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3/02/2018 3:10 pm  #1


House Race in Pennsylvania May Turn on Trump Voters’ Regrets

House Race in Pennsylvania May Turn on Trump Voters’ Regrets



BURGETTSTOWN, Pa. — The steel mill where Patti Stroud’s husband worked for 26 years shut down a few weeks before Election Day in 2016. Though she is a registered Democrat, Ms. Stroud had long since drifted away from the party over its liberal social policies. So she voted for Donald J. Trump, hoping he would shake up Washington and bring back steel, the way he promised.

“I’m not a loyal anything,” she said. “I used to vote straight Democrat all the time, but those times have changed.”

Sixteen months later, Ms. Stroud, a 56-year-old house cleaner, feels politically adrift again.

“I thought we needed a big change, and boy, did we get it,” she said ruefully outside an I.G.A. market recently. President Trump “put his foot in his mouth one too many times,” she said.

Most of the country will have to wait until November to have another say in a federal election, but Ms. Stroud and her neighbors in southwest Pennsylvania will get their chance much sooner, in a special election March 13 to fill a vacant congressional seat. And how they feel about Mr. Trump now may make a big difference in the race.

In the past, it has been a safe seat for the Republicans: Mr. Trump carried the district by 20 percentage points in 2016, and the Democrats did not even field a candidate that year.


But they have one now in Conor Lamb, 33, a former Marine and federal prosecutor. And he is running against a Republican who proudly claims he was “Trump before Trump was Trump.”

Faced with that choice, Ms. Stroud said she was coming home to the Democrats.

Mr. Lamb, a first-time candidate, has raised hopes in his party that it can win back white non-college-educated voters in places like western Pennsylvania — the ones who helped propel Mr. Trump into the White House.

Polls suggest that Mr. Lamb is running close behind his Republican opponent, Rick Saccone, whose struggles have set off alarms in the White House and among national Republicans. An upset victory by Mr. Lamb, or even a narrow loss, would send shock waves ahead of the midterm elections in the fall, when Democrats will try to retake control of the House of Representatives.

In dozens of interviews with voters last week in the 18th Congressional District, which runs from the suburbs south and east of Pittsburgh to the West Virginia border, there was no shortage of Patti Strouds — Trump voters who are now disappointed in his presidency, or at least have mixed feelings about it.

Like her, many of these voters have historically been Democrats but now feel little allegiance to either party. In the interviews, they did not dwell on policy issues so much as vent their frustrations with the politicians both parties send to Washington, who bicker rather than solve problems.

“There needs to be something done down there, it’s a mess from the top to the bottom,” said Harriett Brautigam, 90, who lives in Bethel Park, a suburb where Vice President Mike Pence campaigned for Mr. Saccone in February. “I’m a Republican, but I don’t like the president at all,” she said.

Voters’ dissatisfaction with Mr. Trump boiled down to frustrations over the daily chaos they see in the president’s constant reversal of positions, petty insults on Twitter even toward allies, and a failure to lead Congress.

“I’m not very pleased with him at all,” said Graydon Cartmell, 73, a retired international trade executive who voted for Mr. Trump. Even the Republicans’ signature achievement, a tax cut bill, Mr. Cartmell deemed unsatisfying. “It certainly doesn’t benefit the middle class that much,” he said.

Mr. Lamb, the scion of a local political family, is a moderate Democrat who supports natural gas fracking, opposes raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and said the day after the mass shooting at a high school in Florida that the country does not need new gun laws.

“I’m not running against President Trump,” he told voters last week as he campaigned door to door, mostly at the homes of registered Republicans and independents. “I want to work with people on the other side,” he said. “I think we need a whole lot of young people in there to start over.”

Republicans recognize the stakes and have poured resources into the race. The White House has sent not only Mr. Pence, but Mr. Trump himself, to campaign for Mr. Saccone, who is an Air Force veteran and a conservative state representative.

“I have a record of doing what I say, and my opponent has no record,” Mr. Saccone said in a candidates’ debate last week.

National Republican groups have poured $10 million into the race, outspending Democratic groups by 10 to one, according to a New York Times analysis. Television ads attack Mr. Lamb over plea deals he made as an assistant United States attorney and insist that he would be a “rubber stamp” for Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who leads the House minority. (Mr. Lamb released a TV ad saying he did not support Ms. Pelosi.)

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is scheduled to stump for Mr. Lamb on Tuesday, and the Lamb campaign said this week that it had raised $3.2 million in the first seven weeks of 2018, an extraordinary sum that is a measure of Democratic enthusiasm.

Even so, national Democrats are trying to tamp down expectations for the race. Having seen hopes for special-election upsets fall short last year in Georgia, Kansas, Montana and South Carolina, they are wary of another setback in Pennsylvania.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/02/us/conor-lamb-pennsylvania-election.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Last edited by Goose (3/02/2018 3:11 pm)


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
 

3/10/2018 9:07 am  #2


Re: House Race in Pennsylvania May Turn on Trump Voters’ Regrets

The AP says that this is gonna be a close one.
We shall see.
This Lamb guy is an appealing candidate.
He’s out working the other fella too.

