Okay, seriously, stop focusing on the sun belt

 So, I've seen this chart today from yet another model. I forget from where (I think it was NYT), there are so many of these election models coming out that it's getting hard to keep track of them all, and I really want to back up what it says.

As we know, I recently went over my own predictions and found most flips happen within 4 points. GA, AZ, NV, and NC aren't REALLY in play this election. They CAN flip, but I wouldnt count on it. My bell curve based model has them at a 10-16% chance for the most part, and if we go by my real world data of flips, we get a dismal 4%. So don't count on it. Biden's best shot is defending the states he's ahead in, and making inroads in the rust belt taking back Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. 

Seriously, NE2, Maine, Virginia, and Minnesota are more in play than the sun belt. And I'm tired of pretending they're not. People keep acting like these arent swing states and they can't flip, but if you operate under the assumption that the map shifted 4-6 points to the right from its 2020 baseline, them, being D+2-4 or so makes perfect sense. That's where we are right now. And that's a dangerous place to be in, as those states have a roughly 1 in 4 chance of flipping on average, in both probability models I use. 

The sun belt strategy has always been ill advised. Clinton pursued it in 2016 out of hubris. Not only did it not work, it actually backfired because the coalitions required for dems to even have a chance down there require alienating rust belt voters. Which is how she lost. 

In 2020 Biden barely won those voters. AZ and GA NARROWLY went blue. 

And again, now he's down 4-6 points vs then. 

The thing is, such a strategy relies primarily on winning over minority voters like blacks and latinos in overwhelming numbers, and focusing on upper class suburbanites in cities like Atlanta, Raleigh, Phoenix, and Dallas. I've seen numbers lately implying that the dems advantage among minority voters is actually cratering because as it turns out, their politics are more complicated than the dems think they are, and honestly, suburban voters have always been an iffy go.

If anything, the dems pursuing this strategy is why our coalition is so screwed. We were winning during the Obama years. Clinton literally blew that coalition up, driving white working class voters out of the party, and actually breathed new life into the GOP's coalition of voters. Seriously, the GOP was dying until the dems started messing with this.

If the dems wanna focus so much on "electability", and believe me, this is an election for that, they need to double down on the rust belt and maintain states they risk losing like virginia, minnesota, and maine. Stop focusing on winning these R+5 states that have very little actual chance of flipping. It's a fool's errand. They might be better to go for some time in the 2030s, but not now. This isn't the election cycle to even attempt something like this.

See the writing on the wall, cut your losses, and focus on winning where we can actually win.