if this is true they will soon be severely disappointed.

The people, after decades, finally had enough and many former Democrats voted for an orange idiot that said he would help them.

The sad part is it took an orange idiot to say it.

Where has the Democratic party been? At a Wall Street third-way party, I guess.

Then Trump stole it.

Show me any campaign statement by her to back up your claims.

You've created a story in your head that bears no relation to her actual policies. It's astounding that after all these months you didn't bother to read her policy positions on her website.

I know a couple of Hillary supporters who are total fanatics and acted like Bernie and everything he represented was the enemy.

They bought every single spin coming out of the Hillary campaign including calling Bernie a racist. Hating everything he was for like breaking up the banks, free college and raising taxes on the rich.

I've never heard of that before. Damn it, I miss all the fun!

This, and the optics of getting paid 100s of thousands for wall st speeches turned off many working class voters, many that I know personally

Why don't we join the right wing in smearing climate change and spin that as "taking jobs away" There won't be any planet left for our kids, but hey! We'll win elections! Derp!

I mean Hillary!

by withholding your vote from Hillary. Thanks a lot.

I just couldn't bring myself to vote for a Republican.

and her negotiated platform called for raising the minimum wage to $15 and for free college tuition. She was also pro-choice, pro-LGBT rights, and pro-environment.

But she just wasn't perfect enough for you. This is a site for Democrats, not people who bash them.

Here I shall post my original post again.

I can assure you, the count is correct. Since the late 70's until today what, at one time, used to be a Solid Democratic portion of Pennsylvania has slowly but surly turned Republican.

The biggest cause, without question, has been the slow decimation of the manufacturing base in Western Pa. There was a time when Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Armstrong, Westmorland, Lawrence and Fayette Counties were all strong manufacturing bases for Pennsylvania and they ALL voted consistently Democrat. In the last election cycle the ONLY county still voting Democrat was Allegheny.

Starting with the recession of the early 1980's I have watched 10's of, if not, 100's of thousands of good paying, good benefit providing job's vanish. Along with the jobs disappearing so did the Democratic votes that those jobs provided.

What has been replaced for those type of jobs and group thinking, has been minimum wage jobs and voters who have watched their way of life decimated. They have voted, and waited, for the Democratic Party to make the right decisions and remember who used to be the backbone of the party. From the last few cycles, in my humble opinion, it just seems their patience has just run out.

I have Voted in EVERY election since I got home from the service in 1982. I have ALWAYS voted for the Democratic candidate for President, until this cycle. I would Never Vote for a Republican President or, for that matter, Republican Lite.

I hope and pray that we are able to find a True Democrat in 4 years. I'll be honest though. I'm not holding my breath.

"I just couldn't bring myself to vote for a Republican."

You think you're being so clever but you're not. It is bashing any Democrat to imply that they are no different than Republicans.

Hillary is a true Democrat and no one who failed to vote for her in this critical election can claim the same thing.

Which means you helped Trump win.

Also the notion that if we just get the right (i.e. Male) candidate on the ballot good paying manufacturing jobs will reappear is absurd. Trump is lying about bringing those jobs back. No one will. The economy is dramatically different from a half century ago. The best they can do is help create different kinds of jobs, and that likely means many of those people will have to move to find work.

Thanks for Trump, asshole.

I don't believe there is one word in your post that is untrue. The Democratic Party took the votes of western Pennsylvania for granted year after year, cycle after cycle, union endorsement after union endorsement and it came back to bite the apparatchiks in the ass for a great number of reasons. I imagine the same can be said for formerly reliable Democratic voters in Michigan and Wisconsin; it happened much sooner in West Virginia.

To be fair, Democratic voters in these states are suckers for faux patriotic populism. They are the original Reagan Democrats. They have proven since the early 1980s to vote against their interests until almost all of western Pennsylvania has turned red, but it is also the Democratic Party's fault for ignoring these voters' economic interests for so long. We've gotten a heaping help of lip service from Washington. When Trump combined faux patriotic populism with an attention to the voters' economic situation greatly ignored for decades by the Democratic Party (and, yes, it's all bullshit, but it smelled sweet here in these parts), it was a winning combination.

those flipped Pennsylvania votes correspond sharply with the votes for Sanders in the primary. "Democrats" don't trend Republican in statistics and polls. Surprise, surprise.

