Cindy McCain Says Democrats Can Win Arizona In 2020
In an interview with CNN broadcast on Saturday, late Senator John McCain‘s widow, Cindy McCain, said that Democrats can win Arizona in 2020, reports Raw Story.
CNN host David Axelrod started the discussion by noting that there has been speculation that Arizona, a state McCain represented, could turn blue come 2020.
“Is that a real possibility?” he asked.
“I think it is,” McCain replied.
She explained that Demographic changes in Arizona have changed the electorate, arguing that young people living in the state could help Democrats turn it blue.
“We see a lot of new people, a lot of influx from various parts of the country. Younger people are more moderate and things and so I think you may possibly see a blue state coming up.”
As Raw Story notes, Arizona has voted Republican in every single presidential election since 1952, bar former President Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election.
Indeed, commentators have suggested that Arizona could play a key role in the 2020 election. For instance, The Wall Street Journal argued last month that the Democratic Party’s “most comfortable path to victory” runs through Arizona.
The publication’s columnist, William A. Galston, noted that polls suggest President Donald Trump is unlikely to win any state he did not win in 2016, pointing out that the commander-in-chief appears to be “in good shape” in states such as Florida, Ohio, and Texas.
According to Galston, Trump is in danger of losing Arizona thanks to white working-class women, who abandoned the Republican Party during the 2018 midterm elections. The president’s rhetoric, which has not toned down, is thought to have driven them away from the GOP, according to the columnist, and that could happen again in 2020.
On the #AxeFiles to be aired Sat at 7 p.m. on @CNN, I asked Cindy McCain why she didn’t invite @realDonaldTrump to her husband’s funeral, at which two ex-presidents, Bush and Obama, delivered ringing eulogies. Here is what she told me:
“Words matter. Especially to a dying man.” pic.twitter.com/Umk5WJP4A4— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) November 8, 2019
Apart from discussing Democrats’ chances in Arizona, McCain also talked about the state of the Republican Party.
She said that her husband would be “disgusted with some of the stuff that’s going on.”
The late senator was labeled a maverick because he had a reputation of being willing to go against the current, defying Republican orthodoxies and doing what he thought was right, regardless of how his Republican colleagues felt about it.
McCain told CNN that her husband would be “railing against what’s going on” with the GOP.
“I think John provided a lot of cover for other members,” she opined, adding that she is “not seeing” anything similar in the United States Senate.
The late senator’s widow explained that she believes congressional Republicans are unwilling to stand up to Trump because they fear an electoral backlash. GOP lawmakers, McCain said, want to get re-elected, so they have chosen to stay silent.
She added, however, that Republicans have to “at some point” do what many expect them to do.
