A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about the Democratic Party’s looming geography problem. The issue is the outsized role states play in our political system. Because Democrats are not competitive in enough states, the party will soon find it difficult to win the Electoral College and the Senate even if they remain as popular as Republicans at the national level.
The Electoral College is perhaps the easier problem for Democrats to address. Currently, there are enough toss-up states to give Democrats a realistic shot at winning 270 electoral votes.
The problem is the nation’s blue states—including the “Blue Wall” toss-up states in the Great Lakes region—are expected to lose electoral votes following the 2030 census, meaning Democrats would need to win nearly every toss-up state to win the White House. Making matters worse for Democrats, the most-competitive Democratic-leaning states (New Hampshire, Minnesota, Virginia, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Maine) appear more contestable than the most-competitive Republican-leaning states (Ohio, Florida, Alaska, Iowa, and Texas).
Therefore, thinking beyond the current toss-up states, what should Democrats do to remain competitive in the Electoral College? The obvious answer (besides eliminating the Electoral College, which I wrote about last week) is to put Texas into play. Texas’s population is booming as migrants from throughout the United States (particularly California) have made the Lone Star State the nation’s leader in domestic in-migration. Some projections have Texas’s electoral vote total rising from 40 to 44 votes in 2032. (California’s total, meanwhile, could drop from 54 to 50 votes.)
Democrats have longed dreamed of turning Texas blue, and for a while there, it almost seemed inevitable. Republican margins of victory in presidential contests in the state dropped from 11.7% in 2008 to 5.6% in 2020. Democrat Beto O’Rourke almost defeated Republican Senator Teddy “Cancun” Cruz in a senate race in 2018, losing by only 2.6%. While Republicans still dominate the House delegation 25-13, Republicans opted to defend their incumbents through gerrymandering in the most recent round of redistricting rather than use their majorities in the statehouse to expand their advantage. That was interpreted as a sign the GOP felt exposed electorally. Some also believe the state Republican Party’s ultraconservatism—especially on abortion—puts them out of step with a voter pool that has become more moderate, urban, young, college-educated, and diverse.
But Democratic hopes in Texas have proved ephemeral. O’Rourke lost to incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott by ten points in 2022. Two years later, Don Trump trounced Kamala Harris by almost twelve points, while Cruz defeated Democrat Colin Allred by 8.5%. Perhaps most disconcerting for Democrats, the heavily-Latino counties in the Rio Grande Valley—a long-time Democratic stronghold—have shifted to the right. Even with the influx of new residents that were expected to push the state to the left, it appears Texas has moved back into the Republican column.
Perhaps Republicans’ renewed strength in Texas is just a bump on the road to the state’s inevitable toss-up status. Regardless, Democrats can’t wait another decade or two for Texas to become competitive. I’m not enough of an expert on Texas politics to make specific recommendations for what Democrats ought to do, but generally, they need to unify state Democratic leadership around the goal, invest in the herculean task of organizing the state, and resuscitate the Democratic brand so that Texas is at least in play come 2032.
Turning Texas blue does little to solve Democrats’ problem in the Senate, however. Over the past decade, the number of states sending bipartisan delegations to the Senate has declined significantly. Today, there are basically only three states with split delegations. Fortunately for Democrats, voters in a number of toss-up states that backed Trump in 2024 still supported Democrats in senate races that year. In fact, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan have all-Democratic delegations even though Trump carried those states in 2024, while a Democrat won re-election in Wisconsin last year despite Trump’s victory there.
Yet a basic problem remains: Assuming current political conditions hold steady, Republicans are dominant in far more states than Democrats, which not only makes it practically impossible for Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to break the filibuster, but very difficult for the party to win a basic majority in the chamber. As it stands, the size of the Democratic caucus in the Senate would likely range from 38 senators (if only the 19 states Harris won in 2024 sent all-Democratic delegations to the Senate) to 52 senators (if all seven toss-up states—including North Carolina—also sent all-Democratic delegations to the Senate). That reality makes Democratic talk of trading the Blue Wall states for Sun Belt states ludicrous: To build a foundation of power in the Senate, Democrats will need to prevail in both Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania AND North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada. Switching Texas from red to blue would help, but like every state in the union, Texas and its 31 million people only get two senators. Unless Democrats put more states into play, they could find themselves in near-permanent minority status in the Senate.
