Pennsylvania

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The most interesting thing about this thread is that it doesn't really talk much about the state in question but rather about generalized situations regarding the campaigns overall in 2008.

Another mistake made in this thread is thinking of Eastern PA as a single unit. It is better to think of PA in 6 Parts (NW, SW, NE, Central, Philly Burbs and Philly itself). The NE part of the state functions more like the Western Part of the state and has similar demographics and political inclinations on issues like trade, energy and immigration). The clear difference though is coal mining in NE died in the 1950's and 1960's whereas the decline in the SW is more recent, hence why Romney built on McCain's trends in the SW but didn't get anywhere in Luzerne. War on Coal wasn't going to flip NE PA, trade and immigration would and did.

Here is the obvious answer as to why McCain lost PA. McCain is a sunbelt neocon who was running to be the third term of a sunbelt neoconservative Presidency in the midst of an economic meltdown that was being pinned on the Republicans. McCain is a great candidate for Florida, for Virginia even, and also for the Southwestern States. But he is a terrible candidate for the rust-belt.

1. The Economy. No candidate running could have erected enough distance to separate themselves from the recession and the economic collapse.If the candidates were Huckabee and Clinton, Huckabee could have tied the economic meltdown to the bills that Bill Clinton signed in the late 1990's. But Huckabee would have suffered for other reasons and probably would not have won.

2. McCain was moderate on the wrong issues to win this election. McCain was conservative in that he was pro-life and generally in favor of low taxes. But the specific issues that would have differentiated him with Obama and gave him an advantage in appealing to working class swing voters, energy, trade and immigration, he was for the most part in agreement with Obama on. He did flip flop on offshore drilling when gas prices peaked and that contributed to a substantial boost for McCain in that August surge that he experienced. But McCain was fundamentally the wrong candidate to flip PA.


3. McCain did make strides and even won the old PA-12, which was the only Kerry-McCain district, in western PA. But it was small potatoes compared to what Trump got in the counties bordering WV. If you cannot win the Philly burbs, then you need to counter them with running up the margins in all the rural counties and neutering Dem margins in places like Erie and Lackawanna, which Trump did (he even won the former).


At the end of the day, and the article in question did this as well, there was an assumption that there was a upward limit on the Republican candidate in "out-state PA". This was based on several presumptions about Republicans on issues like trade as well as about the voters themselves. These presumptions narrowed the path to victory and said you had to win all four of Chester, Bucks, Montco and Delco, to win the state as a Republican. The last Republican to do so was Arlen Specter in 2004, and no Republican has done so since to my knowledge.

Since McCain's redneck PA attempts failed to deliver the state, it served as confirmation bias. The problem was McCain is a poor fit for blue collar PA, because he couldn't connect with them on economic issues and worse still he had the Bush era economic and economic collapse weighing him down and little to no attempt was done to defend the Republican brand in terms of the economic collapse. A frequent critique of the Bush years in many ways and it is a miracle that the GOP was able to recover so quickly after 2008, and that was largely by embracing the Tea Party, though such came with a price.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The most interesting thing about this thread is that it doesn't really talk much about the state in question but rather about generalized situations regarding the campaigns overall in 2008.

Another mistake made in this thread is thinking of Eastern PA as a single unit. It is better to think of PA in 6 Parts (NW, SW, NE, Central, Philly Burbs and Philly itself). The NE part of the state functions more like the Western Part of the state and has similar demographics and political inclinations on issues like trade, energy and immigration). The clear difference though is coal mining in NE died in the 1950's and 1960's whereas the decline in the SW is more recent, hence why Romney built on McCain's trends in the SW but didn't get anywhere in Luzerne. War on Coal wasn't going to flip NE PA, trade and immigration would and did.

Here is the obvious answer as to why McCain lost PA. McCain is a sunbelt neocon who was running to be the third term of a sunbelt neoconservative Presidency in the midst of an economic meltdown that was being pinned on the Republicans. McCain is a great candidate for Florida, for Virginia even, and also for the Southwestern States. But he is a terrible candidate for the rust-belt.

1. The Economy. No candidate running could have erected enough distance to separate themselves from the recession and the economic collapse.If the candidates were Huckabee and Clinton, Huckabee could have tied the economic meltdown to the bills that Bill Clinton signed in the late 1990's. But Huckabee would have suffered for other reasons and probably would not have won.

2. McCain was moderate on the wrong issues to win this election. McCain was conservative in that he was pro-life and generally in favor of low taxes. But the specific issues that would have differentiated him with Obama and gave him an advantage in appealing to working class swing voters, energy, trade and immigration, he was for the most part in agreement with Obama on. He did flip flop on offshore drilling when gas prices peaked and that contributed to a substantial boost for McCain in that August surge that he experienced. But McCain was fundamentally the wrong candidate to flip PA.


3. McCain did make strides and even won the old PA-12, which was the only Kerry-McCain district, in western PA. But it was small potatoes compared to what Trump got in the counties bordering WV. If you cannot win the Philly burbs, then you need to counter them with running up the margins in all the rural counties and neutering Dem margins in places like Erie and Lackawanna, which Trump did (he even won the former).


At the end of the day, and the article in question did this as well, there was an assumption that there was a upward limit on the Republican candidate in "out-state PA". This was based on several presumptions about Republicans on issues like trade as well as about the voters themselves. These presumptions narrowed the path to victory and said you had to win all four of Chester, Bucks, Montco and Delco, to win the state as a Republican. The last Republican to do so was Arlen Specter in 2004, and no Republican has done so since to my knowledge.

Since McCain's redneck PA attempts failed to deliver the state, it served as confirmation bias. The problem was McCain is a poor fit for blue collar PA, because he couldn't connect with them on economic issues and worse still he had the Bush era economic and economic collapse weighing him down and little to no attempt was done to defend the Republican brand in terms of the economic collapse. A frequent critique of the Bush years in many ways and it is a miracle that the GOP was able to recover so quickly after 2008, and that was largely by embracing the Tea Party, though such came with a price.

Great analysis. I was amazed by Obama's 10.3% margin win in PA in 08. It was the first double digit win in that state since Nixon 1972. Not even Reagan 1984 did as well. And Obama did better in PA than in any Midwestern state except his home state of IL.

WI, MI and MN were all more Democratic than PA.