- Joined
- Dec 24, 2019
I think of all the states Trump landed in 2016, Pennsylvania is the first to flip for Biden. If it stays Red then Trump has it, but if not then the night will be decided by the hockey-playing retired union workers.
Look at the map posted at post #6197.
Thoroughly D: HI, WA, OR, CA, NV, CO, NM, IL, VA, DL, NJ, NY, VT, NH, MA, CT, RI = 222. Need 48 more to win.
Thoroughly R: The mentioned states last page sans Florida= 231. Need 39 more.
Swing states: Minnesota(10) + Wisconsin(10) + Michigan(16) + Penn(20) + Florida(29) = 85 up for grabs.
Play around with these numbers at your leisure.
Those are 5 states that will decide America's future. The other 45 aren't worth contemplating. The swing states like Ohio have been consolidated under Trump, while New Mexico has gone the way of Cali through demographic inertia. Are the likes of Virginia, Arizona, or New Hampshire flippable? Maybe. But whoever loses them is also most likely going to lose one of the Big 5 too so their election is lost anyway, plus their margins aren't as narrow.
Whats interesting about the general Rust Belt being in play is its mainly, in the words of democrats, 'painfully white' so its honestly a godsend they've got Penn native Joe Biden as the headliner. Democrats have a steeper hill to climb but they've traditionally held the first 4 with ease, so don't rest on your laurels.
Whats strange about other swing states in America's history is how all but Florida have the same general problems and win conditions for candidates. Look at Obama or Bush's victories. They basically turned into different people depending on what the diverse swing states demanded, but right now Florida is a lone exception. 2020 will overwhelmingly be decided by white working class men, despite the USA being more diverse than ever. What I'm interested in is how the Democrats intend to amp up their own side while denigrating Trump. The racial tension rhetoric isn't going to work in these states, especially since that same exact mentality is what's putting these states into play in the first place.
Parts of Minneapolis are so busted they could only be reassembled by air crash investigators. The geographic feature of Detroit. The Woke scolding. All of it piles up. You can't burn down a city, or lead another into economic ruin, and still expect loyalty. What I find insidious about the white privilege narrative is how it tries to flip the script on poor white people. It says the white people, for the crime of being white, owe others things. It doesn't matter if your job is crappy, or you can't get a mortgage, or if you're struggling to pay rent. All these people are gaslit into believing they are the privileged ones in society-- if they buy into the narrative, which, of course, many don't.
Note I put New Hampshire as Democrat. That's 4 electoral college votes that might lead to a hilarious outcome. Imagine if Joe flips both Penn and Florida, but loses Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan AND those precious 4 New England votes, and Trump wins with just 270 EC votes? There'd literally be blood on the streets.
Likewise, Trump might be in a situation where Florida holds, but needs to flip 2 out of MN, WI and MI because Pittsburgh loves Joe that much. It's crazy how down to the wire this is. I crunched the numbers a year ago and genuinely thought Trump was fucked, since carrying Florida is already a big ask, but losing Pennsylvania would been being forced to carry both Michigan and Wisconsin a second time, which sounds like too heavy a task.
But now? Minnesota will take years to recover from George Floyd. Decades, even. Minneapolis just had its economy shredded and its reputation tarnished for NO REASON. They should vote GOP this time but 6 months ago that would have been like suggesting Indiana go blue-- so out of bounds as to be undecisive to the final result... but now I could genuinely see a situation where Minnesota goes red regardless of what the rest of the USA does-- sort of a reverse Reagan.