There are some creative ways for Democrats to address this issue, from making the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico states (which should happen as a matter of principle anyway) to eliminating the Senate altogether (a huge longshot, but a good idea I’ll write about in a future article.) But if we assume there are only going to be fifty nifty united states for the foreseeable future, Democrats need to expand the map. I see three potential options:1
Recreate the Obama map—There are three states Barack Obama won twice that Don Trump won three times: Florida, Iowa, and Ohio. The problem is those states have swung hard to the right over that time (Florida +2.9% Democratic in 2008 to +13.1% Republican in 2024; Iowa +9.5% Democratic in 2008 to +13.2% Republican in 2024; Ohio +4.6% Democratic in 2008 to +11.4% Republican in 2024). That’s enough of a swing to suggest they shouldn’t even be considered toss-up states anymore, although that also potentially runs the risk of turning perception into reality. Of those three states, Ohio remains the most tempting target, since what plays in Pennsylvania and Michigan should also (in theory at least) play in Ohio. The challenge posed by Florida and Ohio, however, is they’re both large states that would require huge investments to turn blue. Winning one of either Florida or Ohio would be great when it comes to the Electoral College, but all that money and organizational effort would only earn the Democrats two senators.
Turn the Black Belt blue—Black voters support Democrats overwhelmingly in elections, so it might make sense for Democrats to concentrate their efforts in states with large African-American populations. Six of the top seven states with the highest percentage of African-American voters are located in the southern “Black Belt”: Mississippi (37.9%), Louisiana (33.1%), Georgia (33.0%), Alabama (29.8%), South Carolina (27.1%), and North Carolina (23.5%).2 What makes it tempting to pursue this route is that it includes Georgia and North Carolina, two states Democrats have already put into play. Additionally, the combined electoral vote count of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina is currently 32, which is two more than Florida; in other words, winning those four states is nearly the same as winning Florida when it comes to the Electoral College, but collectively, they’d be worth six more senators.
Yet given the South’s racial and religious politics, winning those states would be a heavy lift. Louisiana and Mississippi supported Trump in 2024 by an approximate 22 point margin. In Alabama, the margin was 30 points, while South Carolina’s margin was about 18 points. The reason Georgia and North Carolina are so much more competitive is that they boast the sort of large, booming, and highly-educated metropolitan areas (Atlanta, Charlotte, and the North Carolina Research Triangle) that anchor today’s Democratic Party. Outside of New Orleans, the other states lack that sort of metropolitan base.Look toward the Great Plains—If Iowa remains a tempting target for Democrats, then so should Nebraska and Kansas. Nebraska is already on Democrats’ radar, as the state’s unique way of allocating electoral votes means Democrats can win an electoral vote in Omaha’s congressional district. Additionally, the populist independent candidate Dan Osborn ran a surprisingly competitive race against Republican Senator Deb Fischer in 2024, losing by only 6.7% in what should have been a cakewalk for the incumbent. Less attention is given to (What’s the Matter With) Kansas, but the state’s current governor is Democrat Laura Kelly, and its 3rd congressional district has turned blue, with Representative Sharice Davids (D) winning re-election there in 2024 by over ten points.
