US Presidential Election 2020

California and Texas are often seen as kind of being the yin to the others yang - the two largest EC states by a fair margin, and a complete lock for the Dems and GOP respectively that campaigning there etc is never really needed much (unless using it as a base for some national event like a major speech/rally/convention/etc). If either party ever lost either state, they could throw in the towel there and then and forget about winning the Presidency until they got said state back, or until a huge change in politics in most occurred (something we haven't seen since the 1970s).

The Democrats are currently 1/300 to win California, with Biden currently leading there on 538's aggregator by 29.7%
The Republicans are currently 2/5 to win Texas, with Biden now actually holding a 0.1% lead on 538's aggregator.
That difference is staggering.

I do still think Trump will win there, but the funding, time and effort they will need to put in is going to cost them massively in several other states, which is made even worse when you look at him losing almost every single typically 'blue' or 'purple' state he won in 2016, along with some more traditionally red ones that he either won (or lost closely) in 2016. There is absolutely no question that Texas is absolutely 'in play' right now, something which shouldn't even be worth discussing as a possibility. I had seen Biden closing the gap but only noticed when checking for this post that he had taken the lead there.

Given that younger voters skew left, that the current younger voters in the US are definitely a generational movement at this point, are already the biggest one since the baby boomers (who are now dying off), and very importantly that Texas is the third youngest state in the nation after Alaska and Utah (and DC if we're counting it), this doesn't bode well - especially with all the Californians moving there lately.

I read a few years ago that the best way for progressive minded people in the US to get what they want in the current system was to flood 'red' states which are often very over represented in terms of EC seats, Senate positions, etc. It looks like that is also exactly what is happening, with massive net emigration numbers not only to Texas (who have 29 EC seats), but also Arizona (11 seats), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), Nebraska (5), Idaho (4) and apparently rural Washington State (12)/Oregon (17 - both are blue states, but very 'red' once you leave the cities. It has already occurred in Virginia (13 who voted for Hillary and Obama twice, but had been straight GOP from 1964-2008 before that), and looks like Arizona has gone or is right on the brink of going the same way too.

This is bad, bad news for Republicans in the medium-to-long term, and in the short too. Leaving out Washington, Oregon and Virginia, that is a total of 61 seats (74 with VA & NV) that have traditionally been easy wins for the GOP. In the 10 elections since 1980, across these 6 states there have been a total of 59 GOP wins vs 1 single Democrat one (Arizona - Clinton, 1996), and so losing them would be a swing of 122 seats (or 148 with VA) in a race to 270. And it seems the only way to (democratically) avoid this is for the GOP to move their platform to better suit 'Californian types' and younger voters - two groups they have more or less labelled 'the enemy' over the last 10+ years in an effort to rally their base. And if they go chasing that younger and more 'Californian' type of demographic, then what happens with their current base?

538.com aggregates polls from around the country, and while it's very early days in terms of election polling so could easily change, this is what they currently look like for those states:
Arizona - Biden up 2.4pts
South Dakota - still awaiting polls
South Carolina - Trump up 7.2pts
Nebraska - Biden up by 7pts
Idaho - still awaiting polls
Texas - Biden up 0.1pts
Virginia - Biden up by 11.2pts

Obviously polls this early do not tell the whole picture, but of those 74 seats, right now Biden would pick up 58, Trump 9, with 7 from SD/ID being undecided; remove VA and it's still 45-9 in Biden's favour. Traditionally, this should be a locked in 61 seats for the GOP, or 74 with VA included, and indeed in 2016 Trump did win all of these states bar VA and pick up said 61 votes. This is a huge problem for them this year, and it's only going to get worse and worse with time. All of those states by VA (middle of the pack) and SC (15th oldest) are in the 15th youngest states in the US.

Republican election officials would of course be well aware of this too, and the truth is that there is no way for them to keep relevant over the coming years without finding ways to stop people from voting and undermining democracy. The racist Southern Strategy reaped rewards for decades for them, but following further and further down the rabbit hole may have led them to a dead end at this point. And if their acts in congress are anything to go by, it appears that having foreign nations undermine their elections for which the GOP have massively cut protections and defenses of, is the option they have gone for.

"that tweet is unavailable"

What was tweeted, because it sounds like it may have backfired fast - even by Trump standards.