The rural voters may be very disillusioned with the Democratic Party, but they'll find the Republicans can only make it worse. They have been in power at least half the time.

I respectfully disagree. The Government I hoped for and Voted for didn't get enough votes for President.

Anyone who disagrees with you or expresses an unconventional opinion is a "troll". Instead of substantively engaging ideas, namecall instead.

Not getting behind the most electable candidate has enabled horrific people to be elected going back close to 100 years.

At some point, the same types of folks who have been behaving this way have to get smart enough to see this.

Part of the reason those jobs are gone is because of technological advancements. Society always evolves and as technology advances more and more things become automated. People need to evolve with technology and those in rural areas tend to be resistant to change, even when it's necessary.

Over the last 8 years Obama really wanted to bring jobs to those areas again by updating infrastructure but the GOP has put forth such an effort to block everything he wants to do that on that front no much was accomplished. So they voted for someone who thinks people earn too much money and gives empty promises. The Democratic Party could actually help IF American would get rid of all the obstructionists, but they won't do it because the left is too busy wanting to talk about everything else but the survival of the working poor. Yes, people do care about social issues, but less so when they are worried about how they are going to pay the bills and feed their kids.

any body that thinks those manufacturing jobs will come back is a fool, especially as fast as Drump says they will , there is no way -- If there is a trade war we loose

I certainly agree that all job environments change. For instance, I understand that 400 people can now produce the steel that it took 4000 to do in the 70s. So many of those steel jobs are gone to automation.

That said, if there were a level playing field and if we forced the issue of balance of trade, many good jobs would return.

If we played by the same rules China does - sure, sell your product here, but you must bring your factory here and we own 50% of it (you must have a domestic American partner), we also want your technology transfer.tAfter you meet these criteria Then you can sell your Chinese products in the US market. Same rules here as there. The jobs would come back here. In droves.

The US has been played as the sucker for decades with our companies all hoping to sell to the billions of people in China.

Ask Facebook how that is working for them, or Uber or, Home Depot or Best Buy or Google or Ebay or HP or IBM or Dell, ad nauseum.

It is time for the Democratic party, and US CEOs, to support American workers and stop taking direction from Wall Street bankers and think tank economists.

If the current batch of politicians in the Democratic party won't get the job done, then it's time for a new batch of politicians that aren't just a bunch of Wall Street Corporate suck ups.

We have a LOT of work to do. It will take Time to get fellow Democrats to understand CEO's, Bankers and Wall Street hacks are not now, nor will they EVER be Democrat's.

What they WILL continue to do is dump Million's upon Million's of dollars into our Election process. As long as they continue to do this, and more importantly, we allow them, we will end up with dickweeds like Mr. Trump.

We had a chance to overturn Citizens United this time with a Democratic president picking the next SCOTUS justices. It didn't happen, and now it probably won't for the next 20 years. Anyone who voted for someone other than the Democratic ticket, or not at all, consciously voted for that. They had every right to vote as they saw fit, of course, but they have no right to say they had no idea of the consequences of their action.

By the way it would make your posts easier to read if you don't write in Republicanese, which uses an apostrophe at random to form a plural. English does not.

I cannot condone you withholding your vote from Hillary, but much of your explanation about the vote holds true for western PA and eastern OH. People do forget, though, that Ronald Reagan helped destroy the steel industry.

There are other factors involved, like Richard Mellon Scaife turning all of the newspapers into right-wing rags and the utter decimation of the labor unions, in which another "Thanks" goes to Reagan.

To say I dislike Ronald Reagan, would be the understatement of a Lifetime. To this day I HATE the motherfucker with a Passion. In my opinion, the WORST President of our Lifetime.

