The Weekly Standard thinks Hillary may have provided John McCain the key to defeating Obama:
In a new Brookings study of Pennsylvania’s political demographics, William Frey and Ruy Teixeira identify this region, centered on Allentown, as key to the state’s political future. If Pennsylvania’s Northeast keeps trending Democratic, the state will become solidly blue. But if a Republican candidate can hold the line or make some modest gains with the region’s white working class voters, the picture looks very different. And as it turns out, the GOP may have a candidate who can do just that in John McCain. As Hillary Clinton’s campaign slow-marches to its unhappy end, she is offering lessons not only for how McCain can defeat Obama–she is pointing towards a possible bright future for the Republican brand.
The Republicans have lost a lot in Pennsylvania, largely due to the Bush version of Republicanism alienating the traditionally Republican Philadelphia suburbs, and making those voters look elsewhere. That’s probably one reason I’m more sanguine about John McCain than most, is because I think the Republicans desperately need to make some gains in Pennsylvania, and McCain is probably the right kind of guy to appeal to voters in these key areas in the southeast. It’s not so much that I love the Republican Party, and want it to dominate, but I sit just across the river from a shining example of what one party rule does to a state. If Pennsylvania shifts solidly Democrat, if Ed Rendell is any indication of what is in long term store for us, we’re in a lot of trouble. Taxes will keep going up and up, people will keep leaving, and you can probably kiss Pennsylvania goodbye as a pro-gun state in a generation. If it takes McCain coattails to reverse that trend, so be it.
HatTip to Instapundit
UPDATE: Check out this graphic in the Inquirer that shows how Obama failed. It also shows that Ed Rendell had to carry near universal support in the Philadelphia area in order to win. Obama failed to not only carry overwhelming support in the southeast, he failed to beat Hillary.
There was a graphic in today’s Inky about how Obama failed to replicate Ed Rendell’s strategy.
You can take any race in PA by winning only a handful of counties. However, you have to win the right counties by the right margins. Rendell won Philly and all of the ‘burbs by such huge margins, it offset his losses 57 of the state’s 67 counties. Obama couldn’t take all of the Philly suburbs – he lost Bucks and Montgomery County.