Trade will be a key issue as Democrats seek to unify behind nominee Hillary Clinton.

Kirk Atwood, mayor of Kittaning Borough, Pennsylvania, and a Sanders delegate from the state’s 3rd Congressional District, said it’s the “only place” where Republican nominee Donald Trump is right.

Atwood’s community suffered in the early ’90s when a plate glass factory that employed thousands closed. Things only got worse when a ceramics plant followed.

“In Armstrong County, we’ve suffered horrendously because of free trade deals,” said Atwood, adding that it’s a big reason that he backed Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator won Armstrong County and 29 other mostly rural, blue-collar counties in the state.

Clinton has been hampered among voters by her support for the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trump appeals to rural voters by arguing that his business skills will help him negotiate better deals.

Even so, Atwood said he and most Sanders supporters will back Clinton.

“There is no viable alternative,” he said.

Reintroducing Clinton

Polls out this week show that Republican Donald Trump would win if the election took place now.

But that doesn’t have long-time political observers too worked up, said Clinton supporter Chris Munley.

Munley was at the 1988 Democratic National Convention when Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis won the party’s nomination. Dukakis got a substantial post-convention bump in the polls, then went on to lose the election by wide margin to George H. W. Bush.

If Trump is essentially even with Clinton after last week’s Republican convention, Munley said, “he’s not doing so well.”

The Republican will struggle to broaden his appeal, said Munley, a delegate from Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District.

“He’s just a danger to humanity. I never thought I would say that about a presidential candidate,” he said.

On the other hand, Munley said former President Bill Clinton did a masterful job “reintroducing his wife to the American public” in a speech to the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night.

Munley said he demonstrated that Hillary Clinton is a “decent person” by focusing on her decades of work fighting for others.

What she did during the 1970s matters especially, he added.

“You don’t do that because it’s going to score political points in 40 years,” he said.

John Finnerty covers the Pennsylvania Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at jfinnerty@cnhi.com or @cnhipa on Twitter.