Which shift was more painful to see?

[CookieDamage]

Anyone who says RGV over Miami-Dade is someone who doesn't look at numbers and shifts and instead just look at maps and see which county changes to blue or red and vice versa. The latter is unfortunately a mostly unimportant metric when it comes to rural areas.

The Miami-Dade shift was far, far worse as it represents a massive shift in a highly populated area in a competetive-ish state. As Roll Roons said, TX still managed to shift and trend D despite the RGV shift. Dems improved in areas where millions of voters live, while Trump improved in areas where only tens of thousands live. The Miami-Dade shift, if sustained into 2024 and beyond, locks Dems out of FL.

Thinking of it in another way, Dems can lose the entire RGV and surrounding areas but easily make up for it by improving in each of the big metros (which they have been doing). Meanwhile, Dems continuing to lose ground in M-D will be very hard to counteract in the smaller metros of Tampa, Orlando, and Jacksonville.

[CookieDamage]

Well I suppose Miami-Dade is hard to see, but the RGV really highlighted the Democrats *even worse* performance among rural-working class voters of all races. The RGV is just the next tale in the story of the modern Democratic struggle to receive the working-class vote. Democrats mustn't lose any further ground in working-class America, or Pennsylvania might be gone.

Pennsylvania is hardly the bastion of working class America. It's economy is quite white collar. Philadelphia and its Dem-friendly suburbs are growing (albeit slowly), as well as the Allentown area too. The Pittsburgh area is no longer seeing steep losses either. Maybe Michigan fits the profile of a working class state better.