Was the sun belt strategy necessary for democrats in 2016? is it necessary now?

 So....it's no secret at this point, that Clinton and Trump changed the electoral map. We just analyzed the 2012 electoral map, and Obama basically had a rust belt firewall that, as long as it remained impenetrable, republicans were functionally locked out of the electoral college. I mean let's bring up the 2016 election prediction again. 

 We had Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania all firmly in the D column similar to virginia and minnesota in more recent cycles. Obama was a bit less, similar to say, new hampshire. We had iowa. And at this point, VA and CO, which are now democratic mainstays, were just starting to flip blue. Obama's coalition was mixed. It relied primarily on a rust belt strategy, but also started to appeal to a second suburban strategy instead, relying on the suburbanization of previously red and purple states.

This led to the 2016 electoral map:
 

 Here, the rust bely was still important, but Clinton clearly downplayed it. And that's actually why she lost. She literally lost Obama's main firewall that made him invincible. She neglected it. She was so busy on winning the sun belt, trying to win North Carolina, and Georgia, and Arizona, and quite frankly, this was a stupid and suicidal strategy. 

Quite frankly, it's obvious to me why she did this. She was a centrist, she wanted the party to remain centrist, and democrats made a deal with the devil to trade working class rust belt workers for suburbanites, so they could push fiscal moderation instead of economic populism, this proved to be disastrous, and led to the rise of the trump era, and his realignments. In 2024, the map looked like this:

 Now, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania are chief swing states needed to win elections, with Ohio being lost, Iowa being lost, Florida being lost. VA and CO on the other hand are reliable parts of the democratic coalition. And the electoral map is a lot more hostile to democrats than it was.

Now, centrists will argue this was necessary, they'll argue that due to demographic shifts, that the rust belt will be a less reliable path to the presidency, and we need to expand to the sun belt. The real question is...is it?

Well....yes and no.

It's no mistake in 2020, the rust belt took a beating as reapportionment took away some population, and democrats stand to take another beating in 2030.  Between blue and rust belt states losing population, we stand to lose a whole 11 electoral college votes, most of which go to republican states.

If we rely on the current WI/MI/PA strategy to win exactly 270, this strategy will fail, because in 2032, those states will be worth less and only net 261 electoral votes, leading to another state to win.

 Map is from 270towin btw. Anyway, The problem with this theory though is it assumes the CURRENT electoral map. The map of 2024. Had we stuck with the 2012 rust belt map, we'd be able to win Ohio and Iowa. Here's what it looks like with Ohio.

See, we didn't need to abandon the rust belt, we just needed to be able to keep winning fricking Ohio. We could lose Florida. Say that still turned into Desantis land due to retirees and Cubans hating "socialism." We'd still be able to maintain the Obama coalition into the 2030s....as long as we could keep Ohio on our side. And this isn't even counting Iowa and Nevada. 

So the idea that this change was "necessary" was complete BS. 

However, at the same time, is it necessary now? Not because it was a looming necessity, but because the centrists butchered our winning coalition and now the map is different to the point that we're not getting Ohio back? Perhaps. 

Right now, Ohio is in the same category as states like Texas, Alaska, Florida, and Iowa. All pretty soft red states, maybe likely R in a neutral cycle. Sure, many of them are in play in 2026 and maybe even 2028, but that's only due to an apocalyptic blue wave on the horizon. In normal election cycles, these would be republican. 
 

So what's the alternative? Basically, we do gotta do the sun belt. Nevada is too small on its own to count and that's been in play for a while, but now the big states to swing are going to be Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona. And here's the catch. My politics HATE the sun belt strategy. While economic populism can work well in the rust belt given the lack of good jobs, the sun belt is more suburban people who are more fiscally moderate. 

Say we get MI/WI/PA/NV, we still need ONE more state. Assuming we can't get IA or OH, we're gonna need AZ, GA, or NC. 

 One might wonder why I threw Alaska in there. Well, it too has been going in a strange democratic direction lately, and even more so, it basically has that oil dividend which is basically pro UBI, so if I wanted to run on UBI and needed THREE more electoral votes, well, that's 270!

 

otherwise, what would I bet on of the three I posted? Georgia. Here's why. I don't believe in going to the rust belt, I believe in the rust belt coming to us. Georgia is pulling a Virgini right now. It's rapidly urbanizing around atlanta, and it's like the one state that still had movement to the left in 2024. I remember a map showing that in a sea of red, atlanta was still moving in a blue direction. NC and AZ have been resisting those trends more, so I see them as harder sells, but I think GA is gonna do what CO and VA did. So assuming we can win that, we can make up for the loss of Ohio. Still, it fumes me we even lost Ohio. The Obama map was perfect for my own electoral strategy. Having to deal with suburbanites with conflicting ideas down south really throws a wrench in the leftward momentum of the party toward economic populism. 

 So, do dems have paths to the white house? Yeah. But without a trumpesque map change to reclaim the rust belt, we're now stuck relying on sun belt states to win. Which compromises an economically populist platform. While during the Obama era, we could win without the south, we didn't need the south, and why oh why do we wanna bother appealing to those conservative guys? Now we kinda do. It's not that this was inevitable though. Had we maintained the Obama map, even with demographic shifts, we could've maintained an electoral advantage that would have shut out the republicans. WI/MI/PA/OH, boom. Done. CO and VA become part of the coalition anyway, maybe eventually we get GA NC or AZ, but let's not push it. 

But....Clinton pushed it, we lost Ohio, and while sun belt states are eventually drifting our way anyway....they should be a bonus, not necessary. I really hate how 2016 shifted our politics, it is a realignment from hell, and we on the left might be screwed. Even if we win primaries, we not be able to win a general election without suburbanites approving of them, and given how these ideas would raise their taxes...well....yay, we got republicans in our coalition now and we cant get rid of them!

*sigh*

I really can't express how much I hate the centrist wing of the democrats for this. I'm only voting for them at this point because, well, Trump's a fascist, and short term, he needs to go. But post trump? Assuming the GOP DOESNT go full groyper? Yeah I might go back to being a purity testy ###hole and voting for third party candidates out of spite. It depends. We'll have to see how the next couple election cycles go.