om – Are you suggesting that mail-in voting/integrity problems made a difference in red suburban counties but not in deep blue urban areas or red rural areas? I can’t rule that out, but it sounds pretty far fetched to me.

1. The closest thing to a ‘suburban county’ around Milwaukee is Waukesha County. Biden did do better there than Clinton did, but that could have a half-dozen different explanations, starting with how the Gary Johnson vote sorted out.

2. Harrisburg has no ‘suburban counties’. The tract development begins at the intersection of Cumberland and Dauphin Counties and spreads outward. The same observation applies as that to Milwaukee.

3. The suburban counties around Pittsburgh are Beaver and Westmoreland. Biden added about 2-3% in these counties. Same observation.

“McConnell has not spoken with Trump since Dec. 14 — the day McConnell acknowledged President Biden won the November election — and he does not plan to ever speak with him again, people close to him say,” the Washington Post reported. “Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal details. Even the back channel the two men once had — between McConnell’s former top aide Josh Holmes and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner — is now cold.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/mcconnell-speaking-trump-again

Follow the Turtle, GOPextinct. Go team Turtle!

Art+Deco and om – Click the link and select Dem Overperform to show counties where the Democratic candidate gained 3% or more between 2016 and 2020. Most of those counties are red. Philadelphia County is the only swing state city center. Check out all the red suburban counties around Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Detroit, and Milwaukee.

If Trump hadn’t underperformed in the suburbs, he would have won, even with the other shenanigans that went on.

If you want a look at the future, check out the red suburban counties in safe (for now) red states where Biden gained 3% or more relative to Hillary: Cincinnati, Raleigh, Columbia SC, Charleston WV, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, New Orleans, etc.

Which suburbs? And how has their change in disposition differed from the backround noise of political life – where party fortunes rise and decline in a particular locale according to a dozen different vectors. While we’re at it, where did you ever get the idea you were Frank Luntz?

Reagan challenged Gerald Ford for the Republican presidential nomination in 1975 and 1976, so he didn’t always adhere to it. Reagan’s disputes with Ford were over substantive policy, of course, and Reagan wasn’t given to recycling Democratic talking points (much less vicious and mendacious talking points).