Democratic politicians are becoming a rare breed in Pennsylvania, a state that voted twice for Obama. According to PoliticsPa, the last voting cycle was ???the (Democratic) party???s worst performance in congressional races in a presidential cycle since before the Great Depression.???
Aside from rural rednecks who ???cling to guns or religion,??? what accounts for the reddening of PA? Redistricting may be partly to blame, and if so, some very savvy Republican must have been in charge of drawing up this map.
PoliticsPA reports: ???Major prognosticators list 10 of the GOP???s 13 Pennsylvania U.S. House seats as ???safe??? with three seats occasionally popping up on the ???likely Republican??? or ???lean Republican??? lists??? As such, barring an unforeseen tsunami in a mid-term election with the party???s president in the White House, Democrats will continue to languish with a paltry number of U.S. House seats that ??? just like in neighboring Ohio ??? is historically unprecedented.???
Pennsylvanians seems confused, however, or maybe they just like to mix it up. In 2012, despite giving their electoral votes to Obama, Keystone State voters ???elected the lowest number (five) and lowest rate (27 percent) of U.S. Representatives by a major party whilst simultaneously casting its electoral votes for that party???s presidential nominee.???
(This is made all the more surprising when one considers the trouble PA has had in trying to implement voting ID laws.)
Democrats are doing their best to cut their losses before Pennsylvania ends up looking like Oklahoma. They are in the process of mounting a momentous 2014 campaign to topple Republican Governor Tom Corbett, the so-called ???most endangered governor in the country.??? His approval ratings are down and falling, and few Pennsylvanians (24 percent) are keen on seeing him re-elected.
???While Democrats remain optimistic about their chances to win Pennsylvania???s 2014 gubernatorial race, that will not alleviate their deficit in the nation???s lower legislative chamber, at least to the extent redistricting has cornered the party into several 'unwinnable' districts across the state.???
Pennsylvania should be red. It makes sense. You have union workers in Pittsburgh, and minorities and cosmopolitan liberals in Philly who tend to dominate the elections. What???s left, though, is affectionately known as ???Pennsyltucky,??? a wilderness of backwoods hunting, fishing, farming, camping, gun-toting, truck-driving, blue-collar, good-old boys and girls, and a healthy dose of Amish who, if they vote, are anything but progressive. (I am from there. I can say these things.)
