As a political operative, I worked in Pennsylvania politics for almost two decades. From Philadelphia to Pittsburgh I trod the highways and county election offices electing everybody from the federal level down to city council droids. My contacts there are numerous. One of them, a Democrat operative working the western part of the state on election day 2016, gave me my first confirmation that Trump could take the day.

So after talking to him and others involved in the game on both sides of the aisle, it’s clear: the Keystone State is vital to the presidential race and right now it shades, not by much, Trump. The deciding factors will be the Philadelphia suburban vote and the white working class vote. A wild card—Trump’s rising success with minority voters.

Close

Think of PA as a rectangle with Philadelphia on the lower right and Pittsburgh on the central left. All else, Kentucky. Or, as some have called it, “Pennsyltucky.” My favorite, of my own invention, is “Imbesylvania.” Whatever the moniker it’s culturally conservative outside the big cities and even in large parts of those cities, but economically hard hat liberal. Not PC liberal, but Archie Bunker Democrat. Hence why Trump won in 2016. It had voted Democrat in the six prior presidential elections. Though GOP in the three prior to that. Yup, Trump pulled off a serious upset. That Wisconsin and Michigan sealed his larger victory.

With its 20 electoral votes, it is the jewel in the battleground state crown. Many current polls have Biden up by almost double digits. Hogwash. It’s close alright. But the best poll is the previous election and the biggest change since then is the volatile anger of the PA rural and small-town Right against the cultural far-left Democrats.

If you get out of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, it’s palpable. Go to Womelsdorf, Oregon Avenue in Philly, Greene County, Altoona, and many other locales across the state and the comments you get from the residents when you mention Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and both their connections to the Democratic Party is too expletive-laden to quote here. Suffice it to say, the Democrats’ effete cultural sense plays very badly against Trump’s working class- aimed bravado. Thus, look for increased turnout for the president with Archie Bunker Democrats.

But, will that be canceled out by suburban Philadelphia votes, especially female votes there? Maybe. The president’s braggadocio does not play well with those voters and in other poodle people environs. In New Hope, the Main Line, and Sewickley they are appalled by the president’s tweets and off-the-cuff remarks. However, they didn’t mind his economic results and are deathly afraid of Antifa and Black Lives Matter carousing through their leafy neighborhoods and ruining the landscaping it took the gardener so long to put together. They will grudgingly admit Biden is a prisoner to those forces—the terrorists, not the gardener. Thus, will the president win this vote? No. But he can decrease it by five or 10 points. Enough to take the sting out.

Combine that with (and this is low ball) 20 percent of the minority vote statewide and he can take the joint once again. Not by a large margin, but by enough to cobble together over 270 in the Electoral College. That’s enough to celebrate with a pizza steak at Tony Luke’s any day of the week.