Hillary's Hexed and Vexed by the White Working Class Vote

Heh.

Like I said at the last post, I love this stage of the election. And it's not just Hilary who's hexed. The mainstream media's hexed too. Hexed and vexed, lol.

At WSJ, "White, Working Class Voters Vex Hillary Clinton":

WASHINGTON, Pa.— Hillary Clinton isn’t banking on winning pockets of Pennsylvania and Ohio packed with the sort of white, working class voters flocking to Republican Donald Trump. She just wants to avoid a wipeout.

Mr. Trump’s path to victory in these battleground states hinges on running up overwhelming margins in largely white counties, neutralizing Mrs. Clinton’s advantage among minority and college-educated voters clustered in the cities and suburbs.

With polls showing the race tightening in these states, Mrs. Clinton is deploying two allies to try to cut into Mr. Trump’s numbers: her husband and Vice President Joe Biden.
The Clinton campaign reckons that if anyone can make inroads with blue collar voters unhappy about their prospects and cool to Mrs. Clinton, it is these two, who came from hardscrabble backgrounds that give them a natural cultural and economic affinity to this slice of the electorate.

One of their prime targets is Pennsylvania. The state is emerging as a firewall for her campaign in blocking Mr. Trump from reaching the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. If he loses Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes, he faces daunting odds in clearing the threshold, analysts say.

“Where’s the tipping-point state—the state that would put Trump over 270? I think you can make a stronger case for Pennsylvania than for any other state,” said Charlie Cook, editor and publisher of the Cook Political Report. “She has to win that, so I think investing a lot of time in that makes a lot of sense.”

Democrats haven’t lost Pennsylvania since 1988 and polls show Mrs. Clinton leads here, but she has been losing ground.

A new Muhlenberg College/Morning Call poll found Mrs. Clinton with a nine-point lead among likely Pennsylvania voters in a head-to-head matchup with Mr. Trump, and an eight-point lead when third-party candidates are included.

A Real Clear Politics average of polling in the state shows she is ahead by about six points, down from nine points for much of last month.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign wouldn’t say how well she would like to do among the state’s white, working class voters, but one benchmark is the 2012 presidential race. That year, Mr. Obama won Pennsylvania by carrying 42% of this constituency, compared with 56% for Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

Democrats say Mrs. Clinton didn’t help herself when she made a comment in March that her energy policies were “going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” She later said she was “mistaken in my remarks.”

Jim Davis, chairman of the Democratic Party in Fayette County, Pa., near the West Virginia border, said Mrs. Clinton’s comments stung. “It resonates here and Trump has capitalized on it,” he said. “She’s hurt herself in Pennsylvania.”

Mr. Davis was among the customers and Democratic officials who greeted Mr. Clinton when the former president recently stopped at an Italian restaurant in the county to shake hands. It was one of two stops Mr. Clinton made that day behind partisan lines—in a pair of southwestern Pennsylvania counties won by the Republicans in 2008 and 2012...

With the polls tightening, I've been paying more attention to the Electoral College math, and I don't see much hope for Trump --- or at least much margin for error --- unless he's able to win the Keystone state. When polls are running neck-and-neck there, I'll start getting a little more emotional about things.

But keep reading, in any case.