West Virginia went from purple to deep solid red thanks to Obama and the neoliberals, while Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin used to be solid blue states but they went to Trump in 2016 and can be made purple. Ohio has always been a perpetual swing state, but it's slowly shifting light red.
Florida was always purple and still is, it's just no longer the reddish-purple it used to be. I don't think Texas will become a full swing state, even with Austin taken into account. I do think Texas may go from the deep red state it has traditionally been to a light red state that can occasionally shift purple depending on the candidate or issue in question.
Demographics Is Destiny is a meme for the most part. It has not been fully discredited as a meme but it's also one of those memes that can be a two-way street and backlash against the Left as well as the Right.
One thing that doesn't get stated enough is that just like Republicans are against the wall on demographics (provided there is no major shifts in current population patterns or political alignment over the next 25 years), the Democrats are against the wall on alot of their base. Democrats loosely have four wings: big media (including social media), big academia, identity politics, and welfare.
Big media is being chewed up and spit out by randoms online. A youtube animator can create a response faster and funnier than any late night show "comedy" host, and memes are undermining the narrative. Hillary might have been exceptional with going off on Pepe, but she was right about how her media lapdog was unable to beat back anons. The only response the medias had is to flail away even more incompetently, like a dog who kicked up a wasp nest and trying to bite the bugs as he gets stung over and over. My boomer mother is emailing meme dissing new developments in the impeachment hearing, and even though she's not watching it she'll tell you why it's a farce. 20 years ago it would have been impossible, and she'd have relied on the narrative instead. Warren's meme team is also an exceptional idea, but not entirely wrong. The closest left-wing response to 4channers is clickbait media, a top down self-parody. Unless the Democrats get some better digital connections, the internet will keep eating their lunch.
Big academia is undergoing a slow meltdown, as high costs, joke degrees, wokeness, and administrative bloat drag it down. All of them are gradually making college a less attractive choice, especially for non-STEM degrees. There's a looming correction on the horizon like a hurricane, and it's only a matter of time before it starts blowing colleges over.
Identity politics are a double-edged sword for the Democrats. The rise of white identity is due in part to the rise of non-white identity; it's not hard to find a leftwing argument online that is alienating to whites. And the different groups all have problems with each other. Blacks are the most homophobic and racist race, Asians are hurt by affirmative action, the gay community is proped-up meme as a shield for the harmaceutical fetishists pushing trans ideology, and Latinos are only in it to get ahead and will switch sides the moment it's in their interest. Plus, I think the soy-whites are about to start leaving the movement, due largely to how their getting tired of being an acceptable punching bag. The feminist movement is effectively dead, and any holdouts are problematic TERF's that are uppity bitches who keep refusing to deepthroat the anti-female girlcock. Any attempted revival descends into me-too movement backstabbing and grudge settling.
The welfare wing is inherently offputting to most people. For every sob story about struggling single widow with a cancer child, there's a dozen NEET losers, junkies, and welfare queens. It's hard to sell the modern commie fantasy to anyone whose dealt with lumpen proletariat.
And they didn't just abandon the working middle to lower class, they threw them under the bus.
The last time I saw a frontline Dem candidate putting on a sparkly-clean hardhat and standing in front of a bunch of blue-collar guys whose hats weren't nearly as clean, and saying how much he wanted to represent them, was Al Gore.
By the time we got to Clinton, only effectively 15 years later, she wouldn't get within a quarter mile of those grimy machines (it would look bad for the environmental voters) or workers (they're all bigots) and was openly saying that the world would be better if the coal miners were out of work. So much better in fact, she was going to pass excessive regulation to put an end to the very market for coal that would MAKE them go out of work. Those states that rely on coal to fuel a big part of their economies, let alone power grid? Eh, they're obsolete, they were weeds in her progressive garden, the may be healthy-looking plants, but they are utterly unwanted and will be pulled out by the roots if they refuse to die by being stepped on. Besides, they can learn to code, not my problem if my taking their livelihood kills them, that's on them for being unable to adapt.
It doesn't even have to be an "obsolete, right wing" industry, to use a Moviebob. I remember one really infuriating example when Trump made a campaign stop at a recycling plant, and got made fun of for it. Apparently, we need to care about the environment enough to recycle but not enough to respect people in the recycling industry.
Metaphor alert!
slate.com
