Dems need a 67-county strategy
By Richard RobbinsLet’s say you are a guy who started out working at a steel mill in 1970, got married, had kids and bought a house, was laid off when the steel industry crashed, took classes to learn, oh, plumbing, but for one reason or another that didn’t pan out, worked next in retail and later went back to the factory, where the union was weak, salaries were low, and benefits were shaky.
Through all this you listened to a succession of U.S. presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, talk about the benefits of free trade and later to nagging liberal activists. Out of the clear blue, you were being called a “privileged” white male: it turns out you not only hated black people but women as well.
Over time, you become more and more cynical, more and more alienated, until you said to hell with it, I’m not voting for another Democrat. Hell, I’m not voting for any conventional politician for president, ever.
That, in a (long) nutshell, describes more than a few of Donald Trump’s followers. This past week, those always-Trumpers were in plain sight, as both the president and Vice President Mike Pence campaigned in the state.
“I don’t care if he (Trump) calls out people or makes fun of people,” said a truck driver from Buffalo, New York, who was in Beaver County, the same time as Pence, delivering goods to a plant going up there.
“Normal everyday people do that all the time. He acts more like me than any politician in history,” said the trucker, speaking to the Post-Gazette.
At the Summit Diner in Somerset, where Pence stopped on his way to Hershey to meet up with his boss, cook John Kearns told a reporter that it was sure good shaking hands with the Veep. “I’m a big Trump supporter, so I was ecstatic.”
A crowd of 12,500 packed the Hershey sports arena for the president. Concerning the House impeachment of Donald Trump, one of those in attendance, a 32-year-old Harrisburg electrician by the name of Edwin Frese, told the New York Times, “It’s a show trial. Even if it goes to the Senate, they’re never going to remove him from office.”
Trump himself told the crowd, “They are impeaching me because they want to win an election. (Impeachment) is the only way they can do it.” The president called it “impeachment light” because of the paucity of charges.
“It’s not even an impeachment.”
Looking on, former Democratic governor Ed Rendell said, “It’s going to be a battle again (in 2020), because he has kept much of his base. The question is: are they going to stay with him?”
Democrats shouldn’t fool themselves. Trump has been president nearly three years; it’s been many more months since he announced his candidacy. If people aren’t disgusted by him now, they never will be.
Why, just hours earlier, the president met with the Russian foreign minister at the White House and then posed for an official photograph with him in the Oval Office. It was Trump’s way of taunting his critics. It was the foreign policy equivalent of shooting someone on Broadway and getting away with it.
How many people, do you think, in the Hershey crowd asked themselves — how awful of the president to be chums with Sergey Lavrov. If they thought about it all, it was probably, “Hooray for our Donald.”
Here’s the thing about 2020: there will be election with Donald Trump’s name on the ballot. After impeachment by the House, he will be cleared by the Republican Senate.
That brings the discussion back to square one, to the election, and to the supposition: as Pennsylvania goes in 2020, so goes the nation.
What’s a party to do? What should Democrats do?
Democrats, listen to state lieutenant governor John Fetterman.
The first thing, Fetterman said, is that “anyone (who) underestimates Donald Trump does so at their peril.”
The bigger Fetterman scoop is this: his party needs to cut Trump’s winning margins in central and western Pennsylvania counties down a size or two while growing the Democratic vote in the so-called “swing” counties, like Erie, Northampton, and Bucks.
To achieve either requires “a cogent 67 county strategy” in Pennsylvania, Fetterman told MSNBC’s Katy Tur.
“That’s the mistake Secretary Clinton made in 2016.” She organized and campaigned in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. She won both places, but lost elsewhere, sometimes by a lot. Trump bested Clinton by 44,000 votes in Pennsylvania in 2016.
“It all comes down to margins” Fetterman said. “Trump put up some impressive (county) margins in 2016.”
Clearly, some Pennsylvanians will remain with the president. Other 2016 Trump voters, however, are “reachable,” the lieutenant governor said, noting as proof the winning margin of 800,000 plus votes his boss, Gov. Wolf, ran up in 2018.
If Democrats are smart, 2020 will be a county by county slugfest.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.