Comments on: Analyzing Swing States: Pennsylvania, Part 5

By: Brett Heffner

Brett Heffner — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 04:56:12 +0000

Also, it’s easy to forget that the concept of a “Bos-Wash megalopolis” including all metro areas of southeast and south-central PA has to be taken with a grain of salt and your being from California makes it difficult to understand. I had a grandmother who lived in southern CA for almost two decades until she returned to eastern PA.

By: inoljt

inoljt — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 23:08:04 +0000

Thanks and corrected.

By: Brett Heffner

Brett Heffner — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 08:55:17 +0000

You mentioned Lancaster and York Counties as being populous Republican counties and identified them as “east of the Philadelphia metropolis” when you probably meant “west.” Here’s the type of error that no spell checker will catch.

By: Ron Thompson

Ron Thompson — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 04:05:10 +0000

That’s a noble and praiseworthy sentiment.
But if you look at what has actually succeeded in American politics in the last 40 years, it isn’t a party that appeals to everybody. The Republicans have dominated American politics by building a cohesive party that sometimes gets a small majority, and then they ram through their program while some Democrats, who try to appeal to everybody, give them crucial support. By attempting to appeal to everybody, we’ve made a mess of health care reform. I find the modern Republican Party uteerly repugnant, but I’ll say this for them–they understand power: how to get it and how to use it. I wish the Democrats could learn to do the same. But it’s hard, because we want so desperately to appeal to everybody.

By: Brett Heffner

Brett Heffner — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 09:08:10 +0000

If there are four counties that don’t belong to this geopolitical entity of “Pennsyltucky,” they are Berks, Lehigh, Monroe, and Northampton. Obama carried all by at least 9% margins and the demographic changes show that Philadelphia has no right to claim them, yet nor did they belong to such a political invention as “Pennsyltucky.” It seems like these counties (other than Monroe) can be owned or disowned as aligned according to the whims of political expediency by the Philadelphia machine political bosses (such as Marcel Groen and Bob Brady.)