UPSTATE NEW YORK WAS PREDICTABLE TRUMP COUNTRY. IT’S DYING: “It’s no wonder Donald Trump won big in New York’s Republican primary on Tuesday. It wasn’t just that he’s a native New Yorker and a celebrity Manhattan businessman. The rest of his home state is a living testament to the plight of the white working class, whose anger and frustration with the political establishment have sustained Trump’s campaign. Take a close look at upstate New York and you’ll see a region slowly dying. Its decline over the past thirty years is staggering. Blue-collar communities from Binghamton to Buffalo that were built on manufacturing plants and steel mills have simply been gutted. The jobs have gone overseas—or to neighboring states or to the Sun Belt—and the towns and smaller cities are gradually emptying out. A shocking number of those who stay behind are succumbing to opioids and other drugs. Unemployment is up, workforce participation is down, and crime is worse in Niagara Falls, Buffalo, Rochester, Binghamton, and Syracuse than it is in New York City.”

Fundamentally transformed, to coin a phrase.