Some really good stuff being posted; nice job.
I’ll try to be brief and focus on MA only:
Ronald Reagan was reelected in 1984...31 years and nearly 2 generations ago. No way would he win this state today. Just looking at my own family, how many of them (GOP & semi-sane RATs, excluding my father of course) that voted for Reagan are now dead? And what have they been replaced with?
Answers: Many and with diehard leftists. Demographics are destiny.
As a whole, this country is no where near as patriotic, as American, as it was in 1984...even less so in Massholechusetts. I don’t see a GOP POTUS candidate winning this state again in my lifetime.
Statewide, the best you’ll get is a barely Republican (although he’s doing a good job IMO) Chazz Baker running against a truly unlikeable, weak RAT like Marcia Coakley and squeaking in for the win.
Even the CDs are lost. Look at some of the opportunities and quality candidates (Sean Bielat vs. Bwaney Franklover for example) that have lost.
Nope. MA, like the rest of the deep, deep blue states is what it is - a lost cause.
In 1980, there were 158 electoral votes which might have flipped to Carter if he could have added all or nearly all the John Anderson votes, the green states in this graphic.
Those in the south probably would not have been among them since the combined total would've been such a narrow margin over Reagan, it is unrealistic to think they might have flipped.
But even in this case, Reagan still would have won an impressive 331 electoral votes.
I seem to recall reading an article saying that Bielat should’ve run in an adjacent district as he probably would’ve won (either against Tierney or for the open Cape & Islands district in the then-10th). Frank’s district, although containing parts of the ancestral GOP area that sent Speaker Martin and Peg Heckler until 1983, still has too many moonbat areas.
As per that article you sent me, I don’t believe the state will remain indefinitely one party/one ideology. There’s enormous opportunity for growth running anti-establishment candidates with an eye to finally dispatching the leftist control of the state GOP. A big part of the reason the Dems seized a majority was taking advantage of a stagnant and statist GOP, and that’s the problem the MA Dems face now.