Unfortunately since his time we have yet to bring a Truly Progressive Democrat into the White House. Loved President Clinton, Hated NAFTA. Loved President Obama, Hated his Desire to shove TPP down our throat.

I shall continue to pray for a true Progressive Democratic Presidential Candidate. Like I said earlier, I'm not holding my breath.

Probably some justified and some not justified. I'm no Economics expert here! I would venture to say this, though: Bill Clinton's support of NAFTA in the 90's cost Hillary votes in 2016.

It's just frustrating, though, that those same voters forget the harm done by Saint Ronnie Reagan.

People need to pay attention to what you and some other posters in this thread are saying.....the Democratic Party can't just APPEAL to white (and minority) working class voters-------they have to actually come up with SOLUTIONS for the loss of jobs that pay a living wage. Job creation! What a concept!

I voted for HRC in the general, but many, many people I know did not. When Bernie won Michigan, the powers that be in the party should have taken notice and taken steps to capture this LOYAL DEMOGRAPHIC WHO VOTED TWICE FOR OBAMA. Instead they buried their heads in the sand.

Unfortunately you see a microcasm of the same mindset here on this site, with posts like "fuck the white working class", the banning of the member above, and the echo chamber-groupthink whichhunt mentality of many pisters in this group.

Enjoy four years of merciless attacks on organized labor.

And how a democrat "real" or otherwise is so much worse that a die-hard maniac
who wants to destroy the middle class and unions.
Now I understand why my dad left his family in Pittsburgh and never went back.

I'm making a joke, yes.

The party registration numbers are available on the Dept of State website. I pulled them and did a little comparison between votes and registration. One thing to note is that there were significantly more voters who changed their party registration to R than to D (PA has closed primaries) prior to the election.

I know in my precinct, which is heavily R, voters were out in droves. From other posters here who live in PA, the story was the same. Looking at the numbers, Dem votes were in the 40s and 50s as a percent of Dem registration in the small counties, but R votes were in the 80s and up as a percent of their registration. Philadelphia turnout was in the 60s. Had it matched the turnout in the small, rural counties, Clinton would have carried the state.

The small town I work in had trump signs in front of houses but NO Hillary signs. Not every house but around 5-8% had trump signs. I drive through about 35 miles of country back roads to reach the turnpike. The same is true along that route.

Isn't there some theme that can unite rural and small town folks with city folks?

Want to connect with rural voters? Talk more about jobs and wages and less about identity and gun control. Tread carefully on environmental issues, preserving open spaces is popular, miles of red tape to do things with ones own land is not.

I happen to be pro-gun but these folks don't bring it up much. I infer that they already own what they want/need and aren't tremendously concerned.

They are a bit involved with jobs and have concerns about their children moving away. Kids go to college and then can't find a job within 50 miles of home.

Some out there live near a town. My boss lives just outside of Johnstown. They have a houses on a half to an acre of ground. Others have very large very rural properties.

Folks in cities are less likely to own a gun.
Those in cities generally have a choice of colleges.
Anyone near a big city that has a house on more than half an acre is probably a 1%er.

Finding common ground between city voters, who are mostly Dem and rural folks is tough.

I worked as a voter protection volunteer for Hillary in Pennsylvania, and one thing I thought of that may have contributed to her loss there was the fact that her campaign told us not to challenge ANY voters. It made sense at the time, because generally when more people vote Democrats win.* But it meant that while the Republicans had observers at probably every urban precinct challenging the type of voters they thought would be Hillary supporters, rural voters and people they thought were likely to be Trump supporters got a free pass on any grounds we might have had to challenge them.

I am not generally in favor of making it harder for people to vote, but if the state is going to require ID or proof of address to vote, Democrats should consider stationing monitors in Republican areas to make sure the rules are enforced uniformly. Otherwise the rules are enforced more stringently against Democrats than Republicans.

* I volunteered at an urban precinct. I don't know if she did have people challenging votes in more Republican districts.

It's always like that. Huge split. Two different worlds