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October 15, 2024 - 2:01am
Kamala Harris held a rally tonight in Erie, Pennsylvania. As Jeff Bloodworth describes, Erie is “America’s political no man’s land, as bitter and contested as anywhere in the republic”. But for all the focus on northeastern Pennsylvania in the last election, the western half of the state looks like the hottest part of the battlefield in 2024. If a Republican carries Erie County, he is likely to win the whole commonwealth. Before Trump, the last Republican presidential candidate to win there was Ronald Reagan.
So the visit from Harris is no surprise. At the rally today, the Vice President gave her standard stump speech — long on promises, short on specifics, like most campaign speeches. A rally isn’t about specifics, it’s about impressions. And the impression Harris tried to convey is that she’s just like you, Pennsylvanians.
This worked for Joe Biden in 2020. The state is the President’s birthplace and — to hear him tell it — still his spiritual home. The claim isn’t pure malarkey: Biden might not have lived in Scranton since 1953, but he carried Pennsylvania by 82,166 votes in 2020 where Hillary Clinton had lost the state by 44,292 in the previous cycle.
But it will take more than the ubiquitous camo Harris-Walz ball caps to convince white working-class Pennsylvanians that the Vice President “gets them” in the way Biden seemed to do. It’s not a matter of Right-versus-Left so much as it is Washington-versus-everybody-else, and it’s nothing new to politics. We might call it “insider versus outsider”. Five centuries ago in England, it was “the court versus the country”. By whatever name, the division is the same: those who have power against those who don’t.
The Harris campaign people tried, at first, to make this a “vibes” election, but the Vice President failed to appeal in the small cities and towns of western Pennsylvania. This is a shame, because other Democrats have ridden the populist wave. In fact, one did so just two years ago in the form of Pennsylvania’s idiosyncratic junior senator, John Fetterman.
Fetterman’s appeal to working class Pennsylvanians was in part a product of place. Not the middle-class suburb of his upbringing, but the down-on-its-luck steel town of Braddock, where he made his home as an adult and won his first office: mayor. It was a part-time job, but a full-time platform for the issue that moved him: revitalising an impoverished community. He used his bully pulpit to get national media attention, which helped attract creative types. None of it much changed Braddock’s trajectory, but it brought attention to people who were often ignored.
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SubscribeIt’s a pity (from the POV of the Democrats) that they didn’t admit that Joe Biden was senile a year ago and hold a competitive primary. They might have nominated someone who could win in Scranton.
I wrote an article about this problem for American Thinker a few weeks ago, called “For Democrats, Embracing ‘Democracy’ is a Last Resort.”
https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/for-democrats-embracing-democracy
So much of what the Democratic Party is trying to do differently now – from nominating a fully-awake candidate, to not constantly insulting white people, to respecting the police, to respecting the flag, is obviously necessary and good. But it’s also too little, too late – they waited to do all this until it seemed that their other options were exhausted. And the voters know this – they know that the vibe shift is insincere and unlikely to mean anything in the long run.
And, just as in the uk, nobody believes parties which suddenly have a ‘conversion’ when desperate to get reelected.
If Biden had stated that he would not run again one year ago, the Democrats would have had to hold primaries instead of anointing Harris. Given Harris’ inability to appeal to the electorate, this would have meant that the Democrat power brokers would not have been able to control who their candidate was.
Top comment @Unherd Reader. Were I American I would probably be on the right of the Democratic Party or the left if there is such a beast of the Republican and I probably would not vote in November. It is impossible to work out what the Democrats actually stand for.
Not voting is negligence. It’s well known in my time that one who does not vote: he tacitly votes for the winner. A two-party system is inevitable in the long term, and so it becomes inevitable to choose the lesser of two evils. Please always vote.
The problem for Dem’s holding a competitive primary is who they would elect. The next generation are too progressive to be electable.
Biden won as he could be presented as an old school Democrat. Since her anointment, Kamala, or rather her team, has been renouncing all of her previous positions and avoiding any discussion of policy moving forwards.
You’ve written a good essay, UnHerd Reader. I recommend it to others.
Both Trump and Harris could star in a film where a complete idiot becomes President. Difference is that Trump’s gut assessment about what needs to be done in order to benefit ordinary Americans, both socially and economically, is probably pretty accurate. Harris has no such ability and will parrot anything anyone “clever” tells her to.
Kamela was given everything. She never had to create a persona or paradigm. A nothing