This is nothing new. It's been happening for decades, it's just reached the point it's more noticable now.

I graduated high school in a small rural Ohio town in the late 2000s. The kind of country school where k-12 are all in the same building. My graduating class was less than 100 people. Some kids drove tractors to school if they were feeling ornery. Lots of Confederate flags (in Ohio).

Of that class, according to Facebook, around 10 of them still live in or around that town. The rest of us got the fuck out. And this has been the trend in every small town from the Midwest to the South to the West.

You know what happens when you invest in education for young people in these small backwater towns? They leave, and take their progressive votes with them. Hence why it doesn't seem like education tends to work in these areas. It's working, it's just helping kids gain the knowledge that they don't want to stay living in a conservative backwater, and providing them the skills so they don't have to. And off they go.

Unfortunately there's a problem with this. The Senate. Red State brain drain is going to continue to fuck the Senate up worse than it already has. It doesn't matter how many people flee those red states, they will always get two Senators. Ironically, as they flee for better blue states, they are damaging the national government's ability to function properly and making it more red.

That happens in microcosm with gerrymandered congressional districts, too. "Sure, leave your small town, go to the cities, were your voting power is suppressed."