Posted on 09/21/2024 7:11:43 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Pittsburgh’s transformation from Rust Belt phoenix to progressive tech stronghold was supposed to be the Democrats’ long-term ace in the hole for Pennsylvania. Instead, hubris might just hand the Keystone State to the GOP in 2024. As Allegheny County limps toward another election cycle, Republicans are eyeing an opportunity born not of their own strength, but of Democratic complacency and voter disillusionment.
The numbers paint a grim picture. Allegheny County hemorrhaged nearly 7,800 residents last year alone, placing it in the top 10 for population loss nationwide. Even more alarming, the county has shed 50,000 jobs in the past five years – five times more than any other Pennsylvania county. The county’s most impoverished suburbs, home to many recent immigrants and other non-white minorities, are facing another round of white flight. On top of that, the future looks even bleaker for those officials tasked with educating future generations of gainfully-employed citizens: Pittsburgh Public Schools are mulling the closure of 16 schools, a move that would disproportionately impact working-class neighborhoods.
Yet you'd never know any of this listening to the county's Democratic leadership. Take newly-minted County Executive Sara Innamorato. In 2018, she rode a wave of Democratic Socialists of America-fueled primary upsets to unseat center-left incumbent Dom Costa in the state legislature, infamously referring to the working-class voters she grew up with as “racist” along the way. By 2019, she’d ditched the DSA affiliation and made some concessions to organized labor, like many other young Democrats, but kept some of the progressive bona fides. Her narrow victory over well-funded Republican Joe Rockey in the county executive race in 2023 should have been a wake-up call. Instead, it seems to have lulled local Democrats into a false sense of security.
To understand where Allegheny County might be headed, one need only look south to Washington County. Once a union-labor stronghold for the Democrats, Washington County has rapidly become a petri dish for MAGA politics. In 2020, Trump won 61% of the vote there. But it’s not just about presidential politics. MAGA true believers have capitalized on low turnouts to seize control of local government, turning once-staid county commission meetings into wild shouting matches.
The rapid transformation of Washington County offers a playbook for how the GOP might chip away at Democratic dominance in Allegheny County. It hinged on voter apathy – depressing moderate-voter turnout, particularly those who saw Washington County’s Democratic machine as irreparably gridlocked and hopelessly corrupt, while galvanizing the MAGA base in both the primary and general elections.
The Pennsylvania Department of State reports that Democrats now hold their slimmest voter registration advantage in decades. Republicans, meanwhile, have added nearly 40,000 voters since 2020. In Washington County, this wild shift has greatly increased the temperature and radicalized the tone of local politics. Allegheny County isn't there yet, but the currents are detectable.
Consider the recent school closure debacle in Pittsburgh. Nothing saps voter enthusiasm quite like the news that your neighborhood school will shutter – with almost zero possibility for a better outcome, given the demographic catastrophe, further exacerbated by two years of unwelcome COVID closures, now facing the system. For every progressive cheering the city’s blue recycle bins and ban on plastic bags, there's an inflation-wracked working-class family wondering if they have a future in the city their grandparents built.
Or take the job losses. Pittsburgh’s much-vaunted “eds-and-meds” economy was supposed to be recession-proof. Now, even healthcare giant UPMC is tightening its belt. The promised tech boom, meanwhile, has largely benefited a small, highly-educated elite – mostly carpetbaggers happy to inflate property values in the city’s nicer areas and pleased by superficial progressive reforms – while leaving blue-collar workers behind.
Republicans don’t need to win these disaffected voters outright, especially in the city, since the county’s white flight-inflated suburbs have long ago been home to legions of right-leaning voters eager to paint the city in the worst possible light. To prevail, the GOP just needs undecided working-class voters to stay home on Election Day. And given the state of things, who could blame them?
The irony is that Pittsburgh’s current malaise is, in many ways, a product of its own success. The “Pittsburgh Renaissance” of the early 2000s drew all those carpetbagger yuppies and tech companies. Now, the very leaders who built their electoral brands and government pensions during this transformation are shocked to discover that a city can’t run on artisanal coffee shops and co-working spaces alone.
