Posted on 09/11/2020 4:18:41 AM PDT by karpov
To watch Donald Trump on the stump is to wonder if this is a campaign with a strategy. To study the Trump re-election effort in Pennsylvania is to understand the carefully calculated bet it is making.
Pennsylvania is becoming ground zero of the 2020 election. Commentators tend to forget that Mr. Trump in 2016 won 304 electoral votes, 34 more than a majority. He can afford to lose a Michigan or Wisconsin. But he has few paths to the White House without the Keystone State. The president knows it; hes dive-bombing the state. And Joe Biden knows it, making it his new basement.
Conventional wisdom is that Pennsylvania is the perfect example of why Mr. Trump will lose. Critics point to the bleed Mr. Trump has suffered among suburban voters, in particular the collar counties around Philadelphia. The president, they say, is too toxic personally to win those voters back, while his rural base isnt enough to offset the deficit. It is a simple and tidy analysisand therefore one that misses the complexity of a modern presidential race.
One flawed assumption is that Mr. Trumps forgotten man vote is static. The campaign has spent the past few years diligently recruiting more of those disaffected citizens. In 2016 registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans in the state by about 920,000. Since that time, the Democratic advantage has narrowed to about 760,000a 160,000-voter gain in a state Mr. Trump won by 44,000 votes.
In rural counties, the campaign has kept hitting themes that will drive these new voters to the polls. In a recent speech in Latrobe, Mr. Trump warned that Mr. Biden would take away your guns, ship jobs to China, and sit silent as rioters rampage.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
I imagine Pennsylvania doesn't want more of this.
Do me a favor and ask your friend in the PA campaign exactly what they want us to do here. Vote by mail? Not vote by mail? We’re getting all sorts of mixed messages out here. Plus I am in Allegheny County where they’ve screwed with the locations of actual polling stations (consolidating them into central gigantic ones).
From my classmate about the WSJ Penna prediction
Spot on! Trump will win Pennsylvania, we will have 10 Congresspeople, 110State House members to 93 for Dems, and 28 to 22 in the State Senate. We will loose all three statewide row offices.
That is my opinion
I dont know what a row office is.
“Why do suburban women support riots and arson?”
Because they think it is “edgy.” They live the edginess vicariously.
Im sorry, collar suburb is new term to me. Blue collar? White collar? Mixed collars? How does it differentiate one suburb from another? Im not sure I understand. I hate to be so dumb, but I cant find it defined on the internet either. Thanks for your help.
***When Sex In The City and Desperate Housewives became mandatory education for American women everywhere, it showed our disgusting problem with such women.***
Ahhh, this must be one of the reasons I dont fit in with other suburban women. I dont watch Oprah or any of those kinds of morning talk shows, or in the evening those other type of shows you mention.
I do listen to Rush Limbaugh on talk radio, though. I dont think riots, fires, and looting are good things either. Im not into the white privilege thing either.
Painting with a broad brush there, dude. For the record, I see plenty of men wearing COVID diapers on their faces, while driving alone. So there are moron men, too.
Voting in person is the best way to know that your vote is counted.
The “collar” suburbs are the ones surrounding Philadelphia - specifically Bucks County, Montgomery County, Chester County and Delaware County.
They used to be solidly “red” but have been slowly turning more and more “blue” and now all are now leaning “blue” pretty heavily. We did not do well in Mid-Term elections.
Possibly attributed to people fleeing Philadelphia for the suburbs and bringing their political affiliations with them. Also a lot of commuting New Yorkers residing in the glut of pricey townhouses and McMansions in Bucks and Montgomery.
And we do have our share of - Hate Has No Home Here - “Karens”.
Oh, thanks for the explanation.
As far as how things go when people flee urban areas but bring their politics with them, Im reminded of a conversation I had with a neighbor when we moved to this little community a few years ago.
She asked me if I planned to vote, and I told her only for the national elections. She asked why, and I told her that I didnt know any of the candidates or the community itself very well at that point, seeing that we had moved from a neighboring state less than 6 months before, and going into winter when you dont meet a lot of people right away.
I told her that we liked the way our new town was, and I would have to get to know it better before I could vote on certain issues. She said that was pretty neat that I didnt want to come in and just remake the town. I thought how strange it was to want to change something that I really liked. If it aint broke, dont fix it.
“Critics point to the bleed Mr. Trump has suffered among suburban voters, in particular the collar counties around Philadelphia.”
This statement is based upon ‘suspect polling’ and the results of the 2018 mid-term elections where — guess what? — DJ Trump was NOT on any ballot.
Pennsylvania is becoming ground zero of the 2020 election. Commentators tend to forget that Mr. Trump in 2016 won 304 electoral votes, 34 more than a majority. He can afford to lose a Michigan or Wisconsin. But he has few paths to the White House without the Keystone State.
Reads like phony concern trolling by a partisan media shill.
You are a precious woman!
Thank you, Im quite sure there are a few more like me, and most definitely on this website.
Why do suburban women support riots and arson?
They dont. Trumps supposed gender gap is a myth - a fake news narrative.
In 2016 there was supposed to be a huge gender gap - thats why everyone was sure he was going to lose. But he won, and he did just fine with women - even though he was running against a woman destined to be the first female President!
Listen to the spontaneous I love you! chants happening at recent Trump rallies. Those are womens voices chanting that - and a lot of them are from the suburbs.
Yes, the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh suburban counties are Democrat strongholds - they are filled with Trump haters, and of course half are women.. But that doesnt prove the gender gap is real.
Trumps supposed gender gap is part of an insulting fake news narrative - the idea that in order to support Trump, there must be something wrong with you - you must be deplorable - you must be a bitter clinger - you must be racist - you must be a college dropout - you must be a chauvinist.
In order to construct this narrative they describe the typical Trump supporter as being a white male without a college degree. That way, in one fell swoop, they can imply his supporters are ignorant, racist and chauvinist.
This is how identity politics works:
If whites support him, he must be a racist.
If college dropouts support him, he must be ignorant.
If females dont support him, he must be a male chauvinist.
But in reality, there is nothing wrong with more Trump supporters lacking a college degree. It means he is reaching out proportionately to middle class Americans, 75% of whom did not finish college. It is the Democrats who should worry about that statistic - it means they are failing to reach the middle class.
Similarly, there is nothing wrong with more Trump supporters being white, since 70% of voters are white. Again, it is the Democrats who should worry - their support is disproportionately limited to non-white urban centers.
Come November, we shall see how much of this gender gap was real, and how much of it was just another fake news narrative, designed to smear President Trump and his supporters as chauvinists.
I suspect it is all fake news.
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