How is Pennsylvania trending R?

[Flyersfan232]

The Philly area is not booming like Atlanta, Houston, DFW, or Austin. It is not shrinking like rural PA, but it is growing slowly.

It’s not growing either philly is a dead city

[Flyersfan232]

The rural areas are losing population while the Philadelphia suburbs are growing.

Rural areas are trending hard Republican and Democrats used to rely on certain levels of support. You go back far enough and Fulton County was a Democratic county, while Philly was the Republican base. Anyway, as labor politics gives way to culture identity politics you have various areas of the state shift from Democratic to Republican.

You have Philly, which all you of you seem to focus on ad nauseum and presume that this going to make the state vote like New York.

You have a completely different metro of significant size that is Midwestern in culture, whose suburbs (until 2018) remained solidly Republican and whose outlying rural areas were heavily Democratic or at least could still be won by Dems like Bob Casey. That rural stupport and small town support has imploded over the last ten years.

That poster presently going by the name Cory Booker is going on about gun control and millions from Bloomberg. Philly metro is pro-gun control, but guess who isn't? Casey Democrats

Philly Metro is historically pro-choice, but guess who isn't. Casey Democrats

Philly Metro is more pro-enviroment, guess who isn't. Casey Democrats - which is coal country and now the fracking belt in Northern PA.

Philly is pro-immigration (It should be noted for all of the talk about gun control, Toomey also used sanctuary cities as a wedge issue to get those Philly suburbanites you guys love so much to vote like the crime/minority conscious white people that they are), but Casey Democrats are not (Casey Jr. himself is, which is partly why his numbers have gone down). Jason Altmire had an A or B rating from NumbersUSA. So did Paul Kanjorski. So did Chris Carney. So did Tim Holden (that is Berks and Schuylkill just outside the SE PA line). Casey has an F while we are on the subject, but identity and legacy attachment is hard thing to destroy completely (Though it is getting there see the maps above. Its just like the Kennedy's in a sense).

I am tempted to say Philly is pro- free trade but I cannot even be sure of that. I do know that Pennsylvania is a post-industrial state that suffers from I term "rust-best nostalgia" this means that they are very much sympathetic to protectionism. I know what this is, I was born in Susquehanna, I have been to Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, have been inside a coal mine and seen the rotting hulks of abandoned industry. Its an aching in the soul that you just cannot understand unless you have been there and lived it. Even beyond that, PA has long been a protectionist hot bed. From 1846 until 2016, it has more often than not responded positively to protectionist or quasi protectionist candidates. Republicans built their majority on protectionism from Lincoln to Hoover (Hoover won it in 1932 after Smoot-Hawley). Reagan had quotas, Santorum opposed NAFTA. And of course Dems like Holden, like Casey and so on have been critical of bad trade deals.

You have 5 counties (Philly, Montco, Delco, Bucks, Chester) that you guys fixate on because their size and growth and then ignore that the rest of the state is culturally on a completely different planet. You guys also forget that SE PA can be cracked on crime issues (a combination of background checks and anti-sanctuary cities) is what Toomey used. Trump just said Crime and immigration repeatedly and though he didn't win any of those counties, he came really close in Bucks.

Biden has identity helping him out, but he is at odds with out state PA on abortion, guns, energy, immigration and trade. Yes you might be able to make a case on a point or two about trade, but at the end of the day it is the package that presents to that part of a state a candidate that is at odds with them.

The question is not really in terms of results. Biden is not going to win those counties for the most part, if Casey couldn't win them, Biden isn't. Biden also isn't going to get to Casey's numbers either. That makes sense, Casey won by 13% and if the nation really is plus 8, then that difference explains how PA ends up being only an 8 or 9 point Biden win. Then beyond that it becomes question of better than Clinton, worse than Clinton, or same as Clinton. Biden can win PA in all three scenarios though the margin is substantially affected and the exact final numbers in Philly become important in that.

At the same time, Trump can win PA again but there are certain things he has to be able to do and holding his support/improving in those areas where he did well in 2016 is first priority. After that, he needs to shore up the support in the Pittsburgh suburbs.

The thing that needs to be emphasized is that PA is the epicenter of a cultural divide in this country and to quote John King it is where the hand to hand combat between the two coalitions takes place. I fully expect PA to remain closely divided for several cycles and to be the decisive state in a few of them.

If only Casey was a Casey democrat