Kerry seemed to have had a massive vote out of Philadelphia however, as compared to Gore. It looks like Gerlach will be spending his last term in Congress. Chester is deteriorating almost as fast of Montgomery it seems.
Wow, they turned out 247% of the dead/felon/senile vote???
Seriously, though, the fact that Bush successfully turned out conservatives in amazing numbers should not de-focus us from the issue of massive vote fraud. Fraud is the backbone of the Democrat party. Target the PEOPLE that operate the fraud.
Gerlach is in trouble because the eastern Pennsylvania redistricting was an enormous mistake. Gerlach must fight uphill against Lower Merion, Norristown, and Reading.
We should have sent Holden and Kanjorski into a single district from Scranton through Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton to Reading.
We should also have pitted Hoeffel and Fattah in a district including Lower Merion, Norristown, Cheltenham, Abington, NW Philly, western North and northern West Philly.
We should then have left Borski mostly alone by stripping out East Oak Lane, Olney, Juniata Park, Oxford Circle, Frankford, and Castor Gardens from his district (Wards 61, 42, 33, 23, 62, and 54), while adding in Bensalem, Levitttown, and Morrisville from Bucks County. This would keep it a marginally competitive district for us by stripping overwhelming Philly Democrat neighborhoods out while ading in Democrat leaning Bucks suburbs, probably more competitive than the curret District 13, which is missing some of the best parts of NE Philly for Republicans which were given to Bucks County. It wouldn't be even in registration, but it would be by voting thanks to conservative Democrats in Tacony and Port Richmond.
Then with Bucks County, we could have added in the Lower Moreland-Hatboro-Lansdale-E. Greenville fringe of Montgomer County to what was then Greenwood's district to make it non-competitive for a Democrat.
Finally, Gerlach would have his district from the remainder of Montgomer County, northern Chester County, and southern Berks County. This would have been another non-competivie district for Democrats.
Really this whole thing was done really dumb, dumb, dumb because we tried to get greedy with Districts 6, 13, and 17 and got bitten in the ass by the shifts in Abington and Lower Merion (no thank you for this Bob Asher!). Even Weldon isn't sitting pretty.
Three districts for Democrats in Philly needed 1,950,000 people. Philly was 1,530,000. Lower Bucks County (Bensalem, Bristol, Morrisville) is another 150,000. Lower Montgomery County (Lower Merion, Abington, Cheltenham, and Norristown) is 190,000. The strip of Delaware County along the river to Chester is 80,000. This would have been perfect, and we'd have a 13-6 state delegation with an outside opportunity in NE Philly and lower Bucks - 3 in Philly, 1 in Pittsburgh, 1 in Johsntown, and 1 in Scranton/Reading.
We will waste a lot of money unseating Holden when we could have let the Democrats do it for us, and we will waste even more defending our position in Philadelphia when we could have made it non-competitive.
As it is, we have 12-7, we can't unseat Holden, we are likely to lose Gerlach, and Fitzpatrick is going to have tough fights for a while.
The only bright side to all of this is we have another chance in 8 years, when we will lose another 2 congressional seats.