Let's have a bit of fun for a moment and imagine a future where Texas turns blue. Not saying this will happen this way, but I want to illustrate a point about how huge turning Texas blue is.
The year is 2032. After two terms of Bernie, AOC ran in 2028 and is running for reelection. Millennials are by far the biggest voting block now, and it shows. She won thanks to historic Latino support, swinging Texas decidely into her column, the first election it became clear the state was now blue, not purple, and it's only become more blue since. New Mexico has simlarly followed suit, a election or two before Texas in fact. Nevada is also not a swing state anymore, though some pundits had been telling us that for over a decade. The Reid machine is alive and well there and bolstered by ever stronger Latino support, Nevada is untouchable. The Republican party is essentially dead in California and Hawaii, and close to it in Oregon and Washington. Chicago keeps Illinois blue forever, and the Midwest states of PA, WI, and MI have swung back with MN. They still look like swing states, but usually go blue. Baltimore keeps Maryland blue, NYC keeps New York bluer than ever. New Jersey is still pretty blue, as is Massachusettes, and Bernie has turned Vermont blue for the foreseeable future even as the world moves on from his era. DC is a state now, and is the bluest of all. Some of these states lost electoral votes in the 2020 and 2030 census, but Texas gained them back, so for simplicity's sake imagine that the states I've named so far are worth about the same as they are now. These 18 states are all Democrats would need for 273 EVs. Speculation in the Trump era that Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island might one day swing red due to an aging white population came true and Maine and New Hampshire are swing states that swung red, and Arizona and Georgia never panned out, Virginia was lost again for similar reasons to New England and Florida went red thanks to white retirees. Yet even with the old blue wall collapsing, and gains in the south lost, Texas is all Democrats needed to make the presidency untouchable for Republicans.
Fast forward to 2036. AOC endorses a successor. We've now had 16 years of Democratic rule. Trumpism is finally dying out, and Republicans run a moderate. However, the Latino vote is pretty solidly in the Democrats corner now, and demographic change puts even more of the southern border in Democrats' hands. This time, we do get Arizona, and enough old boomer retirees have died that Florida swings back blue again to a younger, more Latino electorate with Cuban descendants of Castro refugees no longer afraid of socialism. Hawaii and California are still one party states, and Washington and Oregon never had their Republicans recover. Texas, Nevada, and New Mexico are still blue. Georgia finally swings blue as the state has grown increasingly more black and less white. The urbanites of DC, Maryland, Illinois, Massachusettes, New York, and New Jersey keep their states blue, and Vermont is still blue from Bernie. The whole midwest outside of Chicago swings red now, MN has gone red for the first time since FDR. Yet even with the entire midwest lost, with just the Mexico border, west coast, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Vermont, and a handful of urban states, with just 16 states and DC, Democrats have the presidency again with 273 EVs.
I personally think these are on the extremely, unrealistically bad end of things for Democrats if they turn Texas blue. I just pretended Republicans always won Colorado somehow, and Virginia is NOT likely to be red all the time. It might not even be purple in the future. Georgia will probably turn and stay blue well before 2036, because it is highly polarized and inelastic in its voting patterns and change is mostly driven by demographics, which are trending our way with no end in sight. North Carolina will probably follow Georgia and Virginia to the blue side. New England will probably stay blue even as its population ages. Add those states in, and any Democrat that wins the midwest, which will probably stay swing states and not go red, will win between 332 and well over 400 possible EVs. With the executive branch that untouchably blue for that long, the Judicial branch would end up deep blue as well. I don't see a Republican party that can't ever control two out of three branches even by going moderate being able to survive long term. If we get Texas blue, something fundamental will have to change about politics for Democrats to not control basically everything forever. Republicans going the way of the Whigs and a Democratic party split into progressive and corporate factions that become their own parties seems the most likely outcome to me. Again, assuming we can turn Texas blue in the next decade, and especially if we turn it blue in 2020.
Thanks for listening to my TED talk.
