"Let's lose with Joe!" what the 2020 campaign slogan should be

[septimus]

@Morgyn

Then you’re a fool. Last election people thought PA was safe, so I know a number of people who did just what you’re proposing to do.

Trump won in PA.

I was screaming about PA’s importance. I started in October 2015, 13 months before the election:

@septimus

Pennsylvania is surely “in play.” If the GOP can win it somehow, they win the White House. If they lose Pennsylvania, along with every state that had a smaller GOP percentage vote in 2012 than Pennsylvania had, they lose the White House. Just like its nickname implies, Pennsylvania is the Key stone for this election.

That’s not to say GOP victory is impossible without Pennsylvania. If the election is close, you may assume that GOP will take North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida. Given those states and Virginia, they’d only need one more swing state; it wouldn’t have to be the Keystone State. Tiny New Hampshire would push them over, as would any of Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, Minnesota, or Wisconsin. (With neither Pennsylvania nor Virginia, the GOP would probably have to win at least three other swing states.)

TL;DR: Don’t let your guard down. November 2016 still looks like a coin-toss. Complacency in Pennsylvania would be a huge mistake.

I was immediately rebuked:

@RTFirefly

@septimus

Just like its nickname implies, Pennsylvania is the Key stone for this election.

I disagree. … Pennsylvania’s size and relative consistency in demographic terms make it unlikely that Pennsylvania is winnable for the Republicans in anything less than a pretty substantial GOP win.

@ElvisL1ves

The only way they win it is if they benefit from a large enough *national *tide “somehow” that makes it irrelevant. PA is not in play except to the extent the *nation *is in play.

Over the next 12 months, I continued to point out that Pennsylvania was the key tipping state. (Nothing arcane about the deduction: it was self-evident to anyone who understood Nate Silver’s graphics.) Nobody ever agreed with me, but many disagreed.

Sorry, folks. I feel like my services are wasted here.