Are the tariffs supposed to save Murphy's seat for the GOP?

House Race in Pennsylvania May Turn on Trump Voters’ Regrets

Did the Duce think he needed to stiffen some spines in Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District?

In the past, it has been a safe seat for the Republicans: Mr. Trump carried the district by 20 percentage points in 2016, and the Democrats did not even field a candidate that year.

But they have one now in Conor Lamb, 33, a former Marine and federal prosecutor. And he is running against a Republican who proudly claims he was “Trump before Trump was Trump.”

Faced with that choice, Ms. Stroud said she was coming home to the Democrats.

Mr. Lamb, a first-time candidate, has raised hopes in his party that it can win back white non-college-educated voters in places like western Pennsylvania — the ones who helped propel Mr. Trump into the White House.

Polls suggest that Mr. Lamb is running close behind his Republican opponent, Rick Saccone, whose struggles have set off alarms in the White House and among national Republicans. 

An upset victory by Mr. Lamb, or even a narrow loss, would send shock waves ahead of the midterm elections in the fall, when Democrats will try to retake control of the House of Representatives.

Update 3/3.

Last night on the local news the reporter connected the dots while telling us Bozo is coming to the region for a rally in the next few days and pointing out that the special election was only 11 days away, and Democrat Conor Lamb has a real shot.

Democrat Conor Lamb is pounding Republican Rick Saccone in fundraising ahead of a special election in Pennsylvania for a vacant U.S. House seat, as President Donald Trump plans a pre-election rally in a contest viewed as a gauge of Republican strength before 2018's midterm elections.

The conservative district, stretching across Pittsburgh's southern suburbs and southwestern Pennsylvania's coal mines, steel plants and gas fields, has long been a Republican stronghold and strongly backed Trump in 2016. 

But polls show a tight race going into the March 13 special election and it has emerged as a national political hotspot as Lamb tries for an upset.

. . . .

Trump has made one visit to the district, and on Friday announced that he will return for a March 10 rally. 

Vice President Mike Pence and Trump's daughter Ivanka have made appearances with Saccone in the district, while former Vice President Joe Biden is heading to the district Tuesday to campaign for Lamb.

Democrats must flip at least 24 GOP-held seats to capture a majority, and a Lamb victory would raise their national hopes considerably.

Trump won the congressional district easily in 2016, downing Democrat Hillary Clinton by almost 20 percentage points. 

The former eight-term incumbent, Tim Murphy, never had a close election, and didn't even have a Democratic challenger in his last two elections.

Murphy, a prominent opponent of abortion rights, resigned in October, after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette obtained text messages in which he suggested a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair get an abortion when they thought she might be pregnant.

One key difference between Saccone and Murphy, however, is that Murphy had labor union support, while Saccone does not.

Saccone, 60, is a four-term state lawmaker with among the state Legislature's most conservative voting records, based on the American Conservative Union ratings. 

He is a retired Air Force counterintelligence officer and college professor who served as a civilian adviser in Iraq.

Lamb, 33, left his post as an assistant U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh to run. 

He was a lawyer in the Marine Corps and comes from a political family, with an uncle who is the elected city controller of Pittsburgh and a grandfather who was the Democratic majority leader in Pennsylvania's state Senate.