ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Democratic political strategist Jim Messina says the campaigns of both Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden and President Trump have to reinvent themselves as they navigate how to run a campaign during the age of coronavirus. 

“Trump’s superpower is his big MAGA rallies. Is he going to be able to do them? The Democrats superpower is usually door knocking and in-person persuasion. Can they do that?” Messina said.

Biden’s “virtual” Tampa campaign event on Thursday night was derided by the Trump campaign and the media as being a technological embarrassment, with audio and video glitches galore.

Messina says Biden has to get his supporters more engaged than they currently are right now.

“He already has 100 million people who are already saying that they’re going to vote for him," he explained. "He’s got to ask them to really run this campaign and to reach out to their friends and family, and do a virtual-like local campaign that we’ve never seen before in world politics. That’s something that he’s got to do because he can’t just sit in the basement in Delaware."

Republicans eager to campaign in Florida

In a conference call on Thursday, Republican Party of Florida Chairman Joe Gruters couldn’t sound more optimistic about campaigning during a pandemic, saying that Trump Victory has been reaching more people than ever.

“We’ve been able to put these volunteers to work just in non-sort of traditional ways from what you normally see on campaigns, but I would say just as effective if not more with the situation we’re facing,” he said, referring to how volunteers now have a “captive audience” who welcome hearing campaign-related phone calls.

Florida isn’t considered the ultimate swing-state in presidential politics as it has been for so many election cycles, but its 29 electoral votes are still considered the most lucrative in the country that aren’t already baked into the electoral college, unlike California and New York for the Democrats and Texas is for the Republicans.

But it’s absolutely vital for Trump’s reelection, Messina asserts.

“There is no simulation – zero - where Donald Trump can lose Florida and win the White House,” Messina said. “Whereas over 70 percent of the simulations don’t have to have Florida for the Democrats (to win).”

Messina ran Barack Obama’s successful 2012 reelection campaign. He says they ran 66,000 computer simulations of how the Electoral College could turn out that year, and none showed Republican Mitt Romney winning without capturing the Sunshine State.

Obama won the state by less than one percent in an election that wasn’t officially decided until four days later.

Trump took Florida in 2016 by 1.2 percent over Hillary Clinton.

Referendum on the incumbent

The Real Clear Politics average currently shows Biden with a 3 percent lead. Not that Messina believes much in polls.

“My theory has always been that almost all public polling is garbage,” he says, citing specifically national polls that he doesn’t believe accurately sample the electorate.

“I believe much more in social listings, seeing what people are talking about online, very big data samples like 100,000 person samples, as opposed to a poll of 800 people for the entire state of Florida,” he says. 

Messina says that all presidential re-election campaigns are a referendum on the incumbent. One data point that he says augers well for the Democrats is that over the past century seven incumbent presidents who have run during a recession have lost. 

Unemployment soared to nearly 15 percent on Friday, the highest level since the Great Depression.

But recent history has favored Republicans narrowly in major elections over the past decade in the Sunshine State. Messina attributes the GOP success to the senior vote and their increased dominance in North Florida.

“Hillary Clinton got eight percent less in North Florida than Barack Obama did,” he notes. “Andrew Gillum was sure on Election Night he had won because he got the turnout that he needed with African-Americans and Latinos, but he just got slayed up in Northern Florida in a way that they didn’t see happening.”

Before his ‘virtual rally’ on Thursday, Biden spoke with Bay News 9 anchor Holly Gregory. You can watch that exchange here.