Democrats Are On Track To Lose Pennsylvania — Again

In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt and other Democrats swept into power in a landslide largely because they championed working class issues. Yet in 2016, fortunes weren’t so good for Roosevelt’s party, as Republican Donald Trump won a historically high number of working-class and pro-labor voters, propelling him to the presidency.

I saw this shift on the ground here in Pennsylvania, a state which hadn’t voted Republican in decades, yet went for Mr. Trump in 2016.

Lackawanna County (where I serve as president of Scranton City Council) is a good case study in what happened.  President Obama won it with more than 63 percent in 2012, yet Hillary Clinton got barely 50 percent. The reason? Donald Trump focused on the issues that matter to this community, such as the loss of manufacturing jobs. Many people felt ignored by Mrs. Clinton – including me, a Democrat that voted for Donald Trump.

For Democrats to win over voters like me, they need to return to their roots and, as many top labor unions are urging, restore the party’s focus to kitchen table economics and the key issues that affect so many working-class Americans.

So far, many of the 2020 presidential candidates seem to be at least attempting to acknowledge this. However, we must always be vigilant that we do not lose sight of the working women and men we seek to represent.