The margins in those states are still tough, as Nebraska and Kansas favored Trump in 2024 by 20 and 16 points respectively. But while a drive across Kansas and Nebraska wouldn’t suggest this, the states aren’t as rural as they seem: With approximately 28% of their populations living in rural areas, Kansas and Nebraska are slightly more rural than Michigan (27%), slightly less rural than Minnesota (29%), and noticeably less rural than Iowa (37%). In Kansas, the suburban Kansas City, Missouri, area has nearly doubled its population over the past three decades and is trending Democratic. Since 1992, Shawnee County (Topeka) has become competitive. Douglas County (the University of Kansas) delivers large margins for Democrats. While there’s a lot of work for Democrats to do in Sedgwick County (Wichita), the county is still a bellwether in statewide races; put Sedgwick into play, and suddenly the whole state could be up for grabs. As for Nebraska, 40% of the state’s population lives in the Omaha metropolitan area, while Lancaster County (Lincoln/the University of Nebraska) has trended Democratic since 2008. These urban areas could serve as a base for Democratic growth in the state. While Kansas and Nebraska have only favored the Democratic candidate for president once (1964) since FDR’s 1936 landslide, the advantage of contesting those two states is that they are small (thus more bang for the buck as far as the Senate is concerned) and don’t carry the cultural baggage of the aforementioned cluster of southern states.
As you’ve undoubtedly noticed, my analysis is predicated on the assumption that Democrats’ electoral prospects are better in states with large urban populations. You can see this in the chart below. The less rural a state is, the more likely it will support the Democratic candidate for president. These states are clustered in the lower left corner of the chart. The more rural a state, the more likely it will support the Republican candidate for president. These states are clustered in the upper right corner of the chart.
There are some exceptions. New England’s rural states—Vermont and Maine are the most rural states in the nation—supported Kamala Harris, while the more urbanized states of Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Florida, and Utah backed Trump. While the rural/urban split is not political destiny, it certainly remains significant.
Unfortunately for Democrats, rural regions currently tend to favor Republicans, and the senate’s design gives an edge to rural states. For example, the states of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska have as many representatives (11) as New York City alone, but New York City shares two senators with the state of New York while the aforementioned states have a combined total of fourteen senators.
Assuming current political conditions prevail, Democrats really have no choice but to put rural states into play if they hope to remain competitive in the Senate. Urban areas in rural states can serve as a base, but even if they don’t turn rural areas from red to blue, they’ll need to narrow margins in those states’ rural areas as well. Doing so can both improve their standing in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, but also hopefully put states like Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas into play.
And Trump may be giving them the opening to do just that.
Having grown up in the Midwest, conventional wisdom held that politicians who proposed tariffs would not find a receptive audience in rural areas, as reciprocal tariffs and trade wars hurt the bottom lines of export-producing farmers. Yet farmers backed Trump in 2016 and stood by him in 2020, in part because Trump handed-out subsidies to help them weather a trade war he started with China that cost agricultural producers $27 billion in lost exports. (The soybean trade with China fell from $12.2 billion in 2017 to $3 billion in 2018.) Trump has renewed that trade war in his second term, and farmers could pay a steeper price this time around. As NPR reported, the National Corn Growers Association and the American Soybean Association have estimated corn and soybean exports to China could fall by as much as 84.3% and 51.8% respectively as a result of Trump’s trade war. China has already set levies of 15% on corn and 10% on soybeans, pork, beef, and fruit.
The long term danger is that countries like China will no longer consider the United States a reliable trading partner and cut us out of their supply chain as much as possible. As it stands, trade in soybeans with China has not returned to pre-2018 levels, as China has built up markets in Brazil and Argentina. (Ron Brownstein of The Atlantic reports that China bought nearly as many bushels of soybeans from the United States as Brazil in 2016; today, China buys three times as many from Brazil.) Another trade war could set the export market for American goods back even further, destroy the price of domestic commodities, and wreck farmers’ finances. The trade war could also have unanticipated fall-on effects. For example, 85-90% of the potash that is used to make fertilizer is imported from Canada, which Trump has threatened with tariffs. Taxing potash would raise production costs for farmers. Meanwhile, financially squeezed farmers will likely hold off on buying new farm machinery, a trend Midwestern manufacturers like John Deere are already picking up on as they see their sales decline.
Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts have also inflicted a blow on American farmers. When DOGE shuttered USAID, Trump and Musk put an end to a program that bought $2 billion worth of American agricultural products that were shipped overseas to feed people in danger of starvation. The Houston Chronicle reported 30,000 tons of food was stuck in their city’s port and at risk of spoilage after Trump halted foreign aid. Farmers across the country have reported grants they had been awarded by the Department of Agriculture were suddenly frozen by DOGE, sticking them with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bills they didn’t anticipate paying out of their own pocket. Even though judges have ordered the administration to go forward with the payments, Trump’s officials are still dragging their feet.
Trump’s slash and burn governance may whip conservatives into a frenzy, including many who live in rural areas, but it is also likely to harm rural residents. Shelley Clark and Matthew M. Brooks wrote about one such example in the Washington Post. Trump’s Transportation Department recently issued a new guideline that prioritizes spending and infrastructure for “communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.” The goal is to direct funding to areas with “traditional” families, which Trump administration officials associate with white rural America. As it turns out, however, over the past three decades, marriage rates in rural areas have fallen behind those in urban areas, nonmarital births have soared, and birth rates have plummeted to levels typically associated with urban areas, meaning rural areas won’t see those funds. If Trump administration officials believe rural America is being left behind, they’re practically guaranteeing it will now.
You may think Department of Transportation funding is small potatoes, but Trump could sever many of the lifelines rural and small-town America depend upon. Trump’s potential cuts to Medicaid would hit rural areas harder than urban areas, since smaller rural employers are less likely to offer health insurance. Rural hospitals, which are already under significant financial strain, rely on Medicaid as a significant source of funding. Without those hospitals, many rural residents would need to travel and hour or more for emergency medical treatment. Medicaid is also the primary way the nation has confronted the opioid epidemic, which has ravaged rural communities.
Trump has frequently spoken of his disdain for the Postal Service, but it’s rural areas that would probably have the most to lose in a DOGE-style overhaul of the agency. As Russell Berman writes in The Atlantic:
Industry advocates are most worried about Trump’s plan because of its likely effect on rural areas. Unlike its private competitors, the agency delivers medications and other important packages to the country’s most remote areas no matter the cost; indeed, when some private carriers take orders in rural areas, it is often USPS that transports packages on the final miles of their journey. Deeper cuts to the agency could endanger that guarantee of universal service, and rural Americans would probably suffer the most.
Finally, Trump’s determination to implement a national school voucher program would gut rural schools. While Republican politicians have long embraced vouchers, a backlash is growing in rural areas against the initiative, which only tends to subsidize private schools without offering the wider population of students much by way of additional educational choices while simultaneously depriving cash-strapped local public schools of much-needed funding. Local public schools are often a source of pride for rural residents; vouchers would only hobble a long-standing social institution. If I were a Democratic politician, I would hammer Trump and the Republican Party relentlessly on this issue by calling out the president for wanting to dismantle the Department of Education to return power to state and local leaders who, in Republican-led states, want to divert your tax dollars away from your local school district and into the pockets of private school administrators.
Residents of rural areas tend to vote Republican for many reasons. Rural residents place a high value on their independence and sense of self-sufficiency, values they see reflected back to them by the GOP. Government does not seem as present in their lives as it does in urban areas, so they generally favor smaller government. Their traditionalism and cultural conservatism on matters like gun rights and religious freedom not only draw them closer to the Republican Party but lead them to view the Democratic Party as hopelessly out of touch with middle American values.
But Trump is giving Democrats the opportunity to push cultural politics to the side and focus instead on the material things that matter to those who live in rural America. Trump’s reckless governance threatens to devastate farmers, the backbone of the rural economy. It also endangers the roads, doctors’ offices, post offices, and school systems rural communities rely upon.
Beyond that attack on Trumpism, however, Democrats need to work on developing a positive plan for improving the lives of rural Americans. That’s a difficult but necessary project, one that may not turn many rural red counties blue but that may still siphon off enough votes to tip a few states and their electoral votes into the Democratic column and add to the ranks of Democratic senators.
