Posted on 01/07/2020 4:25:48 AM PST by Kaslin
PITTSBURGH -- Darrin Kelly, president of the powerful Allegheny-Fayette County Central Labor Council, says that not one of the Democratic candidates running for president has reached out to him to ask about or listen to what union families in western Pennsylvania are looking for in a nominee to challenge President Donald Trump in November. "Not one," he says abruptly.
That omission is obvious in just about every proclamation about the energy sector coming from the mouths of most Democratic candidates, whether it is Sens. Bernie Sanders' and Elizabeth Warren's pledging to ban fracking, or former Vice President Joe Biden's recent proclamation that workers in the fossil fuel industry need to learn how to program: "Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for god's sake!"
Youngstown State University political science professor Paul Sracic said there is one thing that is strikingly clear about all of the Democratic candidates running for their party's nomination. "They are spending way too much time listening to elites that sit on their staff or advise them, or worse yet, taking the voters pulse from Twitter, and zero time listening to Midwest swing voters," he said. "It doesn't matter who politicians talk to, but it sure does matter who they listen to." He cautions that these repeated mistakes, in particular Biden's statement on fossil fuel workers, are no different than Hillary Clinton's tone-deafness in 2016.
Biden also pledged in that same speech to eliminate fossil fuel use and put energy executives "in jail" if they do not comply.
Nick Deluliis, president and CEO of CNX Resources Corporation, a natural gas company headquartered in Pittsburgh, is, in theory, one of those executives. He responds with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek saying he could "maybe" see why the former vice president would want to indict the natural gas industry.
Whether it is the call for fracking bans or making demeaning quips about coding, it is those kinds of remarks directed at the families and the communities in western Pennsylvania that Allegheny County chief executive Rich Fitzgerald specifically urged the candidates running for the nomination not to do in a letter he sent to all of the campaign headquarters this past this year: "To win voters back in this region outside of Allegheny County, in Beaver, Washington, Butler and Westmoreland counties we need two things from the candidates; talk about the things that unite us and show up outside of the urban areas like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and just listen to their concerns." Fitzgerald is a popular Democratic county chief who was about to be sworn in for his third term.
A Democrat has to win Pennsylvania to win the presidency, and he or she has to win western Pennsylvania to win the state, something the party did consistently between 1992 and 2012. In 2016, Trump became the first Republican to win Pennsylvania since former President George H.W. Bush's first run in 1988, squeaking past Hillary Clinton by just over 44,000 votes.
Trump deserves credit for having won by going to economically disrupted places such as Erie, Scranton, Mechanicsburg, Altoona, Ambridge and Johnstown and asking for residents' votes, whereas Clinton centered her presence in the urban centers of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
The assumption was that those disrupted places were just going to follow the lead of their big-city Democrats because they always showed up for a Democrat. What outsiders missed was the harm Clinton did to herself when she did things like calling Trump supporters a "basket of deplorables" or saying, "we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business."
They also missed that Pennsylvania had become 0.4% more Republican every presidential cycle. Former President Bill Clinton won 28 of the state's 67 counties in 1996, but that power had eroded in 2012 to just 13 of the 67 counties won by then-President Barack Obama.
"Biden's recent declaration that coal miners could become computer programmers while advancing clean energy stances is, at best, out of touch with the plights of these states and its workers," Jeff Brauer, a political science professor at Keystone College in Factoryville, said. "At some level, it's difficult to believe that Biden, the scrappy kid from Scranton who has made his political career connecting with working-class voters, would suddenly be so detached from these same voters' everyday realities. He seems to be making the same fatal mistakes of the 2016 Hillary Clinton run with her pronouncements that she will be putting coal miners out of business."
"At the moment, Pennsylvania is his to lose, and he will lose it if he continues to appear to be out of touch with blue-collar workers," Brauer said.
Much of PA is FDR country. By that, I mean folks vote Democrat just because grandpa voted Democrat. Ask for details, and they’ll tell you “the Democrats are for the working man”. They really don’t see that that hasn’t been true for at least 50 years.
