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JOHNSTOWN (Dagbladet): Fall has really arrived in the old industrial areas of Johnstown in western Pennsylvania. The day after returning to Florida after crown disease, US President Donald Trump arrives to convince voters of what used to be a democratic stronghold.
The most anxious have waited more than 12 hours before the president took the stage despite the fact that the weather did not invite him at all.
– I do not care. I’m doing anything to see that man. Trump came out in 2015 and 2016 and said I’ll do this, and this, and this. He did too. He says what he wants to do and then he does it. It’s very refreshing, says David Nau before his first election meeting with Trump at the Johnstown airport.
Giant audience attracted: – Feeling powerful
– Believe on him
– We believe in him. We are behind him. America first. Promises made. Promises kept. Make America Great Again. We believe everything he says, Joan Rossman tells Dagbladet where he covers himself in Trump effects from head to toe and reproduces some of the president’s slogans.
Along rural roads, Trump signs are also nearby, while there is a long way between Biden’s signs. But that doesn’t give the whole picture. Opinion polls are looking bad for Trump now, and Pennsylvania is no exception.
Both Trump and Biden could become completely dependent on winning Pennsylvania for 270 electoral college votes to win the entire presidential election. Biden now leads the state average of 50.8 percent of opinion polls, compared to 43.8 percent of support for Trump, according to RealClearPolitics. It’s a better notch for Trump than the average for national polls where Biden leads by 10 percentage points at 50.6 percent versus 40.6 percent for Trump.
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Superfan
However, the president’s most loyal supporters show no lack of enthusiasm.
Among the biggest superfans is probably Edward X. Young. This is the 41st time he has attended a Trump meeting since 2015.
Dagbladet also met him at an event with Vice President Mike Pence during the first presidential debate. He then described Trump as a superhero and a rock star.
Break the silence: – Desperate fear
To get a seat at the front of the row, he drove more than 50 miles from his home in New Jersey at midnight. It took seven hours. Upon arriving in Johnstown, he was asked to park in a parking lot 4 miles away and wait for the buses that would transport Trump supporters from there to the airport. But the buses didn’t start running until many hours later, so Young stood up anyway. Hiked most of the way in heavy rain before reaching the last stretch.
Now his Trump shoes and Trump socks are drenched.
“I feel physically miserable now, but emotionally I am happy,” he enthuses Dagbladet.
-Why are you doing all this to see Trump?
– We were all very worried. I want to show you that we care and are happy that you have recovered from the coronavirus so quickly. It is quite amazing. He was only in the hospital for three days. At the same time, this casts doubt on the severity of this virus. Trump and the first lady contracted the virus. 20 people in his inner circle made it. It goes well with everyone. I know people who died from this, but they all had serious underlying diseases, Young says.
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Working class
While Trump has been sick with covid-19, Biden has stepped up the fight for voters in Pennsylvania, among other places.
He has repeatedly accused Trump of handling the pandemic in a miserable way. In recent weeks, Biden has also visited several places in Pennsylvania, including Johnstown. Later this week he will go to Philadelphia.
In this important state, the fight for white working-class voters in particular is in more rural areas. Many of them were former Democratic voters. But since 2016, they have been among Trump’s top voters. Now Trump hopes to capture even more in this group. Biden, on the other hand, is ranked higher in the polls in those areas than Hillary Clinton in 2016, and hopes to destroy Trump’s leadership, writes The Philadelphia Inquirer.
In 2016, Trump ended up winning the state by less than 1 percentage point. An analysis last week of the super PAC democratic organization Priorities USA, which supports Biden, shows that Trump’s very difficult path to winning re-election runs through Pennsylvania.
– It looks very bad
– Biden continues to gain support and Trump is fighting both to retain voters and to attract new voters to the fold. It’s just starting to run out of time, “Prioties USA boss Guy Cecil told The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Right now, Pennsylvania is getting much more attention and campaign money from the Biden and Trump fields than the other two states, Wisconsin and Michigan, which Trump narrowly won in 2016.
Advertising war
The Biden and Pro-Biden groups spent $ 31 million (about $ 285 million) on advertising in Pennsylvania in September. The Trump field, for its part, has spent $ 15 million (about $ 138 million), according to Advertising Analytics. The Trump camp is also struggling with less money than Biden, recently slashing advertising budgets in Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio and shifting resources to Pennsylvania.
The Trump camp, for their part, believes they don’t trust national polls.
“Our internal polls show that it is beginning to be mathematically impossible for Joe Biden to win this election,” Trump campaign adviser Corey Lewandowski told The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Trump’s master plan crumbles
Yet even many Republicans now fear that Trump will unleash himself in the presidential election and drag other party candidates into the fall.
