Can Trump Keep Momentum in Pennsylvania?
With its 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania will once again be a major factor in the 2024 presidential election. In 2016, Donald Trump carried 56 of the state’s 67 counties en route to victory. In 2020, Joe Biden took Pennsylvania by a narrow margin of 1.17% over Trump.
The Biden administration is making its message clear: in 2024, it’s Democracy vs. Dictatorship. For its part, the Trump campaign should seek similar clarity – call it Results vs. Rhetoric in 2024. President Joe Biden continues to say that Trump will operate like a dictator on Day One, twisting around a statement that Trump made in jest. Yet it is the Biden administration and its Department of Justice, as well as secretaries of state around the country, who are trying to take away the choice of millions of Americans by removing Trump from the ballot. Though Trump has never been charged with insurrection, these states are testing novel legal theories in an effort to wipe out Biden’s chief political rival, who happens to be leading in the polls and showing new strength among blacks, Hispanics, and even young women.
In Pennsylvania, meantime, Trump is polling at historic highs. According to Athan Koutsiouroumbas, a RealClearPennsylvania contributor, “In the entirety of the 2016 & 2020 cycles, Trump never led in two consecutive polls in PA. In the 2024 cycle, Trump currently leads four consecutive polls for the first time ever in PA.”
Is Trump’s momentum in Pennsylvania real? It seems to be. Why else would Biden be running on threats to democracy and fears of a looming dictatorship? The argument applies nationally, too. Biden is sending Vice President Kamala Harris on a nationwide abortion tour for 2024. Biden can’t tout his approval rating, the economy, low crime, a stable southern border, or global peace. All he can do is gin up fear and try to make people remember January 6, 2021.
Biden pushed his “save democracy” message when he appeared at Montgomery County Community College on Friday, January 5. Will that message convince enough moderates and suburbanites? And what about the statewide map? Biden’s economic failures and the kitchen-table issues plaguing Pennsylvania residents should be the deciding factor in 2024. Voters tend to ask themselves: Which candidate made my life better? The answer is Donald Trump.
“I get the fact that Pennsylvanians are worried about rising costs, they’re worried about good schools, they’re worried about public safety—they shouldn’t also have to be worried about their democracy,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said recently. Yet Shapiro, a Democrat, might ask himself: Which party is attempting, banana republic-style, to remove a candidate of the opposition party from the ballot?
While Biden sells fear, Trump should sell facts. It’ll be a razor-thin margin this November, but Trump can win Pennsylvania in 2024 if he focuses on correcting the mistakes of the Biden administration and focusing on the issues that matter – none more important than how Biden has made the American dream almost unattainable.
