Report: Biden, wife will tour Western Pa. by train on Wednesday
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will be touring through Western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio by train on Wednesday, according to CNN, citing campaign sources.
The tour, which will focus on the economy and working families, marks Mr. Biden’s most ambitious campaign trip since March, when he was forced to cancel in-person campaigning due to COVID-19.
He will be making the tour with his wife, Jill, CNN reported.
It will be Mr. Biden’s first trip to the area since Aug. 31, when he made his first major speech since formally accepting the Democratic party’s presidential nomination at an event at Mill 19 in Hazelwood.
https://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2020/09/28/Report-Joe-Biden-wife-tour-Western-Pennsylvania-by-train-Wednesday-campaign/stories/202009280093
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I HOPE he makes a stop in Erie, PA and its 'burbs. SERIOUSLY.
After decades of being a reliably blue part of western PA (along with Allegheny County), helping to bookend us here in the east, Erie County FLIPPED TO RED in 2016 (the city did not have enough Hillary votes to overcome the red tide by supposed "Democrats" in the suburbs and rural areas of the county).
I remember reading several articles about that area of the state and what the heck happened there including this one -
Updated Jan 05, 2019; Posted Jan 18, 2017
ERIE -- Standing inside the Erie County, Pa., Republican Party's headquarters on Monday, Richard Brozell was still sounded stunned as he discussed the election that had taken place almost two months earlier. "I remember watching the election results [on Nov. 8] and thinking 'Trump's winning. Trump's winning. He's won. Now what do we do?'" Brozell recalled with a laugh. Brozell and his wife, Shirley, both helped campaign for the president-elect here, and on Nov. 8, Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Erie County -- a long-time Democratic stronghold -- since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Trump won the county by roughly 2,000 votes, his numbers boosted by turnout in the smaller municipalities that surround the City of Erie, which remained Democrat blue again this year. The reasons for the county-wide shift vary, but most think Erie County was an ideal audience for Trump's particular brand of democratic populism, given the decades of industrial decline here, the rising unemployment rate and widespread disillusionment with the Democratic leaders who presided over much of that downturn. "We had people come in here that never voted before, I mean older people who had never voted and said, 'I'm going to register.' They wanted to see change. Change, change, change, that was the big thing," Richard added.
[snip]
"My sense of why [Erie County voted for Trump] is that they cannot put up with this kind of corruption anymore," Wurst added. "It motivated the working class white voter in Pennsylvania because I think there's a lot of apathy, they don't really get out to vote. ... But all the unions in this area are totally fed up with what's happening. In this area, it's very depressed. They want a businessman in there who's going to run it like a business." It's true that Trump saw unusually high support among the members of traditionally true-blue labor unions here as well. And while data confirming the extent of that support has so far remained elusive, anecdotal accounts leave little room for doubt as to whether it played a role.
[snip]
Federici explained that while Clinton won all 69 precincts in the city -- a place where Democrats outnumber Republicans almost 2-to-1 -- and was thereby able to win more precincts countywide -- she won 77 out of 149 total -- Trump won by wider margins in the places surrounding the city of Erie. In some cases, these were the same suburban and rural communities easily won by Obama during both of his campaigns.
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2017/01/they_said_erie_county_pa_would.html
The media keeps obsessing about NE PA and completely (probably on purpose) ignoring the NW, after generally writing off the rest of western PA that is not Pittsburgh and its suburbs. We need EVERY little scraped vote that we can get - and not keep relying on "minorities" to overcome every single obstacle put in their way to try to make up for the white Democratic non-voters or ticket-splitters.
Republicans were able to scrape 2000 votes out of Erie County to flip the whole county to red. WE need to do the same kind of "scraping" to turn Erie County back to blue.
