Dan's a jackass. What he did was disrespectful to the fans: sports should be a place where you can get away from politics and everything else [this is one of the reasons I despise ESPN so much.] The Steeler Nation is all over the country and the world, and the highest concentration of it is all of Western PA, part of Eastern Ohio, and West Virginia. Most of that is not liberal country; even Allegheny County isn't as Democrat as it once was. So, knowing that you're going to alienate more than half of your fans you wave the bloody shirt in their faces. Just insulting and rude.
You’re dead on.
Western Pa is an area that is more conservative than its voting patterns indicate. The Pittsburgh metro area actually votes pretty conservatively compared to most other northern cities, but there are a lot of people who live and act like conservatives but still pull the D lever anyway. A lot of these Dems are union guys and old people brainwashed by the media, not so much the latte-sipping liberal types you’d see in places like San Francisco and Manhattan. These people are starting to realize that the Democratic party left them, and Western Pa is slowly becoming more and more Republican.
Obama was never particularly popular in Western Pa, and he continues to become even more and more disliked. Rooney’s continual chumming with him was a terrible decision.