In elections last year, two Trump-like Republicans running for governor and senator lost to Democrats by blowout margins. Four Democrats wrestled away Republican-held congressional seats, including Conor Lamb, whose victory here outside Pittsburgh seemed to be a template for how to win back voters in Trump country.
But, listening to strategists and voters in a critical state for Democrats, the midterms feel like a long time ago. Instead, there are widespread worries that the momentum in Pennsylvania, and in other key Rust Belt states, could screech to a halt if the issues in the 2020 presidential primaries and the party’s eventual nominee stray too far left for the region’s many centrist voters.
“The more we have presidential candidates or newly elected congresspeople talking about the Green New Deal, talking about ‘Medicare for all,’ talking about socialism, the more that plays into the Trump campaign’s hands,” said Ed Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor and national Democratic chairman.
Trump is in the White House in large part because of the crumbling in 2016 of three blue-wall states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
In 2020, if the rest of the electoral map is unchanged, with Trump winning the swing states of Florida and Ohio, Democrats understand that their most promising path back to the presidency is to resurrect the blue wall. Trump carried the three states by less than 80,000 total votes, so small fluctuations in his support or opposition would be pivotal.
Christopher Borick, a political scientist and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, called 2016 a “lightning-in-a-bottle” victory that will be hard for the president to duplicate.
But, he said, Democrats are in danger of creating the conditions in which it could happen.
“A more left-leaning candidate opens the door for Trump,” Borick said.
Leading Democratic and Republican strategists in Pennsylvania said the most likely nominees to carry the state, at this early stage, appeared to be former Vice President Joe Biden, a native of Scranton, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, both of whose centrist policies fit comfortably with the state’s voters.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.