OLD WHITE MEN ONLY NEED APPLY:

"Nowhere has [President Donald] Trump harmed himself and his party more than across the Sun Belt, where the electoral coalition that secured a generation of Republican dominance is in danger of coming apart," Martin and Burns explain. [...]

"Many of the Sun Belt states seemingly within Mr. Biden's reach resisted the most stringent public-health policies to battle the coronavirus," the Times reporters note. "As a result, states like Arizona, Georgia and Texas faced a powerful wave of infections for much of the summer, setting back efforts to revive commercial activity."

Two of the Republicans who candidly discussed the GOP's problems in the Sun Belt are former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and Oklahoma City Mayor David F. Holt. Flake, a conservative who has endorsed Biden, said of Trump, "There are limits to what people can take with the irresponsibility, the untruthfulness, just the whole persona." And Holt told the Times, "Cities in states like Arizona and Texas are attracting young people, highly-educated people and people of color -- all groups that the national Republican Party has walked away from the last four years. This losing demographic bet against big cities and their residents is putting Sun Belt states in play."

If recent polls are accurate, Biden has a good chance of winning more Sun Belt states than Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton did in 2016. Clinton carried Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and, of course, deep blue California, but Trump won Florida, Georgia, Texas, Arizona and both of the Carolinas.

"Even as he stunned Hillary Clinton in three crucial Great Lakes states, (Trump) lost Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico and fared worse in Arizona, Texas and Georgia than Mitt Romney had four years earlier," Martin and Burns note. "Two years later, Democrats performed even better in a series of high-profile races across the region with college-educated white voters and people of color."

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