Erie Captures the Democrats’ Challenges
June gleefully shouted to anyone within earshot, “We are going to make history tonight!” On election night, the Kamala Harris staffer was beyond jubilant. On route to an election party, she howled what had become a victory mantra to every passerby “We are going to make history tonight!” Speaking to me on the condition of anonymity, “June” confided “the vibes were very good. We were hitting and surpassing our expected turnout.” She stopped short, sighed and recalled, “Around 9:30 it turned. It was very sudden. We were all blindsided.”
And quite a blindsided turn it was. On November 5, Donald Trump did more than steal the Democrat’s lunch money – he forced liberals to watch him eat their meal. The obvious numbers, 312 Electoral Votes and 49.9% of the popular vote, obscure the actual onslaught. Harris won the college-educated by 14 points and those earning $100,000 or more. That left Trump with the hoi polloi, or as mathematicians call it “the majority.” And this cuts to, what is a favored term of today’s left, the party’s very “identity.” Since Thomas Jefferson, voters had identified Democrats as the “party of the working class” and Republicans (and their Federalist forebearers) as the advocates of elites. Trump has now flipped that script.
Kamala Harris had Oprah, Beyoncé, Luke Skywalker, and $2.3 million in campaign cash from Harvard faculty – and that’s exactly why she lost. One Democrat who voted Trump said that the celebrity-fest rallies told him Democrats were only for “the phony elite and actors.”
Lindsey Scott understands how Democrats have become identified with elites. The chair of Western Pennsylvania’s Crawford County Democratic Party, Scott sees that her party nominates “front of the classroom kids with front of the classroom personalities.” Whenever “those” kids raise their hands, voters groan “there they go again.” In this 21st century Breakfast Club John Bender (Trump) steamrolled Claire Standish (Harris). The back of the classroom, anti-establishment prevailed over the preps and the plastics.
Kristy Gnibus, vice-chair of the Erie County Democratic Party, sees a different non-John Hughes dynamic. She told me, “There is no way a person could look at Trump and think he’s good for America.” But she admits “People are sick of hearing the promises of the Democratic Party.” Instead of promises, she thinks voters want “candidates who come across as genuine.” Ultimately, she admitted of a Harris campaign that made its framing of Trump as a proto fascist its closing argument: “You aren’t going to shame them [voters] to vote differently.”
Trump won the electricians, metal benders, and others without a college degree, 63-35%. This helped him become the first-ever Republican presidential candidate to win a majority of low-income voters. He also took the Republican’s highest percentage of Asian voters since 2004, the biggest share of the black vote since 1976, and the party’s second-highest portion of Hispanics ever. Trump’s GOP is a multi-racial working-class coalition.
In the years before Trump, Jim Wertz would now be a state senator-elect. Wertz ran for district 49, which encompasses most of Pennsylvania’s Erie County, where Democrats enjoy a 44-25% registration advantage. Wertz and his team door-knocked more than 40,000 homes and made 584,609 phone calls, texts, and in-person contacts. A Democratic official said of Wertz, “Jim was everywhere, getting his hands dirty.” The Republican incumbent, Dan Laughlin, is a skilled pol. By sporting a Carhartt utility jacket and a moderate, deal-maker profile, he wins Democratic votes. But in 2024, he, like Trump, barely mounted much of an organized campaign. None of it mattered. Laughlin swept to a relatively easy 10,000 vote victory.
June correctly observed “we [Democrats] absolutely outworked the Republicans.” She told me, “I think everything went right in Erie. Without such efforts, we would have lost by much, much more.” In Erie, Harris staffers knocked on 150,000 doors for their campaign alone. Meanwhile, Erie Republicans warred with one another. The Erie County Republican chair, Tom Eddy, scuffled with local, insurgent activists. But the GOP dysfunction went deeper still. Canvassers were witnessed moving house-to-house never knocking on doors and reporting false voter encounters.
Such campaign dynamics offer a window into America’s deeper issue. June explained to me “There is a real national problem. It is our inability to speak to each other when we disagree.” Even though Democrats tried to talk to voters, they still lost. June now understands what the Harris campaign never fully grasped. She explained, “I don’t understand Trump voters. [But] I don’t have to understand them. I can have people around me who have different views. I can show them my humanity.” She believes Democrats need to, “Knock on doors outside of election season. Host people for a party. Be their friend. It requires a human connection. You breakthrough not by one door-knock. It takes years. It takes a conversation.”
Stopping these conversations is what June terms, “purity culture.” Human connection requires meeting people where they are. June shared a viral TikTok post as evidence of political “purity culture.” In the post, an earnest young woman angrily implores, “Cooking my man dinner bc he voted blue ok. But does he still speak to his racist dad? Does he still go on golf trips with his homophobic Joe Rogan listening buddies? Does he still frequent conservative sports bars? Did he canvass, volunteer, campaign, text, write, donate, or even post?” Reducing all life to bare-knuckled partisan wrangling is as exhausting as it is counterproductive and almost Soviet in its pursuit of political perfectionism. Just as vital, purity culture means Democrats and Republicans never engage beyond their bubble. An eye for an eye, as Martin Luther King reminds us, leaves everyone blind.
June’s election night proclamation was correct – but not in the way she intended. “We make history” not by electing presidents but by repairing the human connections that make democracy possible.
