Exactly eight weeks before Election Day, Biden has strong opportunities to recapture states that President Donald Trump won in 2016 both in the Rust Belt and the Sun Belt. But public and private polls consistently show that Biden is running slightly better in the former group of battlegrounds — centered on Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — than the latter, which include North Carolina, Florida and Arizona…

But if Biden can regain enough ground in the Rust Belt in November to win the White House, he’ll buy time for Democrats to allow increasing racial diversity and a steady influx of college-educated White professionals to strengthen their hand in Sun Belt states that have leaned reliably Republican for decades.

That’s how Biden could offer Democrats a bridge: His potential to improve on Hillary Clinton’s showing with older and blue-collar Whites means that even if falls short in some or all of the Sun Belt states that many in the party see as its long-term future, he could still reach 270 Electoral College votes by recapturing Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the three big Rust Belt states that Trump dislodged from the Democrats’ “blue wall.”