here and in the rest of the theocratic South requires his re-election and a Democratic Congress that would restore the protections of Roe v. Wade.

'It's about women's rights'

Unlike Trump, Biden is committed to vetoing any nationwide restriction Congress might pass. The waffling, equivocating, hiding-from-his-record Republican nominee says he wouldn’t sign one, but that reluctant promise didn’t extend to a veto. A bill can become law without a president’s signature.

“It shouldn’t matter where in America you live,” Biden said in Tampa. “This isn’t about states’ rights. It’s about women’s rights.”

The best way for him to assert that point is to keep coming to Florida and see to it that his party puts in as much money as it takes to be competitive.

Through the last four presidential elections, Florida hosted more presidential campaign events, 188, than any other battleground state except Ohio, which had 196. But interest in Ohio dwindled to 13 events in 2020 while Florida’s shrank to 31 from a high of 71 in 2016.

Not a good trend.

National Popular Vote

Roughly 30% of America’s voters live in the four largest states: California, Texas, Florida and New York. But because of the ancient and outdated Electoral College system, all but Florida were entirely ignored when Obama was elected and re-elected, and when Trump was elected and defeated.

These statistics, compiled by the nonprofit organization National Popular Vote, show that in the last four presidential elections, 22 states had no presidential candidate visits and nine had one each. Their citizens were told in effect that their votes weren’t worth the asking. That’s one of the poisons that the Electoral College injects into the system, along with the strong possibility that a minority of voters will elect the president, which has already happened five times. In 2020, it spawned criminal conspiracies to replace legitimate electors with fraudulent claimants in battleground states.

When presidential candidates neglect a state, it can and often does hurt their party’s candidates for Congress, the legislatures and other offices. If Biden wants a supportive Congress, it means making a whale of a fight for Florida.

No one can say with certainty how different the results might be if the president were chosen by popular vote, but what is certain is that every vote would matter. Every vote will matter, in fact, if just a few more states join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, as Maine did this month, becoming the most recent state to do so.

There are now 18 jurisdictions with 209 electoral votes legally bound to cast those votes for whoever wins the popular vote nationwide. That’s 61 short of the 270 needed to put it into effect. Florida could, and should, supply 30 of those.

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The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

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