I'll say for Dems, Pennsylvania needs a three-pronged approach as the confluence of three separate events cost them the state.
1. Philadelphia
Dems rely on one huge city to run over the rest of the voters in a ton of states, and Pennsylvania is no exception. But Philadelphia proper has seen voter deregistration at an alarming pace due to people moving out (presumably out of state). Local Dems need to make the city of Philadelphia and the surrounding area a more attractive place to stay. Hillary probably came pretty close to maxing this area out, and it wasn't enough.
I mostly agree with this part, especially about making the Philly suburbs more attractive for people migrating, but did Hillary really max out Philly proper? She got 4k fewer votes than Obama while Trump picked up 12k votes over Romney.
What do you mean by this? She won Allegheny by the largest margin since Clinton in 1992. Sure, she got crushed in nearby coal and steel country, but those areas have been rapidly turning more Republican for three decades. How much would a wink and a nod have slowed that trend? I'm guessing not much at all.
In my opinion, Clinton lost PA because she let places like Erie, Luzerne, and Lackawanna turn rotten, not necessarily what you'd consider Pennsyltucky. That's where Obama-Trump voters really made their mark and put him over the top ever so slightly. That said, I don't think there's much she could've done to keep those people on board. Her presence wouldn't have changed much, and sending surrogates who were supposed to be tailor-made for these areas like Joe Biden didn't make a difference.
The next Democratic nominee needs to focus on expanding on Hillary's gains in suburban Philly while simultaneously trying to bring back those minor cities like Erie and Scranton back to Kerry-like margins. This is more reasonable than trying to appeal to people with a message that is completely incompatible, because most of them are unreachable. Democrats should not attempt to get
these people back.
