'The one thing you can never get back': Strategists say Biden running out of time in 5 swing states

Democratic Party strategists say President Joe Biden is lagging behind former President Donald Trump in the five swing states most likely to decide the electoral college majority in 2024, and that time is running out to invest resources in those states.

According to Politico, Biden's campaign has still not announced new staff hires in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which have 62 combined electoral votes between them. The publication spoke with nearly two dozen elected officials and strategists in those states who are worried that Biden's slow pace in staffing up offices hampers organizing efforts and prevents would-be volunteers from having main points of contact who can help coordinate get-out-the-vote efforts.

Pete Giancreco, who is described as a longtime Democratic strategist for multiple presidential campaigns, said the Biden campaign needs "to build a serious infrastructure in the battleground states," adding that "they don't have it right now."

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"You have to build an infrastructure to drive [the] message and deliver votes. It’s not something you do just on paid communications," Giancreco said, referring to the Biden campaign's millions of dollars spent on TV and online campaign ads. "There’s still time, but time is the one thing you can never get back in a campaign."

Biden's timeline is months behind Trump's at this point in the 45th president's first reelection campaign. By December of 2019, then-President Trump's campaign named nine regional campaign directors and multiple state directors. And in comparison to Biden's Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, he's also lagging: Politico reported that by late 2011, the Obama 2012 campaign had staff on the payroll in 38 states, and field offices in 15 states.

The Biden campaign is pushing back on assertions that it isn't taking these states seriously. Under Biden's watch, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has built up a beefy outreach effort, blitzing key swing states with an "unprecedented sum" of $13 million in radio and digital ads specifically targeting Black and Latino voters. DNC executive director Sam Cornale told Politico that "for the first time in a generation," the DNC is leading efforts to "innovate how campaigns are run."

"Anyone who mistakes headcount as a stand-in metric for communicating with voters doesn’t know much about the realities of the modern election cycle — or running a campaign built to win in one," Jim Messina, who ran President Obama's reelection campaign, said in a statement. "Instead of using an outdated model burning through resources this early in the 2024 cycle, Democrats are being smart about when, where and how to invest in a ground game."

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Still, swing state Democrats say that the Biden campaign's efforts to lean on the DNC to make its money stretch through 2024 is frustrating efforts on the ground. An Arizona operative anonymously told Politico that Democrats are "waiting for marching orders that have not been handed down yet." Another Western state strategist said the Biden campaign was "taking a long time to get things moving, both at [headquarters] and in the battlegrounds."

Read Politico's full report by clicking here.