PA GOV 2022: Stick a fork in it

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Pls let it be Barletta. Has the dude not learned his lesson

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I no longer think anyone is unelectable.

Bro gas is still 5,000 a gallon. Springfield Gulf was D R Y last week. 50-cent cakes are now 75-cent cakes. The GOP could run a wet mop in the fall and they'd pull it out at this rate.
>Inb4 its the corporations fault.
Then soak em.
>Nobody who cares ab inflation was gonna vote D anyway
It hits the trifecta of mobilizing Rs, grabbing as many D-Rs as possible, and having loyal Ds check out. Burnt.

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I no longer think anyone is unelectable.

Bro gas is still 5,000 a gallon. Springfield Gulf was D R Y last week. 50-cent cakes are now 75-cent cakes. The GOP could run a wet mop in the fall and they'd pull it out at this rate.
>Inb4 its the corporations fault.
Then soak em.
>Nobody who cares ab inflation was gonna vote D anyway
It hits the trifecta of mobilizing Rs, grabbing as many D-Rs as possible, and having loyal Ds check out. Burnt.

I’m not sure if this is meant as a serious post or not. You think whoever wins the Republican primary is shoo in?

Lean R. Go look at NJ and VA-gov. Rural voters fired up, black voters+young voters are checked out. Economy’s only gotten worse since then too.

Is it really gonna matter that its a state race and not federal when there’s a federal race on the top of the ticket and voting is just so ideologically polarized now anyway?

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Lean R. It is truly astonishing how despite hosting a litany of individuals who either hold degrees in or are academically pursuing philosophy, law, psychology, political science, sociology, or some other liberal arts discipline, this blog cannot quite wrap its head around the historically proven fact that generally speaking, people can accept fascism and chauvinism if the purveyors of such can convince them inflation will go away.

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Mastriano hasn't even focused on those issues though? What also could be his downfall of his own making is his OWN focus on issues like abortion, 2020 fraud, re-registered voters, rather than actual kitchen table issues.

Candidate quality is why this is Lean R and not worse.

I just hope the GOP overreach by focusing on such BS issues and nominating horrible candidates will result in serious underperformance. That's a major contrast to 2018 Dems, when they talked kitchentable issues a lot and tended to nominate candidates that play it safe.

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Yeah guys we should all have 100% faith in polls rn totally

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Yeah guys we should all have 100% faith in polls rn totally

Nobody should have faith in polls totally.  There is some inaccuracy inherent in any sampling operation.  But polls (if well-designed and conducted by reputable organizations) are a useful tool. 

I always wonder why people who think polls are worthless hang out on the polling forums.

Are they worthless, or rather have we seen enough times they under-estimate conservative turnout in Pennsyltucky/the pastorals of the Lower Susquehanna to where know a poll in PA showing ~48-40 or ~50-41 for the D is really dead-even?

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Other than 2016 what are the examples?

In 2020 per the polling database here the average was Biden+5. Actual result was Biden+1. So that's a D error but just 4 points, not 8-9.

2018 had Wolf+15... actual result was Wolf+17, actually underestimated. And for Senate it had Casey+13. Actual result....Casey+13.

Yeah, in November..... it's the end of July. Casey was seeing high-teens into Labor Day. Biden was at +6-7 after the convention bumps. Wolf I'll concede the polling correctly found there was little enthusiasm, however it's hard to gauge how much of that was the incumbent advantage in the race the GOP didn't contest during a Trump midterm.

I just want you to ask yourself, is the Pennsylvanian electorate this fall going to be plurality Biden voters or plurality Trump voters? I feel pretty confident in stating it'll be plurality Trump voters. Now, Shapiro has proven appeal w/the bronzy NEPA dinocrats who only registered to vote in the primary due to his stellar handling of the opioid crisis which has ravaged many families including my own, however  it's just hard to ignore the fundamentals of inflation, the incoming recession, and the GOP's continued whittling of the party registration edge. Furthermore, it's hard to look at the results in South Jersey/Appalachian Virginia and not imagine similar nuclear turnout for the GOP.

