Obama returns to a different Western Pennsylvania

When former President Barack Obama comes to Pittsburgh on Thursday to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris in the home stretch of next month’s elections, he will return to a very different western Pennsylvania than the one he won in a landslide in 2008, and less in 2012.

In 2008, Obama ran on a message of ambition, using a slogan of hope and change to create a coalition of white working-class people who had long been part of the New Deal Democrats, minorities, young people and educated professionals.

In that race against Republican John McCain, he won 18 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. Here in the West, he won Cambria and Erie and came within 100 votes in Fayette, and he earned a whopping 57% in Allegheny. In total, Obama received 3,276,363 raw votes, or 54.47%, in Pennsylvania, compared to McCain’s 2,655,885, or 44.15%.

By the time he ran for office in 2012, Obama’s hope and change had faded, replaced by a more ideological Democratic Party built around climate change, expansionist government, internationalism and a move toward eliminating fossil fuels.

His new coalition of emerging demographics, minorities, youth, college-educated white elites and women was his focus. Left in the dust were the New Deal Democrats. But it worked. Just enough New Deal Democrats stuck with him. However, his lack of support should have been a warning sign to Democrats that this dismissal of working-class interests might not work for the next Democratic nominee.

When Obama won Pennsylvania and the presidency in 2012, he did so by becoming the first president in modern political history to win his second term with fewer voters than in his first attempt at the presidency.

That was no more apparent than here, where the erosion of the support was noticeable if you paid close attention. Obama lost five counties that year, falling to a scant 13 of 67. He lost a percentage point here in Allegheny County, lost Cambria, lost Fayette significantly, and counties like Beaver, where the race would have been much closer in 2008, all went to shifted to the right. .

In Pennsylvania, Obama received 2,990,274 votes in 2012, or just over 51%, meaning that nearly 300,000 people who previously voted for him simply didn’t show up. What’s interesting about that is that those missing voters didn’t show up for Republican candidate Mitt Romney, who won only 2,680,434, or 46%, of the votes.

In short, Romney won just over 24,000 voters over McCain in Pennsylvania that year, while Obama lost nearly 300,000 voters statewide, with many of those voters coming from western Pennsylvania. Obama lost about 20,000 voters in Allegheny County, a county he won, but declining support in Beaver was about 3,000 votes, Westmoreland 8,000 votes, Fayette 4,000 votes, Cambria 8,000 votes and Butler about 4,000 votes.

So where did former Obama voters go if they didn’t go to Romney? It seems like they stayed home for the most part. They liked Obama’s promise in 2008 and generally liked him personally, but they didn’t like his policies, and they saw Romney not as the guy who brought back jobs but as the guy who came to your desk with a box to guide you out. from the building after he politely dismisses you.

The Obama ascendant coalition promised to pay dividends to his party in the coming years. That was not the case for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She lost a state that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, had won. Then-candidate Joe Biden, because of his past relationships with unions, was able to hold onto just enough of the working-class votes here in 2020 to narrowly win the state.

The voice of the working class, white, black, Hispanic and Asian, is now firmly in the Republican camp. That party has now become the party of labor. A part of the coalition that was always on the sidelines is now in the driver’s seat.

Few details are available so far for the Oct. 10 visit. It will be interesting to see who comes to the event. The young people who blocked traffic in front of the University of Pittsburgh on Thursday night probably won’t be there. It is unclear what the energy is for Harris, or Biden, among left-wing youth voters.

The suggestion is that Obama is the strongest surrogate Democrats can attract here four weeks ahead of Election Day. Eight years ago it was suggested that Bill Clinton would be the best surrogate for Hillary Clinton. Both came, but both were unsuccessful. Working-class voters had a candidate in Trump that they would actually support.

Obama’s speech in Chicago at this year’s Democratic National Convention was not one of hope and change. It was mocking and slick, and very reminiscent of 2012’s Obama, who lost support here and across the state.

Case in point: When Obama was last in Pittsburgh, during the 2022 midterm elections for then-Senate candidate John Fetterman, he said Republicans are “making us angry and afraid of each other… so they can seize power.”

Of all the campaign stops Democrats have made here in Pittsburgh, including Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., the one that will be most telling in terms of message and who shows up will happen here Thursday.