'Rustish-,' maybe.

We attend a weekly Saturday morning meeting where a group of local citizens get together and talk politics. Now the room attendees are mostly Republicans and average over the age of 60, however, some Progressives show up to ensure the room does not descend to outright "Trump is the bestie thing since sliced bread' madness.

Anyway, so one lady who is a strong Anti-Abortion supporter, did not initially support Trump (wanted any other Republican besides Trump), but in the end voted for Trump and is a Republican for sure -- came to me after last week's meeting and ask if I thought the "Russia Stuff Had Merit".

What she was told, "The Spider Legs are connecting everywhere to the White House and in particular the Oval with Russia. Knowing this happenstance to be factually based on the information revealed thus far, there is little to no way Trump did not know about it."

Thus, the moral of this story is --- in Michigan where some Republicans voted for Trump because he was the only thing left at the top of their ticket, YES -- the poll numbers above are likely an accurate reflection of his approval rating in the State right now.

Also, if the election was held today, there is no way what-so-ever Trump would win Michigan -- as he only supposedly won the state by 10,793 votes. There are way over 10,793 Republicans in Michigan that would NEVER vote for Trump again and secretly hope he is removed from office.

Obama and Bernie remain popular in all 3 states so don't fall for line people upset trump hasn't gotten his extreme agenda of gop passed.

Being below 40 percent there is really, really bad.

This is an example of trying to force a narrative by manufacturing bullshit. PA is an east coast purple state with a Democratic governor. Philly is 50 miles from the Atlantic ocean.

This one last freak (Russian-hacked) election netted Drumpf a win here where no Republican had won PA in a Presidential election since 1988.

This was not a thing until after the 2016 election. One might think the entire state moved 1,000 miles west.

It's a false narrative based on trying to shoe-horn PA folks into having some full blown "midwestern" mentality/culture, when they fail to realize that "rural" has its own culture no matter what state. IMHO, the "transition" state is really OH and even in that case, mostly western OH leading into Indiana & Illinois.

If PA is "midwest", you might as well call New York state "midwest".



(there are some references that further break it out to have PA & NY in the "midatlantic", separate from the New England states as well)

I'm sure there's a reason for that, too!

Yes! Ironic, ain't it?

who thinks Pennsylvania is the Midwest needs a map check! Our county voted "bigly" for Hillary. To refer to my state as the Midwest is disturbing and "fake news"!

is like another world from western PA.

but have also been to the midwest many times and have relatives there, and they are not like Western PA either.

The current transformation of western PA had been preceded by eastern PA's similar transformation that happened decades before, with the move away from industrial/manufacturing, and into more diversified types of occupations. Eastern PA also has the proximity to NYC & D.C. to reinforce the "eastern" feel.

With the loss of of the industry here, the steel from places like Pittsburgh shifted to the midwest where there had still been a thriving automotive industry (and all the support for that), so you had that relationship going on. But that didn't make them "midwestern". One of my uncles has lived in the MW (Chicago burbs & Minneapolis burbs) for the past 40 years and there is absolutely no way that either Illinois or Minnesota, are like PA, eastern or western.

Whenever my midwestern relatives come here, that's the FIRST place they want to go! And they crave the seafood as well, something apparently not very prolific in the MW (at least in any inexpensive fashion).

And yes, Philly metro went bigly for Hillary.

nt