Now what COULD screw Mast is his plan for education. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HGmCpNlnJPo?feature=share]The guy is talking about religious school choice and slashing spending like we're Alabama or something.[/url] We are not even five years removed from the long-awaited pension reform which shifted the burden onto new hires and purposefully carved out the State Employees and Public School Employee unfunded liabilities because the municipal AFT chapters would redacted the entire State Capitol Complex if they ever tried. Furthermore, if there is any way to fire up the vote in Philly, it is the re-instigate the beef between the Catholic schools and public schools. I know which one wins that battle.

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I was camping up in NEPA last weekend; saw far too many Hometown Heroes banners, spent too damn much on gas myself navigating Pennsyltucky backroads, hiked too many miles from camp to a grocery store, and drew existential dread from connecting it back to the party registration trends for future closed primaries. The good news is a plurality Trump-voter electorate isn't a death knell; Fetterman and Shapiro maintain good enough relations w/their respective trade bases to feasibly run well in SWPA/NEPA. Likewise Fetterman's decent enough on student loans to where the Philly burbs' (and increasingly inner Pittsburgh metro's) evergreen, environmentally-conscious yuppies can overlook his fracking equivocations. Abortion agitates both bases, can't easily tell the ultimate benefactor.


My only fear is Mastriano put out ads hitting Shapiro for being DA while Philly's crime rate skyrockets. Shapiro can and must point to his success arresting crazy kenzo drug dealers. He also needs to rally PA's numerous AFT chapters lest Mast "changes PA into Florida". PA's flavor of municipal empowerment contains many drawbacks, however MY school district being decent remains a rare positive. Mast wants to shrink the government to the size of the bathtub and neglect all our students in the process.

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*snip*

They indeed border self-parody. Consider them as dog-whistling towards the bitter people clinging to guns and religion.

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Ah s______

Former President Trump will be headed back to Pennsylvania in September to hold a rally in support of gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano (R) and Senate hopeful Mehmet Oz (R) several months ahead of the midterms. An advisory through Trump’s Save America PAC said Trump would hold a rally with Mastriano and Oz on Sept. 3 in eastern Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

https://twitter.com/frankiemuniz/status/448624831315988480?lang=en
Welp, the political college football tailgate is back on tour. The GOP already feeling the need to break out the big guns provides a slight silver lining. Just remember folks, Shapiro should run on "Do you want to send your kid to a decent school/invest in sustainable infrastructure to weather future inflationary shocks" because "Do you want Trump back?" is NOT current a winning issue for PA Democrats.

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I agree with the idea of running on economic issues instead of over-focusing on Trump, but I also think the degree to which focusing on Trump may be successful also depends on the degree to which Trump himself gets involved in any given race. For example, in last year's Virginia gubernatorial election, aside from endorsing the Republican nominee, Trump actually kept a relatively low profile for most of that contest, which negated the Democratic nominee's Trump-centric strategy - had Trump increased his involvement in that race, it might have tipped the race the other way. Likewise, for this year's contests (at all levels), if Trump were to inject himself heavily in any given race, that could have a direct effect on the likelihood of his candidates winning/losing, depending on his popularity in said state and/or district.

It's not even necessarily economics; Sure he could talk about his continued fight for prevailing wage increases. He could also bring up his office  brokering an agreement between UPitt and Highmark to protect nearly 2 million Terrible Towel wavers' healthcare access. He could discuss his continued crackdowns on both the multi-billion dollar pill mills and street-level Alpo Martinez imitators who've ravaged our most vulnerable communities to assuage any fears he's soft on crime. He could even go negative on abortion; Pennsyltuckian Conservadems disproportionately go "mostly illegal" in the 4-way survey but they're 20-week ban people not the absolutist line Mast is pushing.

