Atlanta, Denver, somewhere in Virginia, Maryland, or DC, or possibly Ohio or Pennsylvania. There's places like Austin and some places in Florida that might have cool people, but the state government is trash.

I saw Greenville recommended, and this is anecdotal, but last time I was there visiting friends, we (visibly queer) got followed around by this crazy guy with a metal pipe making all kinds of death threats. I love my friends but that sealed the deal for me on not wanting to live there. There are some neat places there ngl, the sex themed desert restaurant was a fun place for a queerplatonic hangout, but in general it's not exactly going to be a refuge from Trump supporters.

I've heard good things about Durham.NC.

I love South Carolina and used to visit Charleston annually but I'll never go again because of the politics.

Pacific Northwest

There hasn’t been “bitter cold” in the northeast for a decade. Climate change is a bitch. We barely get snow anymore - 2015 was a banger, but it’s been dustings since.

Come to Finland. I have absolutely zero clue about what party my neighbours vote. Hell, I don't even know who my friends of parents vote.

Come to Georgia. It's close. We're a swing state now. We could use your vote.

Stay and run for office. Even under a maga banner..if anything shown we can change this country it's voting. Also both parties shown that you can change parties once in office. So run win then go full blown progressive while in office.

45 minutes outside of Portland, OR in any direction will get you somewhere just as rural as the place you left in SC, only with better weather and sane laws.

I dont know why but this just summoned in my brain the ancient text, the knowledge…

Come to Kenya; we got lions

Hello neighbor! NC will welcome you. It's purple here. Rural areas are not so great but closer to the bigger cities (Charlotte, Raleigh, Asheville, Greensboro/Winston) are nice.

Sorry about your sanity.

If you wany a rural setting you're probably fucked.

If you're looking for a SC kind of 'city' I would suggest perhaps Colorado, or something like Bend Oregon, or Spokane Washington. More isolated cities without large populations and also surrounded by that rural character.

Southern Florida? Like the man said: Florida: the more North you go, the more South it gets. Orlando seems mostly OK. Big city, opportunities, and there's a NASA space center and launch facility not too far.

My mom lives there, and that's about the limit of my knowledge. I will personally never again willingly live south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Oh, I hear that if you stay out of the little handle at the bottom, Missouri is nice. A friend from there once told me that if they'd cut off that handle and give it to Arkansas, it'd raise the average IQ of both states. Never been there, myself.

Lots of places in Oregon and Washington are great; large swaths are not, but if you're not prone to SAD, there are great towns in the Willamette Valley: Corvallis, Eugene, and Ashville down on the California border. Also, California is enormous. N California is very different from S California, and the coast is enormously different from the interior. It's a huge state, and painting it with a single brush is like saying Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania are all the same. It's seriously about the same area as all those put together, lengthwise, at least. The greater LA/San Diego area alone is almost as big as your entire state. But the Pacific Northeast is wet if you live in the Valley, and there isn't much in the way of big cities east of the Cascades.

How about Boise, ID? Good size college city, lots of microbreweries, lots of outdoor recreation, pretty great weather if you like hot, but you get snow in the winter, too. Plus nearly half the state is national park; fantastic backpacking.

Most of these places I mentioned specifically lean liberal, although when you venture into rural areas it gets red pretty quickly, like anywhere. An exception is Orange County in CA, which is full of really crazy red-hatters. But it sound like you've already ruled out at least part of CA, and "insufferable" makes me think you're thinking specifically of S Cal.

Eugene is, or used to be, fantastic. Extremely liberal, and not trust-fund hippie style. Decent sized to be entertaining. You just have to put up with the weather and hippies, or whatever hippies have mutated into with successive generations. Pot's legal in OR, too, if that's your bag.