For Republicans, this presents a golden opportunity. While they're unlikely to ever again seize control of Pittsburgh proper, they can use the city’s leftward drift as a boogeyman to drive turnout in the suburbs and rural areas. Every time a Pittsburgh politician has talked about defunding the police, shutting down a polluting smokestack, implementing a Green New Deal, or – as with Innamorato – the racism of white working-class voters, that's fodder for GOP advertisements outside the city limits.
Democrats, for their part, seem aware of the danger – the takeover of Washington County received lots of local and national coverage, after all – but have few levers to pull to release all this built-up pressure. They’re so used to winning Allegheny County that they have no reason to make the concessions and cut the deals needed to win coin-flip elections.
The result, alas, is a political monoculture that stifles debate outside of niche primaries dominated by left-leaning activists and rewards ideological conformity over practical problem-solving. To give but one example, instead of a robust public debate about how to right-size the failing Pittsburgh public schools while ensuring equitable education, we get vague promises and finger-pointing. It's the kind of thorny, politically fraught issue that single-party rule seems especially ill-equipped to handle.
Just judging from the numerous candidate visits and Kamala Harris’ pro-fracking forgiveness tour, it’s clear that all eyes are fixed on the region. For it's here, in the shadow of abandoned mills turned into malls and shuttered churches retrofitted into breweries, that America's political future may well be decided. Can its Democratic elite forge a center-left political identity that bridges the gap between its progressive pretensions and its working-class roots? Can these leaders avoid becoming the weakest link in the Democrats' electoral chain? The anvil of Western Pennsylvania, once used to shape the nation's infrastructure, may yet forge an unexpected political realignment that reshapes the nation itself.
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I think the problem in Pennsylvania is that the Democrats “count” the votes in Philadelphia. They will probably have a 150% turnout this year.
Pittsburgh is heavily Democrat. But unlike in many places, it’s an odd mix.
You’ve got old-time steel mill Democrats who still think Harry Truman is running the Democrat party. They’ll pull the D lever no matter what.
Then you’ve got the Joe Six-Pack guys. They’re registered Democrats because their grandparents were registered Democrats. Those guys know what’s up. They’ll break for Trump.
Then you’ve got the suburban soccer moms. They want to vote for Harris, because that’s the cool thing to do. But Biden’s inflation is killing them. Plus they’re starting to worry about crime.
Bottom line: I think the edge in PA goes to Trump. But only if the count is honest. Otherwise, it’s a coin flip.
One of the voting reforms of the past decade eliminated the D lever or its electronic or paper equivalent.
"Straight party" voting in Pennsylvania has gone the way of the buggy whip.
Unfortunately by State law the Party of the Governor appears first on the ballot.
Our Governor is Josh Shapiro (D).
> “Straight party” voting in Pennsylvania has gone the way of the buggy whip. <
Yes, I was perhaps being overly dramatic there. By “pull the D lever” I meant vote straight D, right down the line.
And as a side note, I’m still holding on to my large collection of buggy whips. Because you never know when something old will become new again.
+1
I think the problem in Pennsylvania is that the Democrats “count” the votes in Philadelphia. They will probably have a 150% turnout this year.>>> Very funny. The democrats count the votes in Delaware county +20,000 extra votes, Montgomery county +25,000, Chester count +20,000. Dauphin county, Centre county, Northampton county, Erie county, Lancaster county and Lackawanna county. And they do not update the state voting system as dictated by law. (auditor generals report)
The "Pittsburgh Renaissance" of the early 2000s was an artificial construct. After 9/11/2001 companies were incentivized to set up backup operations outside of a target ring around Washington DC and a target ring around New York City. Pittsburgh was the nearest city that met their needs for the short term but as fiber optic connectivity and satellite communications spread, companies moved those operations to more viable cities.