Shapiro demonstrated his strength w/those ancestral Dems who crossed over for the Don in both 2016 and 2020. He'll need to again given how turnout dynamics seem to shape up this fall. I've referenced Big T's massive acceleration of PA's voter registration trends (thus both major parties' ideological composition due to closed primaries), and we don't need to remind those remaining dinocrats why all their friends changed sides.

Edit: I've now realized....... good googly moogly what ads/attacks do Shapiro's donors want him to make?

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Shapiro demonstrated his strength w/those ancestral Dems who crossed over for the Don in both 2016 and 2020.

I'm still not entirely over the fact that he managed to squeak out a plurality win in Luzerne County in the Year Of Our Lady 2020 as the county barely budged from 2016 in Trump vote share and in between two complete shellackings of the Democrats in county council elections. Like Jimmy Carter, he must have some serious sexual tension going on with the Polish people. If he does an endorsement deal with Mrs. T's for a personalized flavor and bombards anthracite country corner stores with them he might stand a chance of keeping the firewall of GOP raw votes out of Liquor Control Board King Tim Holden Land down enough for a decent margin.

Oh, and he should stop by SNPJ for some drinks and a photo op.

Indeed! Casey country can have quite the wacky split-ticket dynamics due to Big T's gravitational pull on their underground indie wrestling scene and Rowhouse supremacist enjoyer-seasoned bronz stew. I'm afraid such pure 88% copper would see through Shapiro's surface-level confectionery appeals; rather his retail politics should feature a Polish deli-themed hajj, conquering the Old Forge pizza crawl to lock down NEPA's itaiyin community, bring SNPJ a case of Rolling Rocks to protest the Commonwealth teetotalers. and last but not least spread his industrialist appeal to PA's struggling mid-sized cities via barnstorming the Great Appalachian Valley's numerous minor league baseball parks. Only then will he ace my idealized Campaign Trail mod.

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shapiro riding horses with the lititz moravian hunks
shapiro shaking hands with 9/11 first responders (of somerset county)
shapiro locking down chesco #realigners with a visit to the herr's factory like my third grade school field trip
shapiro riding in the hershey kissmobile but not in a michael dukakis-y way
shapiro beating the wawa/sheetz civil war at its own game and courting baltimore supercommuters for the almighty trendz by holding a rally at a rutter's in shrewsbury

Shapiro touring the pouch and palace to engage Temple house show hoppers
Shapiro biking the entire Delaware water gap to raise awareness for national park designation
Shapiro inviting BalCo Public Schools Wine Moms to the Renaissance Faire joust
Shapiro reviving Appalachian hospitality in Labtrobe’s own Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood
Shapiro pillaging the Nottingham Keystone Fireworks
Shapiro fostering an environmentally conscious coal country at Reptileland

My sister in Royal Farms by the time he’s done this man will be a mason w/how well he knows the Keystone.

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Some more Shapiro ads during the halftime of today's Eagles-Commies game. He did a nice job of painting Mast's radical positions on religion/climate change. Even more impressive he's at least apparently decoupled Mast from Trump in his attacks as Big T remains popular with the type of ancestral Appalachian Conservadems Shapiro retained in his Attorney General runs. Solid stuff.

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https://twitter.com/wrmcduff/status/1574473374725971968?t=O5OuygYZvbwutyEl-a3zKA...

Yeah this is somewhat of a nail in the coffin. If Shapiro’s garnering the predominantly Irish/Italian Frank Rizzo-reincarnated PPD cops then he likely retains his 2016/2020 amongst NEPA’s law-and-order minded ravioli/periogie enjoyers. Furthermore, the FOP endorsement implies the Wilkes-Barre Trump rally failed to give Mast credibility amongst the aforementioned bronzites who gatekeep his quest for the governor’s mansion. Lean D.

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https://twitter.com/joshshapiropa/status/1584198236419796992?s=21&t=0eRPmved...