Bend, OR is one of the best places in the planet if you're sporty. It's high desert, but smack up against the mountains. In the summer, people rock climb and bike. In the winter, they ski Mt Bachelor. There's fishing and camping, and at one point it had more restaurants per capita than any other city in the US. There's no humidity. At all. Very pretty town. A 4 hour drive north, and you're in Portland, OR, which isn't what it used to be and has been having problems, but is still a large metro area with lots to do and a fantastic science center. 2 hrs West through the mountains is Salem, the capital, which frankly sucks; or or 3+ hours SW is the aforementioned Eugene. A couple hours south is Crater Lake. A couple three more hours and you're in the N California Redwood forest. Oh, and if you do speed through So-Lame (Salem), another 1.5 hours and you're on the Oregon coast, so 3-4 hours from Bend to the coast, mostly through a fantastic, amazing mountain range (and then the Valley and then the smaller coastal range).

If you want to stay on the E coast, I recommend the greater Philadelphia area. From there, NYC is a 3hr drive. The Jersey shore is a 3 hr drive. Washington DC is a 3 hr drive. Gettysburg is a 3 hr drive. Williamsburg, VA - possibly my favorite place in the US - is a 4-ish hour drive (depending on DC traffic). Plus, you can get to almost any of the coast cities from Philly by train, if you're willing to sacrifice a couple more hours. Pennsylvania wasn't my favorite place to live, but if you can stand living in S Carolina I'm sure it'd be fine for you.

Honestly, you might consider Minneapolis. It does get cold in the winter (-50F is the coldest I've experienced), but The Cities are fantastic, full of Art Deco architecture, and end-summer temps can hit the 100's. In September, any of the literally over 10,000 lakes are bath-water warm. And we don't have copperheads. The great lakes are close; we're practically in the center of the country, so flying anywhere in the continental US is a 4-hour flight or less. The Cities are very progressive - again, you drive an hour outside and it's Trump signs everywhere - par for the course - but within The Cities it's quite nice. And the bike paths are incredible; miles and miles, and much of it completely off-road - at some point they took all the old industry rail lines and turned them into maintained bike and foot paths. It's really quite remarkable. And the metro system isn't half bad, for a US city. The humidity gets oppressive, but, again, you're surviving S Carolina so I don't think that'd be a problem for you.

What’s wrong with California?

I'm not from the US, so I don't know how accurate this is, and I also don't know if this thing has ever been updated (I found it a long time ago), but there's this tool that might help with deciding: https://www.whereshouldilive.co/

Cincinnati is pretty diverse, but also corrupt law enforcement.

Because Putin & Murdoch hate democracy & know new age warfare: troll social media, market fake news.

With a tiny troll army: Created a party of snowflakes that calls everybody else snowflakes.

Streaming endless propaganda (Fake News: Fox, Alex Jones etc)

I live in a similar part of SC as well. I feel you.

When I had a FB acct, I wasnpart of my area's group, and the racists there was insane, even one person litterally was complaining that she moved to this area because she was tired of the north and was looking for the "white parts" of the south.

If you figure out where to move, please post an update, looking for somewhere new as well.

Greenville. That downtown is perfection.

Portland or Seattle would for those criteria well as long as you don't mind rain. Both very progressive cities, weather is generally mild (rarely above 85, rarely below 30, usually less than 2 weeks a year with snow).

If options were no object, Pacific Northwest is beautiful and temperate

There are a number of blue cities in the Midwest. What's the lowest temp you want? I live in Lincoln, Nebraska and it's pretty great: nice weather most of the year, low cost of living, blue city, tons of parks. Only downside is dealing with red state bullshit from the state government.

I guess you could go to Georgia. You could go to Savannah or St. Simons. Make the state slightly more purple.

North Carolina is a crapshoot. Virginia?

Those are your options. Feel free to move to Tennessee: you won't like it, but I'd like my state to turn purple eventually so all libs are welcome.

Edit: I used to live in Macon, and I hated it, but it's apparently amazing to visit now, so maybe you can live there if you don't need to work.

Come to Columbus, Ohio. It doesn't have the name recognition of Seattle or Denver, but it's a pretty chill city with decent weather, good people, and a lower cost of living than just about anywhere else while also having job opportunities.

Hey, Chicago food is way better and the child weather kills all the bugs every year. Don't be a wimp, move north. Or what your kids will have to anyway thanks to climate change. Oh yeah, we've never had a hurricane up here.

Durham or chapel Hill? We got lots of libs over here.