Hillary Clinton Shares Her Cautionary Philadelphia Suburban Tale with NJ Dems
At a VIP reception yesterday for Phil Murphy in Harrison, 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton gave a cautionary tale to New Jersey Democrats about the significance of the suburban vote.
She didn’t act like Murphy is going to lose New Jersey on Nov. 7th – on the contrary; a mood of a mortally wounded GOP prevailed.
But Clinton did say that had her campaign last year nudged her suburban Philadelphia vote total over a certain level, she would have been able to win Pennsylvania.
She didn’t do that, and consequently Donald Trump beat her in Pa., and ran up his rust belt vote to drown Clinton in the Electoral College.
The former Secretary of State made her remarks even as Republicans who back the gubernatorial candidacy of Kim Guadagno say the NJ Democrat gave wide openings to Guadagno to pitchfork GOP suburban voters with taxes and sanctuary cities.
I’m told that Clinton seemed to forget about Harrisburg and was weak in Pittsburgh
No. Harrisburg was one of the few places she actually visited during the general. In Allegheny County (home of the City of Pittsburgh), she actually out performed Obama’s 2012 performance.
Where she lost PA was in places like Erie County in NW PA, Lackawanna County (Scranton), Cambria County (Johnstown), and Beaver County (NW of Pittsburgh). Those traditional union Democrats had been moving to the right for years, it just took Trump’s faux-populism, combined with Hillary’s high unfavorable ratings, and a lack of a strong ground game to lose the state for her.