Pennsylvania is slipping out of Trump’s reach Vibes, not policy, will decide the race

David Urban is worried — and he should be. The native Pennsylvanian knows the Keystone State. As a senior advisor to Donald Trump in 2016, he helped deliver Pennsylvania and, thus, the White House to his boss. But the veteran politico, who is now a senior strategist with the BGR Group, can smell the odour of a losing campaign.

Urban senses that Pennsylvania, the nation’s key tipping point state, is slipping away. He fumed to me: “Trump had the big positions, the vibes, and the themes. But with Harris there are no themes except: we are not Trump and abortion.”

Flipping the script, it is Harris who now leads Trump in Pennsylvania and a series of key battleground states. But some knew this before they saw the polls. Sam Talarico, chairman of the Erie County Democratic Party has the pulse of the swing county of the nation’s swingiest state. With Biden as the nominee, Talarico witnessed a trickle of volunteers. Once Harris topped the ticket, a flood commenced. Talarico told me: “People are calling and asking, ‘what can I do?’ Canvassing and phone banking are way up. And interest is way up. There was a lot of energy that was just released once the change [Biden to Harris] was made. It is exponentially different.” And as Erie goes, so goes Pennsylvania — and with it the White House.

With money and energy, Talarico now has eight full-time staffers and dozens of volunteers. And Erie is merely a microcosm of the fundamental vibe shift in American politics. I spoke with Joe Morris, an Erie-based political science professor, who sees in the polling what Talarico senses on the ground. He told me: “Harris has completely changed the dynamics of the race. At this time, the Trump campaign is at a loss for how to manage this.” Even more ominous for the Republican is Morris’s interpretation of the political mood: “To beat a movement, you need a movement. Harris is on the threshold of being a leader of a movement, like Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2016.”

Urban’s political Spidey senses are tingling. A Harris movement, like Obama in 2008, would mean her candidacy has come to represent “change” to voters in what is most certainly a “change” election. Harris would then float above the political flotsam. This would spell political doom for Trump whose only chance at victory is an ugly slugfest in the mire. The race is still winnable for Trump. But the Harris vibe, immense crowds, record fundraising, and grassroots energy, has distracted the boss. And a distracted, sullen Trump is his own worst enemy. Urban griped: “Trump is one of the most gifted politicians, but he is also one of the most flawed. He is incredible at connecting with crowds, but he is also incredibly ill-disciplined.”

In the weeks since Biden left the race, Trump’s utter lack of self-restraint has been on full display. His rants about the Vice President’s racial identity and vulgar social media posts have merely fuelled the Harris momentum — and vibe shift. For Urban, Trump’s self-immolation is especially galling. He knows that Harris’s liberal record makes her politically vulnerable with Erie County and Western Pennsylvania’s normie voters. He advised, “All the Trump campaign has to do is focus on the issue. If we make this about the issues, Republicans win.”

Urban is surely onto something. In Harris’s truncated 2020 presidential campaign, she delighted the progressive fringe with gun buy-backs, fracking bans, and the Green New Deal. These positions, to Urban, loom as Harris’s political Kryptonite in Western Pennsylvania. A smart pol, the Vice President has pivoted to the centre. Urban said of this: “Those are some mental gymnastics that Olga Korbut would be proud of.” But he knows that Harris’s liberal centrism is good politics. That’s why he growled: “If we listen to her [now], she sounds like a fuckin’ Republican.”

And that’s important — because while policy obviously matters, “vibes” reign supreme. Years ago, Peter Hart, the veritable Yoda of Democratic pollsters, explained why George W. Bush defeated Democrats whom voters deemed more intelligent and knowledgeable: “voters value ‘I Like’ over IQ”. If vibes didn’t precede ideology, Hillary Clinton would be finishing her second term.

It is losing campaigns and candidates who cry “stick to the issues”. Winning presidential campaigns capture the vibe by the political alchemy of personality, first, and policy, later. Like a first date, a voter must get “the feels” before they entertain the wonk of inflation reduction or stories about your awkward brother.