Trump flying out tonight to try and save it.


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
     Thread Starter
 

3/10/2018 1:47 pm  #3


Re: House Race in Pennsylvania May Turn on Trump Voters’ Regrets

Trump flying out tonight to try and save it.

Right, and what's he gonna say .............. "Trust me, we're going to take America back to the mid-20th  century when there was no such thing as robotics, solar power, wind power, geothermal power, and alternative energy sources, and Ozzie and Harriet mirrored the typical middle class family."

 

3/10/2018 10:36 pm  #4


Re: House Race in Pennsylvania May Turn on Trump Voters’ Regrets

Trump's comments at the campaign event in PA really point out how much of a "loose cannon" or POTUS is. It is frightening. 


"Do not confuse motion and progress, A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress"
 
 

3/11/2018 6:43 am  #5


Re: House Race in Pennsylvania May Turn on Trump Voters’ Regrets

Yeah Trump put on the usual shit-show.
Barely mentioned the guy he came to endorse.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/10/politics/trump-pennsylvania-speech-rick-saccone/index.html


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
     Thread Starter
 

3/11/2018 10:00 am  #6


Re: House Race in Pennsylvania May Turn on Trump Voters’ Regrets

This is telling. Last night Trump claimed that 52% of Women voted for him.

“Hey, didn’t we surprise them with women during the election? Remember? ‘Women won’t like Donald Trump,’ ” he said, mimicking cable news pundits. “I said, ‘Have I really had that kind of a problem? I don‘t think so.’ But: ‘Women won’t like Donald Trump. It will be a rough night for Donald Trump because the women won’t come out.’ We got 52 percent. Right? Fifty-two."

Checking the exit polls shows that, in fact, Trump was wrong. He got only 41 percent of the vote from women. He got 52 percent from men.

Among Hispanic women, he won only a quarter of the vote. Among black women, he got an overwhelmingly poor 4 percent of support.

But, among white women, Trump earned the 52 percent figure to which he referred.

In other words, Trump’s celebration of how well he did with women appears to have been, in fact, a celebration of how well he did with white women, somehow skipping over that critical modifier. 

Trump's defenders say that Trump doesn't see color.
Well, that's partially true.
Donald doesn't see black or Brown, anyway.


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
     Thread Starter
 

3/14/2018 5:03 am  #7


Re: House Race in Pennsylvania May Turn on Trump Voters’ Regrets

That Trump guy sure does have coattails for other GOP candidates to ride on.
Ed Gillespie
Luther Strange
Roy Moore
Rick Saccone


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
     Thread Starter
 

3/15/2018 7:20 am  #8


Re: House Race in Pennsylvania May Turn on Trump Voters’ Regrets

And here's something funny:  During the campaign, the GOP spent a wad of money characterizing Lamb as a 'Pelosi Democrat' and after he won, they now characterize him as a 'Conservative Democrat'.

It's amazing how dumb they think we are.

 

3/15/2018 7:42 am  #9


Re: House Race in Pennsylvania May Turn on Trump Voters’ Regrets

Just Fred wrote:

And here's something funny:  During the campaign, the GOP spent a wad of money characterizing Lamb as a 'Pelosi Democrat' and after he won, they now characterize him as a 'Conservative Democrat'.

It's amazing how dumb they think we are.

Yeah, I've seen Speaker Ryan and some other conservatives try to brush off the PA race by saying that Lamb "Ran as a republican"
So, let me get this straight. If a Democrat pretends to be a republican, he will beat an actual republican?
The People will be confused about who is the actual republican despite the fact that Trump came to campaign for him. Twice. Pence came. Ivanka came. Donnie Jr came for Saccone, but the People didn't notice.
Anybody buying this crap?

 


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
     Thread Starter
 

3/15/2018 10:22 am  #10


Re: House Race in Pennsylvania May Turn on Trump Voters’ Regrets

Goose wrote:

Just Fred wrote:

And here's something funny:  During the campaign, the GOP spent a wad of money characterizing Lamb as a 'Pelosi Democrat' and after he won, they now characterize him as a 'Conservative Democrat'.

It's amazing how dumb they think we are.

Yeah, I've seen Speaker Ryan and some other conservatives try to brush off the PA race by saying that Lamb "Ran as a republican"
So, let me get this straight. If a Democrat pretends to be a republican, he will beat an actual republican?
The People will be confused about who is the actual republican despite the fact that Trump came to campaign for him. Twice. Pence came. Ivanka came. Donnie Jr came for Saccone, but the People didn't notice.

Anybody buying this crap?


 

Never underestimate the stupidity of some people. 


 

Last edited by tennyson (3/15/2018 10:23 am)


"Do not confuse motion and progress, A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress"
 
 

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