Angela LeJohn is 49, has worked at a local energy company for nine years, and loves it. A registered Democrat, she never once voted for a Republican and never expected to entertain such a thought—not even in a local election—until this year.

“The short of it is that I am looking at this election through self-preservation,” she explained. “I love my job, I love that I only live three miles from work, I love that who I work for contributes to a stable life, and I love that my community is holding on because of the trickle effect Lee Supply Company’s impact has on the region.”

LeJohn will vote for Donald Trump for president and for incumbent U.S. Senator Pat Toomey in November, she candidly admits, not because she loves either Republican candidate but because “they have my back.”
Angela LeJohn, 49, of Allenport, has worked at Lee Supply in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, for nine years. She has never voted Republican but expects to this year. (Justin Merriman)

She was among more than 60 employees who attended an informal voter-registration effort conducted by Secure Energy for America, a non-partisan trade association that has visited energy vendors and suppliers in key counties of Southwestern Pennsylvania, Ohio’s Mahoning Valley, and Virginia. It hopes to mobilize energy-industry workers, along with their relatives and neighbors, to vote in November. Officially, the effort is non-partisan. Yet for most energy workers in Pennsylvania, voting to preserve their industry means voting for Trump and Toomey.

The registration drive gets to the heart of the election in Western Pennsylvania. Democrats in these small communities want to hold on to their way of life; they feel their communities have as much value as those of their more-cosmopolitan Democratic cousins, and they cannot reconcile themselves to a national Democratic Party that they feel is working against them. They are the voters whose simple motivation to vote outside of the party they were born into has fallen under the radar of the national press and the polls.

But the energy industry has noticed. “This kind of endeavor is terrifically impactful with voters,” said Ron Sicchitano, the Democratic Party’s chairman here in Washington County. “I’ve got to hand it to them.” Sicchitano, a coal miner, says anti-coal statements by President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have had a “tremendously devastating” impact on voters in a county that has been reliably Democratic in the past.
Terry Huweart, 45, of Charleroi, left, and Sheik Shannon, 55, of Monongahela, center, sign forms for Secure Energy for America, as Bob Staranko, 71, of Charleroi sits in a chair nearby on Sept. 7, 2016. (Justin Merriman)

“My main objective is to get as many of my voters out so that I can keep the margins down in the county,” he said. “Trump is going to win [the county], he just can’t win that big or a big turnout in this county will chip away at Hillary Clinton’s wins in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.” He feels that the national party is running away from energy voters and southwestern Pennsylvania Democrats; he confesses to being unsure who his reliable voters are anymore, because so many of Washington County’s registered Democrats could vote Republican in November.

In the 2000 presidential election, Washington County went strongly Democrat; it gave 53.2 percent of its vote to then-Vice President Al Gore, and only 44 percent to the Republican, then-Governor George W. Bush of Texas.

By 2004, when climate change and cap-and-trade became the national Democratic Party’s driving narratives, John Kerry barely won the county, with just 552 votes more than Bush.

In the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board that “if somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them.” Washington County voters abandoned their Democratic voting tradition that fall and chose John McCain over Obama. They did so again in 2012, choosing Republican Mitt Romney. What’s different this time, Sicchitano, said, is the intensity of people’s feelings: “This time it really is personal for these voters.”

Lee Supply is a third-generation family-owned business, operating since 1954. “My dad started it servicing the coal industry,” Lee said. Nestled in a glen between the rolling hills of the Alleghenies and the Monongahela River, the company bustles with workers moving about the plant. Today, it sells pipe and pumping systems used in everything from traditional applications, such as water distribution and sewage treatment, to highly specialized applications such as horizontal directional drilling, slip lining, leachate and methane collection, gas extraction, and water transport.

Hillary will win ... comfortably.

Trump - the alleged child rapist - will never be POTUS.

Wanna make a little bet?

Polls released over the past few days show Hillary Clinton losing to Donald Trump in several key swing states, in a trend that should set off alarm bells for Democrats.

These new polls, from several different outlets, show Trump ahead in some states where he hasn’t led any polls in months, and some are the best general election poll results Trump has ever gotten. Here’s the rundown:



In Ohio, two new polls from Bloomberg and CNN show Trump soaring to a 5-point lead — his biggest margin in the state in any poll tracked by HuffPost Pollster all campaign.
In Florida, a new CNN poll shows Trump winning by 3 points, his best performance since before the conventions.
In Nevada, Clinton is down by 2 points, according to Monmouth. She had led in post-convention polls.
And in Maine, which most expected to be a safe Democratic state and not a swing state, Clinton leads Trump by a mere 3 points, according to Colby College/Survey USA.

Now, you should generally look at the average of polls, rather than overinterpreting the significance of any one new poll, and head over to HuffPost Pollster or RealClearPolitics to do that. But sometimes, if the race is changing quickly and there haven’t been many polls lately, the averages can be slow to catch up (some state averages incorporate polls conducted back in July).

And when so many unusually pro-Trump poll results emerge at once, they seem unlikely to be the artifact of random noise. At the very least, they seem to indicate that the race is now much closer than it has been in months. At most, they could indicate that Trump has now pulled into a lead in states that could help make the difference.

The case against Democratic panic

One reason Democrats shouldn’t completely panic just yet is that it is quite possible for Clinton to still win if she loses Ohio, Florida, and Nevada. Her apparent easiest path to victory involves winning Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Colorado, Virginia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. So keep an eye on new polling from those states in the next few days — if they start to slip away from her, then it will be time for Democrats to get really worried.

Furthermore, it hasn’t all been bad news for Clinton. Over the weekend, she got a strong set of poll results from CBS News/YouGov, which gave her a 7-point lead in Ohio and a 2-point lead in Florida. And she remains ahead in almost every national poll to come out lately.

