^And this myth that Trump would have won without improving over Romney's 2012 showing in rural areas (many of which had voted Democratic for decades before) needs to die an even quicker death. It is exactly because he collapsed in many of these suburban areas that his massive margins in rural areas were key to his victory. Iowa's trend to the right is mostly (though not entirely) driven by the rightward trend of its rural areas and small as well as medium-sized towns (like Dubuque, which trended heavily R in this election (but not in 2012)) and not places like Des Moines and Cedar Rapids or its suburbs (Trump did worse than Romney in Johnson County, though it is true that he held his own in Linn County). The fact that Trump got 35% of his votes just from counties won by Clinton is pretty irrelevant: Of course he's going to get a big chunk of his votes from the...well... most populated counties - that doesn't mean that those areas were key to his victory or that the average Trump voter in IA is a wealthy suburbanite. You're obsessed with this idea that suburbs MUST be more Republican than rural areas everywhere because it apparently confirms your (overly simplistic) notion of which voters make up the two parties' coalitions. Take a look at the exit poll: Trump only did 2 points better (49% in 2012, 51% in 2016) among suburban voters, but a whopping 11 points better among rural voters (52% in 2012, 63% in 2016).
Ceding even a small part of the rural vote to the Democrats would be a disaster. Of course the GOP can't afford to collapse even more in the suburbs, but let's not act as if rural areas weren't key to Trump's victory. Many of these educated, wealthy suburbs that you like to talk about so much are trending Democratic in the long term, and some of them pretty strongly - look what's happening in GA-06. Ossoff is running away with this race in a distict that was solidly Republican for decades and in a way made the GA GOP relevant at the statewide level in the 90s.
Exactly.
Sure, we can be technical about what defines "rural," and because most states are classified as majority urban, Trump obviously had to get some votes from people who aren't rural. That doesn't change that fact that the Republicans of today are by far the more rural party, and there's no point denying or downplaying it.
While Republicans would suffer from slight inroads achieved by Democrats in rural areas, the flip side is that if Republicans make inroads in cities and inner suburbs, and nothing else changes, Democrats are in deep trouble.