Further Reading: “With Multiple Tariffs Looming, Farmers Who Support Trump Grow Nervous” by David J. Lynch (Washington Post, February 21, 2025)
Signals and Noise
“The Five Pillars of Trumpian Repression” by Benjamin Wittes (Lawfare)
“The United States of Fear” by Isaac Stanley-Becker (The Atlantic)
“The Hollow Men” by George Packer (The Atlantic)
“Stopping Autocratic Legalism in America – Before It Is Too Late” by Scott Cummings (Verfassungsblog)
“How to Think (and Act) Like a Dissident Movement” by Jonathan V. Last (The Bulwark)
“The Five Scandals (and One Fascinating Political Insight) of Signalgate” by Garrett Graff (Doomsday Scenario)
“Trump Takes Government Secrecy Seriously. But Only When It Suits Him” by Peter Baker (New York Times)
“This Is Why Young People Really Voted for Trump” by Neil Gross (New York Times)
“Long Waits, Waves of Calls, Website Crashes: Social Security is Breaking Down” by Lisa Rein and Hannah Natanson (Washington Post)
“Why the COVID Reckoning Is So One-Sided” by Jonathan Chait (The Atlantic)
“My Day Inside America’s Most Hated Car” by Saahil Desai (The Atlantic)
Vincent’s Picks: Adolescence
Adolescence, a four-part limited series by Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne streaming on Netflix, has created a cultural moment in the United Kingdom. It became the first streaming program to land at number one on the UK’s weekly TV ratings chart. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has discussed it in Parliament. Labor MP Anneliese Midgley recommended making the series required viewing in schools. Legislation addressing issues raised by the show is being drafted as we speak. In a five-star review, Lucy Mangan of The Guardian called the program “as close to televisual perfection as you can get.”
I don’t know if I would go that far, but Adolescence is undoubtedly a major achievement. It’s also a harrowing viewing experience that explores how social media and toxic masculinity are poisoning a generation of children.
Adolescence is centered on a shocking crime: The stabbing death of a teenage girl named Katie Leonard by Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) a 13-year-old boy. Each hour-long installment consists of one unbroken shot. The first episode takes place the day after the murder when police officers led by DI Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters) burst into Jamie’s home, arrest him, and transport him to a station for interrogation. The second, which takes place three days later, follows Bascombe as he question’s Jamie’s classmates at Jamie’s school. The third episode is set seven months later and filmed almost entirely in one room as psychologist Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty) meets with Jamie to complete a court-ordered evaluation. The final episode occurs thirteen months after the murder and follows Jamie’s family (Graham plays his father Eddie, Christine Tremarco his mother Manda, and Amélie Pease his sister Lisa) on Eddie’s fiftieth birthday.
Initially, it’s hard to believe Jamie could have committed such a heinous crime, as he looks closer to ten-years-old than thirteen, but CCTV footage confirms his culpability. Adolescence, therefore, is more concerned with why Jamie killed his classmate. The pieces fall and then harden into place over the course of the series: Jamie had tumbled into the misogynistic Manosphere online, had been called an incel (involuntarily celibate) by Katie on social media, and lacked a compassionate male role model at home. The show is ultimately an indictment of the dual threats posed by toxic masculinity and social media and a call for parents and society to pay more attention to the lives our children (especially boys) are living online.
Wright conceived Adolescence as a response to a number of high-profile stabbings of girls by boys that rocked the UK in recent years. That’s admirable, especially when you consider the UK’s relatively low crime rate; an uptick in knife violence in England is enough to inspire a television show that prompts a national reckoning, while we in the U.S. have become inured to daily instances of domestic gun violence.
But Adolescence is flawed as a work of social commentary. For starters, we learn very little about the victim, Katie, and what we do learn is that her cyberbullying and rejection of Jamie is presumably what finally pushed Jamie over the edge. I say “presumably” because we don’t know Katie’s motives; what if she insulted Jamie hoping to end his harassment of her? As it is, it becomes far too easy for the audience to see Katie as complicit in her own murder, as you can imagine a victim-blaming viewer saying to himself, “If only she had been nicer to Jamie online.”
