Reading recommendation. Michael Barone, the longtime author of the bible of politics, the American Almanac of Politics, has an excellent column up on Pennsylvania and why John McCain is having trouble catching Barack Obama in the state. If you are a reader of this site, you will love the article. Read it.
Barone's thesis? While McCain is doing pretty well across much of the state, he getting killed by so much in the southeastern/metro Philly area that he simply cannot catch up with his numbers elsewhere. Specifically, and I agree with this, Obama is doing well in the Philly suburbs in key Bucks County and elsewhere, places he has had to win in order to carry the Keystone State.
All in all, this one of those rare articles you will learn a great deal from and not have to spend much time on it.
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2 comments:
For a so-called moderate democrat, Barone is nothing but a poorly disguised right-wing apologist, but that does not mean he is not smart so forgive my bloviating.
However, what he is saying really isn't anythig new with regards to the Phily burbs. IIRC, in the 2006 race Rendell and Casey lamblasted their GOP opponents. Casey beat Santy by 18pts (59%-41%) but Rendell beat Swann by 20 points (60-40). However, Rendell won fewer counties (about 29 out of a total of 67) while Casey split the county count 50/50 with Santorum.
Rendell got approximately 100k Santorum voters to vote for him and nearly all came from the the Philly burbs. For these reasons, I always felt PA was impregnable for McCain/Palin (as was the case with Bush '00 and '04). I certainly don't expect Obama to get Rendell/Casey like margins but unless the GOP ticket can win 53% of Bucks and hit the high 40s in Montgomery and Delaware counties, they can't win PA. Unlike OH, PA has a very democratic buffer zone in SE PA, that is at least 15% less GOP top ticket voting than it was in 1988, and there is just no equiavalent population center like Columbus and/or Cincinatti to offset Philly and its burbs. Obama should get about an overall +4% margin in Allegheny (Pittsburgh) and its surrouding areas but he will overperform in Montgomery, Bucks, Delaware, Philly and maybe Chester County (thanks to HRC voters running from Palin). At the end of the day, Obama should win PA by +7.
In terms of Barone, he is actually a self-declared Republican, or at least he once was. And I agree he has taken a lot of cheap shots at Obama this year, but I did not add a qualifier because I still respect his work too much. It is funny because I had a debate about this with a friend just today.
McCain's people I think lasered in on PA early, because really he has had a presence in the state for some time. I think pulling out of Michigan, especially in the manner that he did was stupid. We can make these judgments after the election, but this race was always about resources. I posted in the summer that given the resource disparity that would exist between the sides, McCain was simply going to have to hope that his base states like IN, NC, and FL held without him dropping big money in them that he did not have. In the end, the race has not been close, so he has been screwed. I am not sure he ever had a better option, other than raise more money!
Finally, I am not so sure that the Rendell/Casey landslides of 2006 really transformed the state's political landscape, though they definitely showed that PA is more blue than it was 20 years ago. I am not a big believer in talk about trends and realignments. I think that when it comes down to it, the outcome of races almost always hinger on money, name recognition, incumbency, and the overall quality of the candidates. 2006 was a bad year for the GOP, their Senate candidate was just too extremist and the Governor's candidate was plain bad. Conversely, Rendell was a popular incumbent, and Casey really stole away too many voters from Santorum for the Senator to survive.
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