I have the strange privilege and burden of living in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a city not only in a battleground state, but also one of the most battleground areas: Barack Obama won Luzerne County by about 5 points in 2012, then Donald Trump won it by about 20 points in 2016, before Joe Biden narrowed the gap to about 14 points.
It’s no doubt why both Trump and Kamala Harris have been visiting Wilkes-Barre in recent weeks, despite the town’s modest population of about 45,000 — Trump appeared at a local arena (technically in neighboring Wilkes-Barre Township) last month, and Harris appeared at the private downtown Wilkes University last week. It’s also why my wife and I have been receiving so much mail from both camps; a friend who lives across the street (who is not Republican) has been receiving pro-Trump mail literally every day for the past few weeks.
I wasn’t able to go to Trump’s rallies, where he delivered his trademark rambling, incoherent, long-winded speeches and turned at least one supporter against him, but I did go to Harris’ rallies, to gauge the mood of her supporters and to see how her campaign is going.
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As I approached the security checkpoint on Friday afternoon, I was met by a handful of pro-Palestinian protesters with drums and bullhorns. I fully sympathize with their cause, but their choice to insult the rally-goers by shouting that Harris supports genocide, and that they do so by supporting her, did not seem to be interested in garnering support, or even sympathy, from Palestinians. It felt more like vandalism than anything else. (Unfortunately, I was running late so I didn’t interview them.)
The rally attendees I asked about Gaza were also on the Palestinian side and assumed Kamala would agree with them. “This war has to stop everywhere,” said Martha Ellis, a black Wilkes-Barre resident. “It’s pointless.” “I agree with Kamala, we need a two-state solution,” added her friend Beverly Astwood, who is also black.
To be sure, Harris’ support for a ceasefire and a two-state solution suits her. She is not yet president and has little influence over U.S. foreign policy, much less Israeli policy. She can advocate for an obviously right solution without taking responsibility for implementing it. But for now, friends of the people of Gaza can only hope.
Not only is Wilkes-Barre in a battleground state, it’s also in one of the most hotly contested areas.
Abortion was a top priority for many attendees. “My main issue is reproductive rights,” said Kelly Smith, who drove two and a half hours from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with her mother, Kathy. Others praised Harris’ family policies. Biden’s restoration of the child tax credit — for the first time, to the very poor — “is the quintessence of pro-life,” joked Jan Robinson, of nearby Pittston. “We’ve had the biggest reductions in child poverty and hunger we’ve seen in years,” said Dave Harvey, who came from Honesdale wearing a White Dudes for Harris cap. “Kids were getting fed.”
The event was well organized: There was a smooth check-in process, volunteers prepared signs, water bottles, and snacks, and the word “KAMALA” was written in large letters behind and to the side of the podium for camera footage. I mention this last bit in particular because somehow Trump’s events managed to screw up this basic aspect of preparation.
The opening act included local Mayor George Brown, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, and Senator Bob Casey, whose reelection this year is crucial for Democrats to maintain control of the Senate. Shapiro was the best speaker, but his voice was raspy and sounded eerily like a 51-year-old white man doing an imitation of Barack Obama (which, frankly, he is). He quickly struck an easy rapport with the crowd, smoothly improvising lines of applause-drawers, proving Obama’s knack for lifting and releasing the energy of a crowd. His speech also had great themes about freedom, and ended with a hackneyed anecdote about Benjamin Franklin, which was well received.
The penultimate speaker was Mary Grace Vadala, a nurse from Scranton, who summarized one of Harris’s campaign strategies in an interesting way. When Vadala said she was a lifelong Republican, the crowd booed. But when she declared that she now supported Harris, the boos gradually gave way to cheers and applause. At the end of her speech, Vadala received unanimous sympathy from the audience when she said that her mother, another Trump supporter, had died of COVID-19 during the pandemic due to Trump’s egregious failure to respond.