Scott Pressler is single handly(well with lots of help) turning PA counties from blue to red. I beleive they have shaved the Dem registration gap by 170,000 (in a state “won” by 20,000. Even Spotlight PA (left leaning) reports that “In those 26 years, Democrats have never had as small an advantage as they do now.”
Active VR is as follows:
🔵3,468,605 Dems
🔴3,297,149 GOP
🟡1,180,106 Others
🔵 - 🔴 = 171,456 Republican Gain
donate to Scott’s site here: https://earlyvoteaction.com/
Democrats haven’t carried Washington County for President since 2004. I recall Irey vs. Murtha 2006 — I didn’t think Irey could win because Senate? or Governor? data showed the Mon Valley was still heavily Democrat.
2016 and 2020 - less than a handful of jurisdictions went for Biden — Washington City, Donora Borough, and one or two others.
The political transformation of Washington County is not quite as fast as the author suggests. The trend to Republican certainly predated Trump.
If Trump does not win convincingly here, they will steal it in Philly.
AI summary:
The document discusses the political and economic challenges facing Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. It highlights the city’s declining population, job losses, and the potential closure of public schools, which disproportionately impact working-class neighborhoods.
The article suggests that the Democratic leadership in the county has been slow to address these issues, instead focusing on progressive policies that may not resonate with the broader electorate. The document also draws parallels to the rapid political shift in neighboring Washington County, where MAGA-aligned Republicans have gained ground by capitalizing on voter apathy and depressing moderate turnout.
The article suggests that Allegheny County could be headed for a similar political realignment, which could have significant implications for the national political landscape.
A FL neighbor summers in Pittsburgh. His email ends in:
@stealcity.com
So the Republicans have radicalized the tone? That’s laughable. 😃
I would add the rise of fracking. Combine the collapse of the UMWA in the wake of mine shutterings in the 1970s and 1980s, and the United Steel Workers almost dissolving in the area as the steel industry shuttered in the same time period, much of the Dems foot soldiers are gone. Fracing brought in the first new money into the area in a generation, and these are overwhelmingly non-union jobs. Despite “Kamala Harris’ pro-fracking forgiveness tour,” Everyone has known that Democrats are hostile to fracing since it became a common practice during the Obama Admin.
Pittsburgh is an aged city with geographical disadvantages that puts a financial burden on any company thinking of operating there, as well as their employees. It's steep hills and multiple waterways put it at a disadvantage compared to other cities.
Pennsylvania is a port city by extension from the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes have a fraction of their prior commerce and have dwindled on the world stage because the St. Lawrence River is too small to handle large container ships. Many rail lines from Pittsburgh to the port at Erie have even been converted into nature walks.
The three rivers which put Pittsburgh on the map as assets have been severe liabilities for century. A mountainous terrain intersected with rivers is not conducive to modern industry which needs flat horizontal space to expand. The Pennsylvania Canal system is a relic that costs exponentially more to maintain each year than it pulls in toll revenue. They knew in 1850 that the canal through mountains was unfeasible.
Pittsburgh was part of a manufacturing network with nearby Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, Cleveland, and Akron, all of which have suffered the same fate. These cities survived on the Great Lakes and on rail lines, both of which have been eclipsed by coastal ports and highways.
The highways in and out of Pittsburgh are an old design laid on top of wagon roads and poorly handle a fraction of what an industrial base needs. Pittsburgh is far enough south of the I-80 corridor that companies can choose better locations. Many are situated in open spaces in Ohio or the open middle of Pennsylvania.
Pittsburgh International Airport isn't even in the city itself. Yes, it's nearby, but I-376 is a miles-long choke point in between the airport and the downtown. Add the cost and effort of that trip to every passenger, and every package delivery truck and the cost far exceeds the same in other cities.
Pittsburgh is very comparable to Portland Oregon which died in 2015 when the port closed because the newer generation of cargo ships couldn't fit through 100 miles of the Columbia River from the Pacific Ocean. Due to the mountainous terrain, widening and deepening the river is not an option.
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