If you shift every state to their vote relative to the nation, simulating a 49%/49%/2% popular result, you get this:
That doesn't look much like a 2000-2016 map to me.
Democrats would have been much better off creating the coalition this map shows than chasing southern votes for another quarter century.
If Roe v Wade had never happened the following year, the New Deal Coalition probably could have been rebuilt, and you'd have a much broader battleground. Things were better off when voters in places like Texas and Tennessee mattered.
I'd rather have an alignment with 35 battleground states than one with 10. Regardless of who is winning elections, that's healthier for the nation as a whole.
I disagree. First, while Roe probably killed the Democrats already weak stance in the Plains, it didn't really have much impact in the South. Busing and desegregation efforts toward private schools had more impact. The evangelicals were even united on that issue until Jerry Falwell started courting Catholics.
While I agree on paper that it's best to have across-the-board representation, Democrats fixation on the South in the late 20th century led to many negative political trends - mass incineration the most blatant example. It also meant that a badly needed de-Confederateization never occurred after Jim Crow, as the South's racial bigotry, militarism, and televangelism was pandered to by Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton as much as by the GOP. Making matters worse, the fixation of giving the South pork and appeasing it's bad prejudices occurred at the expense of the rest of the nation (look at how little help the Rust Belt, family farms, inner cities, etc, got under Carter and Clinton).
