If one were to look for an Homeric parallel to Biden, it might be closer to say that he parallels Nestor...

But still, yes, very much the representative of the city state. There have been times when "conservative" and "progressive" didn't line up with "urban" and "rural" - when I was young conservative parties were most prominently the agents of Wall Street and Bay Street, as urban as they come - but they surely do now.

The rhetoric of red versus blue states actually hides the reality out there where most states are purple, with blue cities and red hinterlands (although to be fair Brooks' original article didn't make that error).

A civil war of some sort has now become slightly more probable with a narrative of a "stab in the back", but it is likely to take the form of a lot of localized violence in dribs and drabs rather than of regions seceding, what with the mixture of cultures, blue cities in red hinterlands.

All of which starts to get away from the consideration of Trump as "leader" and back to seeing him as a symptom rather than a cause, which is another, and in many ways more serious, issue