City strategy and the midwest.

[RINO Tom]

Most of the midwest is losing population except some of the suburbs around the big cities, or certain growth hubs like Dane WI, Washtenaw MI, or Franklin OH.

If anything the suburbs continuing to trend Democratic will be what causes problems for the Republicans with the rural areas losing people.

Yeah. Places like Oakland County, MI do seem to be trending D as places outside metros are becoming more Republican. I kind of doubt though that Democrats will continue to perform as badly as they did outside cities and suburbs in 2016. After the 2004 election, the common narrative was that Democrats are doomed in rural America, but 4 years later, Obama did pretty well in the rural midwest.

And after Goldwater's disastrous campaign in 1964, the GOP recovered magnificently with suburban voters, so I'd say it's very shortsighted to say these trends will continue forever.

[RINO Tom]

Part of the shrinking urban center/D-trending suburb phenomenon is simply that people who previously lived in the city and voted Democratic have since moved to the suburbs while continuing to vote Democratic. It's not the whole thing. But part (and in the case of Detroit/Oakland County a really big part) of it.

That is a great point, I never thought of it like that. 

It's underrated.  We see study after study that shows political allegiances are largely static, yet we almost always assume a county trending one way is because its existing voters are just changing their minds.

[RINO Tom]

Most of the midwest is losing population except some of the suburbs around the big cities, or certain growth hubs like Dane WI, Washtenaw MI, or Franklin OH.

If anything the suburbs continuing to trend Democratic will be what causes problems for the Republicans with the rural areas losing people.

Yeah. Places like Oakland County, MI do seem to be trending D as places outside metros are becoming more Republican. I kind of doubt though that Democrats will continue to perform as badly as they did outside cities and suburbs in 2016. After the 2004 election, the common narrative was that Democrats are doomed in rural America, but 4 years later, Obama did pretty well in the rural midwest.

And after Goldwater's disastrous campaign in 1964, the GOP recovered magnificently with suburban voters, so I'd say it's very shortsighted to say these trends will continue forever.

Goldwater lost basically everyone.

And Reagan won basically everyone.  These trends just simply aren't going to slowly morph the EC a state or two every four years; there will be bigger changes along the way.