Her speech was a perfect example of how Harris handles her conservative support: After all, neither Badala nor Dick Cheney are making policy demands in exchange for votes. Republicans are welcome to board the anti-Trump bus, as long as they don’t believe they have the right to steer it.
Ultimately, Harris’ speech was a disappointment. It lasted just 20 minutes, and despite hysterical cheers when she entered, she didn’t connect with the audience the way Shapiro did. One problem was that it was a little unfocused. At one point, she recounted her career as a prosecutor, including how she went after Mexican drug traffickers, but it wasn’t all that interesting. Then she proceeded to outline a range of policy proposals that ranged from pretty silly (a $50,000 tax credit for new small businesses) to pretty good (helping cities build housing) to very good (a big expansion of the federal child support program).
The proposal to create better career paths through technical programs and apprenticeships beyond traditional four-year college degrees was especially well-received by the audience in Wilkes-Barre, a city with a history of job and population decline. But overall, the policy section still felt like a laundry list and didn’t evoke much enthusiasm, perhaps because Harris’s policy theme, “opportunity,” is one of the oldest clichés in the book.
The crowd’s energy returned when Harris harshly criticized Trump on abortion, noting that “more than 20 states have banned abortion, many of which make no exceptions for rape or incest.” The next part, in which she promised to restore freedoms that Trump and the conservative movement have restricted, including voting rights, LGBT rights, union rights, and “the freedom to protect ourselves from gun violence,” was well received.
Proposals to create better career paths through technical programs and apprenticeships beyond traditional four-year college degrees were particularly well received.
To be fair to Harris, part of her oratory problems was that she was repeatedly interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters who continued to shout after she responded, “It’s time to get a hostage deal and a ceasefire done. I’ve been working day and night for that.” But she didn’t improvise other responses on the spot, use the classic comedian’s technique for dealing with onlookers, or try to connect the interruptions to her theme. After the initial exchange, she stuck to her prepared remarks, speaking in an indistinct voice undrowned by the screams as security scurried the protesters away. As my colleague Robert Kuttner points out, the debate played out in a similar way, with Harris launching multiple well-prepared and effective attacks on Trump but barely firing back when he got carried away with some outrageous remark.
This seems to be the approach the Harris campaign has decided on. Like the 2016 Clinton campaign, it is conservative with a lowercase “c” in the sense that it has decided on a strategy and stuck to it. Unlike the Clinton campaign, this strategy seems much more likely to work. The Harris campaign has a platform that applies to almost everyone in the Democratic coalition (except the Cheneys), but even putting them together doesn’t make for a very coherent package. And her strongest attack on Trump, that he is responsible for the Dobbs decision and would ban abortion nationwide if she could, was something that the 2016 Clinton couldn’t do. The Harris campaign could afford to let their guard down a bit more on the campaign trail, but that comes with risks. Overall, I can’t find much fault with this strategy.
So that’s what it means when a presidential vote matters in this country, and I have to say I don’t agree with it. It’s convenient for the Prospect and for me that the election focuses on the little town where I happen to live. But it’s a crime against democracy that Wilkes-Barre should be given so much attention. Because of the Electoral College, only about six states matter in a presidential election, and most others can be safely ignored. If the polls are right, Pennsylvania is the closest thing to a grand prize. My vote matters at least 1,000 times more than the votes of the people of Wyoming, California, or Kentucky. Not only is this wrong, it undermines the legitimacy of our entire constitutional structure. It’s dangerous to have perhaps 80 percent of Americans effectively disenfranchised in presidential elections.
And frankly, for those of us who live in places where voting really matters, it’s annoying. Police close multiple roads for hours during every election. Everyone is inundated with political mail, most of which ends up in the trash. Our phones ring nonstop with polls, donation requests, and campaign communications. Our email inboxes are filled with political crap every day. Personally, I want to have the exact same level of voting rights as 240 million other voters. That seems like the bare minimum for America to be able to claim that power comes from the consent of the governed.