Along those same lines, because we never get to know Katie, it’s easy for our sympathy to flow to Jamie as a boy whom society and technology have turned into a monster. Jamie is a tragic figure, but Katie—the girl—is the real victim. You can blame this flaw on the show’s structure: Each episode is one hour-long take, and the episodes are arranged in chronological order starting the day after the murder. But the full story begs—or better yet, demands—a flashback episode or two so that Katie’s story can be told, too.
Additionally, Adolescence didn’t exactly convince me that toxic masculinity and social media are responsible for twisting Jamie’s mind. The show tells me that, but doesn’t exactly show me that. We’re told Jamie has ventured into the dark corners of the Web. We’re told Jamie believes “80-20” (that 80% of girls are interested in only 20% of boys) is true. We’re told Katie called Jamie an incel. We’re told Eddie has a temper. We do see that Jamie is prone to wild swings in temperament, but we don’t see how he got to be that way, or if that attitude is merely a product of becoming ensnared in the legal system. It feels like viewers discover the causes of the social ills in question at the same time as the show, when the show should be exposing viewers to these problems’ roots and showing us how this all plays out in real life. Furthermore, by not showing us the origins of these problems—that is, by not showing us the development of Jamie’s character—we might instead end up blaming the only thing we do see: A boy with little more than anger issues. Consequently, when Jamie’s parents admit they had no idea what Jamie was up to online and question whether they raised him right, we’re in the same boat, too, since nearly all we have to go off of to make that judgment is their own speculation.
Still, Adolescence is gripping television. The one-shot format plunges the viewer into the drama and carries them away. In the first episode, during which Jamie is swept into a justice system that toggles between compassion for the accused and a determined quest for justice, the viewer is often left disoriented, which reflects the experience of Jamie and his family. The third episode is a tense, claustrophobic showdown set almost entirely in one room. There are some moments in the show when its creators could have broken with the one-shot rule. For example, there’s a lot of uneventful walking between classrooms in the second episode. Yet that episode also ends with an amazing feat of camerawork that reinforces the tremendous amount of coordination and choreography that goes into a shoot like this.
If you’re going to film everything in one shot, you’re going to need some phenomenal actors, too, and Adolescence delivers numerous award-worthy performances. Watching the show is like watching an elaborate theater production. Every member of the cast is on-point. Stephen Graham oscillates between confusion, composure, anger, despair, and dread as Jamie’s father. His personal sense of guilt is soul-crushing even as he tries to carry on, particularly at the end of the first episode. Erin Doherty—an actress on the verge of a breakthrough—is sharp and poised as the psychologist who parries with Jamie. As for Owen Cooper, the teenager who plays Jamie…well, the only thing more astonishing than his flawless performance is the fact that this is also his debut as an actor. Just imagine what he’ll be able to accomplish when afforded the luxury of multiple takes.
People on both sides of the Atlantic have recently been asking themselves “What’s the matter with boys?” In America, I feel the answer to that question too often has something to do with emasculation or society’s rejection of traditional masculinity. That’s unfortunate, as such answers only reinforce the mindset at the root of the problem. Adolescence doesn’t dig into these issues surrounding boyhood as much as it could, but at a minimum, it should be a wake-up call for parents and policymakers and prompt some important conversations.
Exit Music: “Angel” by Massive Attack (1998, Mezzanine)
Actually, there are two states Democrats could flip that I didn’t include in this analysis because they don’t fit into the broader categories I examine. The first is Utah, a conservative but not exactly MAGA state. The rapidly growing Salt Lake City area continues moving to the left politically. If Trump doesn’t just break but shatters the Republican Party, there may be an opening in Utah, but it’s a stretch. The other is Alaska, which is heavily reliant on federal funding. If DOGE keeps it up, Alaskans could get hit hard and take it out on Republicans. Furthermore, Alaska’s run-off election system creates an opening for Democrats if Republican candidates divide the vote.
For the record, the seventh state is Maryland (32.0%).