General Discussion

However I think the references to States like Oklahoma were unnecessary, because they never were Democratic strongholds. Democrats haven't carried Oklahoma in a Presidential election sense Johnson in 1964 and even then it hadn't been carried sense 1948. West Virginia,Missouri,Kentucky and Iowa are all more interesting case studies. Michael Dukakis even carried West Virginia. Kentucky just lost the Democratic State legislature in 2017 in which they had held for 95 years. The collapse of the coal mining industry hurt us in West Virginia and Kentucky as the coal mines went so did a lot of union members. Missouri is the biggest mystery of all of them. They just voted for abortion rights on a ballot initiative and for minimum wage increases. So why on earth is Missouri a deep red State now? I don't get it. I think a big part of the problem in what use to be swing States or even former Democratic strongholds is we have run to many moderate/centrist candidates rolling with the punches instead of aggressively pushing back for the sake of winning the next election in which we usually lose anyway and thus contribute to accelerating the erosion of Democratic culture in those States.