so I want to give a glimmer of good news to Dems all over regarding small town PA.
I live in a very conservative, rural part of Pa in crawford county. It is one of the 2 or three counties that actually voted to reelect Santorum over Casey (but just barely). In my township Santorum won convincingly (i mean by probably 2 to 1 ) over Casey.
Local elections are always a big deal here although obviously the Repubs have no active presidential race on the agenda.
But here are the returns:
clinton: 127
obama: 58
________
(31.4 % for obama much better than many of the small counties around here). In fact if he could have kept it this close in some of these counties he might have been alot closer to winning tonight.
total Dems voting: 185
Repubs:
mccain: 178
paul: 38
total Repubs voting: 226.
total voters: 411
repub %: 55%
dem%: 45 %
I have lived here for 10 plus years. In the Gore and Kerry years my Democrat friend and I called Crawford county headquarters a week before the election and offered to help: no response. Not a single Gore sign was in any yard in town; I had the only Kerry sign I saw anywhere. Even Bob Casey could spare no yard signs for the area. But this election I received multiple calls from both Obama and Hillary people urging me to vote. I went to a meet up for Obama people (although I am ashamed to say besides the meet up and handing around bumper stickers I didn't do nearly enough for Obama) and we actually saw signs up for Obama and Hillary all throughout town.
Listen i wanted to win tonight badly but do you know what it will do to this state statewide if we take a 70-30 area and make it 60/40 or (could I ever hope 55-45?). Can you imagine the Republican party going into inner city philly and walking away with 40% of the vote?
This is a part of the Dean strategy that is not much discussed: identifying and motivating voters away from our high concentration areas to hold the margins down and then kicking serious ass in the area (such as inner cities) where the margins are much better, but not just in "red" states but in the red part of blue states.
Hillary won tonight but obama held his won and the party recognized that the little numbers out here multiply into big margins statewide. I hope this is a lesson that they carry on into November.
So onto N Carolina and Indiana, and for me onto barackobama.com to drop a nickel into the kitty.
thanks for listening....