And it’s also possible that this sudden swing in the polls is affected somewhat by differential non-response rates, a phenomenon Jeff Stein wrote about earlier this year. That is to say, the news of Clinton’s illness may have made her supporters less enthusiastic about even answering polls, so they’d naturally show up less often in the results.


The case for Democratic panic

Yet if Clinton voters truly are feeling so unenthusiastic about the race that they won’t answer phone polls, that in itself indicates a major underlying enthusiasm problem her campaign needs to solve. And in any case, finding creative reasons to dismiss poll results you may not like has generally been a bad idea this year. “Differential non-response rates” may have a fancy name, but paying attention to what the polls actually show has proven to be a pretty good guide to what’s happening.

And even those national polls that are mostly good for Clinton contain some worrying signs for her. For instance, today’s national Quinnipiac poll results put her ahead by 5 points in a head-to-head matchup with Trump, but by just 2 in a four-way ballot test including Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

Polls show that it is mainly young voters who are willing to switch their loyalties from Clinton to Johnson or Stein when they are offered as options. Perhaps this will change if those voters view a Trump presidency as more of a possibility, or if Johnson and Stein both fail to qualify for the debates, as seems likely. But for now, it appears that Clinton can’t take overwhelming support among millennials for granted.

Mortdooley wrote on Sep 14^th, 2016 at 10:44pm:


"wet dream girl"?

I'm no fan of Hillary Clinton.

I'm just telling you what's going to happen: she will win.

I guarantee it.

That doesn't mean I like her.

WASHINGTON – A month after it appeared the race for president in Michigan might be all but over, Republican Donald Trump has cut deeply into Democrat Hillary Clinton’s post-convention lead, with an exclusive new Free Press/WXYZ-TV poll showing Trump has moved closer to tying Clinton in a state that hasn't backed a Republican nominee since 1988.

Clinton, whose lead in some national polls also has disappeared lately after a successful convention this summer in Philadelphia, still leads Trump 38%-35% in Michigan, according to the poll done by Lansing-based EPIC-MRA for the Free Press, WXYZ-TV  (Channel 7) and their outstate partners. But that is within the poll’s 4-percentage-point margin of error, and a significant drop from her 11-point lead last month.

“The race is tightening a lot in Michigan,” said Bernie Porn, EPIC-MRA’s pollster. “It may be a function of the timing of the survey and her health questions, (but) there has been a shift toward Trump. Whether it’s going to be a permanent shift is yet to be determined.”

Clinton has led practically all of the head-to-head polls against Trump taken in Michigan, so it is not clear whether he can break through in the state. But the trend suggests that he has the potential for closing the gap — potentially putting a key Democratic state in play.

Trump, unlike other recent Republican presidential candidates, has doggedly refused to write off Michigan, despite Clinton’s earlier lead and a history of the state’s voting for every Democratic presidential candidate since 1992.

While the real estate mogul and reality TV star hasn’t spent widely on TV ads in the state, he has still outspent Clinton on air recently, and, perhaps more significant, has made four visits to the state since early August — including one Wednesday to Flint. On the national stage, he also has relied more on scripted speeches and avoided making off-the-cuff statements that, at times, have even alienated supporters.

Clinton, meanwhile, had a tougher road in August, with media reports continuing to raise questions about whether people who gave to the Clinton Foundation had special access to her while she was secretary of state.

Then, last week, she referred to half of Trump’s supporters as being “deplorables” and labeled them as bigots, though she later recanted the suggestion that she knew the percentage of his supporters who fit that label.

Trump has made comments about immigrants that some say fuel racial divisions.

For the new poll, EPIC-MRA surveyed 400 likely voters beginning last Saturday, the day after Clinton’s remarks about Trump’s supporters and a day before she took a few days off the campaign trail to battle pneumonia. The poll found Clinton retained broad-based support across the state, but that her numbers had fallen since the last poll.


The topline numbers showed her leading Trump, 38%-35%, with Libertarian Gary Johnson (10%) and Green Party candidate Jill Stein (4%) trailing. Thirteen percent remained undecided. In a two-way match-up, Clinton had a slightly larger edge, beating Trump 42%-38%.

Trump has clearly improved his standing among several demographics as the Nov. 8 election moved closer, however: Among white voters, what had been a 38%-36% lead for Clinton a month ago is now a 40%-32% lead for him. He also has taken a lead among men — 38%-33% — where she had held what was the slightest of margins in August.

He held an edge among voters with a high school education or less — 40%-36%. But he also gained among those with some post high-school education, and led Clinton, 36%-32%. Clinton led among college graduates, 41%-32%.

Perhaps more troubling for Clinton — who despite a sizable lead in the polls in the March primary lost to rival Bernie Sanders in Michigan — was a drop-off in support needed from key groups.

Where she led among every age group a month ago, she now trails with voters 50-64 by 41%-33%. And what had been a 24-point lead among voters 18-34 has dropped to 7 points, 31%-24%, with Johnson picking up support to match Trump’s (24%).

Also, where Clinton led among black voters, 85%-2% over Trump in August, that is now 74%-2%, with the poll showing some support migrating to Johnson and Stein and the undecided number growing from 10% to 14%.

And in the most populous part of Michigan — Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties — where Clinton held a 53%-27% edge over Trump in August, she now holds a 47%-32% margin. Undecideds remained at 11%.

Clinton's support among people from union households fell from 49% to 41%, where Trump’s rose from 29% to 37% — though she appeared to continue to hold a wide margin among union members themselves. The UAW, Teamsters, AFL-CIO and others have endorsed Clinton................