Urban’s “stick to the issues” steals a page from a long cast of liberal losers. In the Fifties, liberals noodled over the riddle of sustaining party loyalty in an era where old fidelities had faded. Southerners were no longer automatically voting Democrat. Northern white ethnics increasingly ignored political bosses. The liberal egghead answer was “programmatic liberalism”. In this equation, voters would decipher the meaning of issues to their own lives and vote accordingly. For the Democrats, voters were like Star Trek’s Spock or AI.

Since the Sixties, a bevy of well-intentioned liberals placed policy at the forefront of their campaigns. Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes, and Trump were the result. Liberals lose because they underestimate humanity’s frailties and foibles. Conservatives win because they don’t.

The latest political science affirms this reality. Voter behaviour is dictated by emotions just as much as rational choice. Even those of us with fancy degrees are influenced by “vibe” and “tribe” more than we admit. Obama’s healthcare-for-all and Iraq War posture mattered. But he, more than Sarah Palin or Chris Dodd, dressed, talked, and lived like your coolest professor from graduate school. Plus, Obama signalled a definitive vibe turn from the Clinton-Bush era. For upwardly mobile professionals, voting Obama was tribe and vibe first, policy came second.

That’s why David Urban is partly right but mostly wrong. Kamala Harris’s 2019 policy positions should cause West Pennsylvania normies to wince. This is why Urban is begging Trump to frame the race as a choice between policy visions. But he admitted to me: “[Trump] is terrible at talking about his policy accomplishments. When he is off-prompter he is much more fired-up about the hand-to-hand political combat.”

Trump wants the political combat because he knows, more than anyone, that vibes are key. In 2016, he tapped into the nation’s sour mood and launched a movement. He, like Professor Morris, sees a nascent counter movement on the Left. Trump understands what Urban knows is true but hopes is not. The vibe, like the Dude in The Big Lebowski, always “abides”.

But to boost the political feels you need campaign nuts and bolts. In 2016, the Clinton campaign ignored Erie County and Western Pennsylvania, while, in 2020, Covid prevented much face-to-face canvassing. So, for 2024, Talarico is touting a “coordinated campaign” that combines his staff with a recently opened Harris office, one of 14 across Pennsylvania. Terron Sims, who helps lead the Democratic National Committee’s vote mobilisation efforts, boasted to me: “When it comes to grassroots get-out-the-vote campaigns, no one beats the Democrats. We have professionals and super volunteers who have been doing this for decades.”

And the issue for Trump is, while he understands the value of vibes, he doesn’t see that they mean less without political organisation. A local Democratic strategist admitted that the GOP’s local dysfunction fuelled Biden’s 2020 win in Erie County. Four years later, the Erie County Republicans might have new leadership, but sources report “major beef” between Trump forces and area Republicans. Local Republicans pay rent to the Trump campaign for a bit of space at the local headquarters, an arrangement that a Democratic official described as “odd”. The Harris campaign, who have the opposite agreement with local Democrats, seem to have it the right way round.

Conflict is to Trump what the sun is to organic life. But as in 2020, dysfunction could prove decisive in a close race. Urban pointed to Trump’s disregard for mail-in early voting as greatly hurting the Republicans. In the 2022 US Senate race between Mehmet Oz and John Fetterman, Pennsylvania Democrats banked 1.5 million early votes. The Democrats had won before election day. Urban, obviously frustrated with how “Trump derides early voting”, advised that “Republicans need to play by the rules in the commonwealth. We need to ensure that the voters of colour who are for us are registered.”

By mid-October, millions of Pennsylvanians will have cast their ballots. Trump has weeks to stunt the Harris vibe. In Erie and Pennsylvania, it is vibe and organisation, not the issues, that will decide this race. For now, both decisively point to Harris.

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Jeff Bloodworth is a writer and professor of American political history at Gannon University

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