In a remarkable display of candor, Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon and Robert Bauer, who served as Obama’s White House counsel, publicly discussed the Biden campaign strategy. The interview is available on YouTube here.
Among those watching was Trump’s campaign manager Nick Trainer. He took the Biden strategy and its numbers, reconstructed them, and concluded that Pennsylvania is the one state to watch Tuesday night:
Using their math alone, and reconstructing it, they’re saying that the president is currently one state short of winning the election. Using their math!
And that’s where the Trump campaign has been pouring manpower, money, and an aggressive door-to-door canvassing strategy for the past three years. And it’s about to pay off, according to Trainer:
President Trump’s Election Day margins need to be big, and [they] will be. We currently project he’ll win Election Day votes in Pennsylvania by over a million votes.
Pennsylvania voters, it will be remembered, gave their support to Trump in 2016 by the slimmest of margins: 44,000 votes out of 6.2 million that were cast. Back in September, the Trump campaign rolled out its “seven paths to victory” in November and each of them led to and through Pennsylvania.
Those 44,000 votes were concentrated in just three bellwether counties, including Luzerne County, which is now clearly swinging to Trump. As Charlie Gerow, a Republican committeeman and strategist, noted, Luzerne’s “Democratic state senator switched his registration to independent and now caucuses with the GOP. Republicans took the majority on the city council and dramatically increased their registration.”
On Monday night, Robert Cahaly, chief pollster for the Trafalgar Group, gave its final prediction for Tuesday’s outcome in Pennsylvania: Trump 47.8 percent; Biden 45.9 percent.
Cahaly told Politico: “People are going to be shocked. A lot of people are going to vote this year who have been dormant or low-propensity voters. I think it’s going to be at an all-time high.”
Other polling models are outdated and seriously flawed, said Cahaly:
The models of who’s going to turn out this year are very flawed.… What type of person comes out for Trump? They’re not a normal election participant. They’re a low-propensity voter.
We’ve included them in all of our surveys in fall 2016, and we are including them now.
Those “low-propensity voters” are turning out for Trump rallies in record numbers. His rally in Butler County (population 187,000) on Saturday was attended by 57,000 people, according to the Secret Service. That means that nearly a third of the people living there attended the rally. Said Trump supporter Scott Pressler, who posted a video of the crowd, “Butler County, PA. I’ve never seen anything like it — just a sea of people.”
Even the left-leaning Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gave Trump its endorsement, the first time since 1972 when it last endorsed a Republican, Richard Nixon, over George McGovern. From the editorial:
Let’s look at the Trump record:
Under Donald Trump the economy, pre-COVID, boomed, like no time since the 1950s. Look at your 401(k) over the past three years.
Unemployment for Black Americans is lower than it has ever been, under any president of either party.
Under Mr. Trump, our trade relationships have vastly improved and our trade deals have been rewritten. Thanks to him, Middle America is on the map again and the Appalachian and hourly worker has some hope.
Has Mr. Trump done enough for these struggling fellow citizens? No. But he recognized them. Maybe he was not articulate, but he recognized their pain.
No one ever asked the American people, or the people in “flyover,” country, if they wanted to send their jobs abroad — until Mr. Trump. He has moved the debate, in both parties, from free trade, totally unfettered, to managed, or fair, trade. He has put America first, just as he said he would.
He also kept his promise to appoint originalists to the Supreme Court of the United States. His third appointment, Amy Coney Barrett, is the best of all — a jurist whose mind and character and scholarship ARE first class. We hope she stands against both judicial and executive excess.
Finally, let’s talk about one of the most important concerns in this region — energy. Under Mr. Trump the United States achieved energy independence for the first time in the lifetimes of most of us. Where would Western Pennsylvania be without the Shell Petrochemical Complex (the “cracker plant”)?
Donald Trump is not Churchill, to be sure, but he gets things done.
He is not a unifier. He often acts like the president of his base, not the whole country. He has done nothing to lessen our divisions and has, in fact, often deepened them. The convictions and intellect of all Americans should be respected by ALL Americans, especially the president.
Has Mr. Trump handled the pandemic perfectly? No. But no one masters a pandemic. And the president was and is right that we must not cower before the disease and we have to keep America open and working.
He has not listened well to people who could have helped him. He has not learned government, or shown interest in doing so.
But the Biden-Harris ticket offers us higher taxes and a nanny state that will bow to the bullies and the woke who would tear down history rather than learning from history and building up the country.
It offers an end to fracking and other Cuckoo California dreams that will cost the economy and the people who most need work right now. “Good-paying green jobs” are probably not jobs for Pittsburgh, or Cleveland, or Toledo, or Youngstown.
It offers softness on China, which Mr. Trump understands is our enemy.
Mr. Biden is too old for the job, and fragile. There is a very real chance he will not make it through the term. Mr. Trump is also too old but seemingly robust. But in Mike Pence, Mr. Trump has a vice president ready to take over, if need be. He is a safe pair of hands. Sen. Kamala Harris gives no evidence of being ready to be president.
This newspaper has not supported a Republican for president since 1972. But we believe Mr. Trump, for all his faults, is the better choice this year.
As goes Pennsylvania, so goes the election.
Related article:
Pennsylvania Is the Key to Each of Trump’s Paths to the White House