But it’s not hopeless. Those guys went for Reagan. And they went for Trump.
A fair comment. I think the GOPe is not very different from the Democrats. President Trump, however, seems to focus on the Commoners. I think this is part of why the GOPe has a problem with him.
Are you really sure though?
Yes.
Trump already won Erie County in 2016, the first time since the 1980s a Republican accomplished that.
He didn’t win the city of Erie but came closer than any Republican has lately, and won every other municipality in the county aside from little Edinboro, home of the brainwashed snowflakes at the local college.
Pretty much the rest of Western PA outside of some Beaver County ghetto areas, the city of Pittsburgh and many of its close-in suburbs, votes Republican for President every time out now anyway. The Democrats’ “War on Coal/Fracking” sealed up whatever was left of ancestrally Democratic rural areas like Greene County.
These are the same Dems the left chased out.
>>There were many Philadelphia districts that went 100% for Obama. No one bothered to look into this. So it’s going to happen again.
IIRC, there were a few that went more than 100% for Obama..
We need an evangicals to the polls Sunday’s all through primary and election cycles. Not sure why we give that to democrats.
Need to GOTV in Western Pennsylvania to offset Philadelphia where 115% of the population vote Dem.
Democrats in these parts tend to be old school Labor Movement Democrats. Socially conservative, but distrusting of Republicans due to decades of propaganda about them being shills for management and the wealthy.
They are about to experience shock therapy and come to the realization that grandpa’s Democrat Party has abandoned them.
Biden does not need Western Penn if he can get out the vote like Obama did. Clinton could not get out the vote.
I was watching a couple of Philly districts come in during the last 3% of the vote. The vote count changed by 5,000 each time. I could tell they miscounted the margin they needed for victory. Turnout will be everything in the middle of the state because they won’t make the same mistake twice.
Shhhhhh they will hear you.
exactly. For as long as I can remember, it’s been called the Republican “T”.
“..Biden, the scrappy kid from Scranton.”
The crappy kid from Scranton.
For the life of me , I can't understand why Pittsburgh is so largely democrap. Big steel is gone, most industries are non-union. The economy now is based on health, science, research, and small businesses.
But the attitude prevails "Republicans is fer the rich people, Democrats is fer da workin' man."
In my area of Mt. Washington, our registration shows that Repubs are outnumbered by about 5 to 1.
In many elections, I don't have a Republican candidate to vote for; I write in my wife.
My take as well. Every 4 years it's the "same game" in Pennsylvania. Right before the polls are scheduled to close the Philly TV & Radio media gets a story out that "there remains long lines of voters waiting to vote". Then some ACLU lawyer runs to a state judge asking to "extend the voting hours" to accommodate the voters. "The Game" here is to stretch things out until all the other districts in the state have filed their results so that Philly can file and swing the state result. Hillary's people simply misunderestimated the margin they needed.
With early-voting and absentee ballots there's no need for judges to keep accepting these requests for "emergency orders". Oh, you didn't get to the voting place early enough? Too bad.
Thats because he is FAR REMOVED from anything Scranton blue collar.
It is not universal, but most of the union guys/gals I know are Trumpers {some are active but most are undercover}.
The union leaders know that Trump is better for them than any demonRAT, so they soft pedal their pushing of the demonRAT candidate.
Go into the union working bars, hunting and fishing clubs, VETS and firemen clubs and just listen to them talk after they have had a coupla beers.
The truth is Trump is ahead by a 3-2 margin {at least}.
I still don't know about 'suburban women' although my wife and her friends are Trump suburban women, but I have no way to really gauge that segment of the population.
In Westmoreland County, Trump won 63-35 last time and this time he will improve that number.
Washington county is even better, but Allegheny county is where the fraud will occur and depending on how much we can contain that, will determine on how much W PA goes for Trump.
That statement may be true in VA, but it is pure bullshit in PA.
Union members are great influences in PA because many are parents and grand parents and PA has many people that stay close to home.
Every state is different.
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