The Philly Suburbs Can Stop Trump AND Make Congress More Progressive And More Productive

I woke up yesterday to the news that Bob Dylan had won the Nobel Prize for Literature and that the Trump campaign, looking at it's internal polling numbers in Virginia-- numbers that show Clinton far ahead of him with the gap growing-- decided to end their efforts in the state entirely withdrawing all resources, including scheduled advertising. A few minutes later I saw the PPP polling memo showing that Hillary's lead in New Hampshire had grown to 11 points and that she now leads him 48-37%. Numbers like this spill over into congressional races. Its good news for Democratic challengers Maggie Hassan and Carol Shea-Porter. It's especially good news for Shea-Porter because the feedback from New Hampshire voters was that they wanted real action on gun safety, a signature issue for Shea-Porter that contrasts her perfectly with her NRA-puppet opponent Frank Guinta.

Over 100,000 people have already voted in each of several key states: Florida, Iowa, and Michigan and by Monday there will be over 100,000 votes cast in Minnesota, Virginia, Wisconsin and Ohio as well. The early voting period has been marked by huge polling drops for Trump. There's been no early voting in Pennsylvania yet at all. But the polling there has been dismal for Trump and very good for Clinton. So good for Clinton, in fact, that it is likely to impact down-ballot races as well. BloombergPolitics reported yesterday that she holds a commanding 9-point lead statewide. That's good. Even better, though, is that she's "trouncing him in the Philadelphia suburbs." Bloomberg examined 4 key counties around Philly: Delaware, Montgomery, Chester and Bucks. We've been talking about 3 of them all cycle because of Blue America-backed candidate Mary Ellen Balchunis, the political science professor who beat a Wall Street-friendly DCCC hack in the primary 74-26%, only to see the increasingly senile Pelosi to order the DCCC to abandon the very winnable district. Last week Hillary visited Mary Ellen in Haverford, her hometown and they campaigned together. Two days later she was campaigning with Bernie Sanders. A personal friend of Clinton's Mary Ellen describes herself as being from "the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party," something that drives corrupt conservaDems like Steve Israel insane and makes them froth at the mouth.

Clinton has 51 percent to Trump’s 42 percent in a two-way race statewide, with her margin swelling to 28 percentage points in four suburban counties that were once reliably Republican, according to a Bloomberg Politics poll conducted Friday through Tuesday after the video’s release.

Clinton’s suburban advantage is 18 points larger than President Barack Obama’s winning margin there in 2012, meaning that to match Clinton’s strength in those counties and in urban areas, Trump would have to dramatically improve on his 11-point lead in the rest of the state. Losing Pennsylvania’s 20 Electoral College votes would sharply curtail his paths to the White House.

In a contest that will help determine control of the U.S. Senate, Democrat Katie McGinty is roughly even with Republican incumbent Pat Toomey, 47 percent to 45 percent, and, like Clinton, is doing better in the suburbs than statewide.

“Hillary Clinton’s strength in the Philadelphia suburbs may clinch the state for her,” said pollster J. Ann Selzer, who oversaw the survey. “It’s possible she will carry McGinty to a win over Toomey in the U.S. Senate race.”

While Clinton’s strength was long assured in the urban Democratic strongholds of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, her fight with Trump would typically be expected to be more competitive in these four suburban counties, which accounted for 22 percent of the state’s vote in 2012. Instead, she carries almost every demographic group tested there, including women 67 percent to 24 percent in the two-way race.

Clinton has been seeking to drive up her numbers with those women, who often play a decisive role in presidential elections, as a way to counter Trump’s strength with white, working-class men. While white men have been the core of Trump’s support, Clinton is even performing about the same as Trump with that group in the suburbs.

  “That’s a signal of her ability to cut through in these suburbs,” Selzer said.

Mary Ellen's race in PA-07, primarily Delaware County, with chunks of Montgomery and Chester (with a small piece of Berks and a tiny spec of Lancaster counties), has been hitting every note that's now shown up in the polls as decisive for suburban voters, especially on infrastructure, Social Security, jobs, consumer protection, the environment and-- most ominously for Meehan-- gun safety, which was her top agenda item for months. (Please consider contributing to her very grassroots campaign's get out the vote effort by tapping on the thermometer on the right. The DCCC is still refusing it give her any assistance, cutting off their noses to spite their faces, still furious that she beat their conservative recruit in the primary.) Republican backbencher Pat Meehan is a lock-step NRA ally, who has taken more money from gun manufacturing lobbyists than almost any other member of Congress in the northeast United States-- while this has been featured prominently on Mary Ellen's campaign website:

And, yes, Meehan is still peeing in his pants about Trump, unable to denounce him, unable to full support him-- infuriating Trump supporters and normal voters with his cowardly attitude. While Mary Ellen was proudly campaigning with Hillary and with Bernie last week, Meehan was laying low and praying that the DCCC's sabotage of her campaign would win him his reelection.