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At Ideas We Should Steal Festival 2024

The perfect antidote to post-election blues. 

One day. 30 speakers. 30 ideas for a better Philadelphia. Did you secure your seats yet for the event of the year? It’s just under two weeks away!Here’s a sneak peak at just a few of the solutions our many speakers will address:

  • Actor/activist Debra Winger on ridding our politics of dark money
  • San Francisco YIMBY crusader Sonja Trauss on solving our housing crisis by…building more housing
  • Cleveland’s Devin Cotten on guaranteeing every working person a $50,000 income
  • New York’s Kathryn Wylde on how to mobilize the private sector in service of the common good
  • New Yorker writer Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on the future of politics in cities
  • Garrett Langley on using police car cameras to catch crime suspects — including would-be assassins — in cities
  • Austin’s Piper Stege Nelson on raising $10 million in one day for local nonprofits
  • Charlotte’s Mark Etheridge on strategically keeping rents affordable for all
  • Laurin Leonard on helping returning citizens by rethinking the criminal background check
  • Housing expert Bruce Katz on a roadmap for ensuring every American family has stable housing
  • Former mayors Michael Nutter of Philadelphia and Kasim Reed of Atlanta on how to really run a city

 

Guest Commentary

Even Shapiro Couldn’t Have Saved the PA Democrats

A Pittsburgh historian on how last week’s election results may require a permanent realignment in a state Dems once considered a safe bet

Guest Commentary

Even Shapiro Couldn’t Have Saved the PA Democrats

A Pittsburgh historian on how last week’s election results may require a permanent realignment in a state Dems once considered a safe bet

Elections often tell you less about the winners than the losers. Victory has many fathers, as the saying goes, but defeat shows you exactly what went wrong. Pennsylvania’s 2024 results offer a master class in Democratic collapse: while Donald Trump edged out Kamala Harris by 2 points in the presidential race, Republicans romped to victory in every down-ballot statewide contest. Dave McCormick seems to have pulled out a narrow victory over three-term Senator Bob Casey; Dave Sunday trounced Eugene DePasquale by 5 points in the attorney general race; and incumbent Tim DeFoor beat Malcolm Kenyatta by an even wider margin for auditor general.

The story of how Democrats fumbled PA reveals itself in the campaign’s final weeks. Trump’s operation blanketed working-class neighborhoods with simple, direct messaging: “Trump: Safe Borders / Kamala: Open Borders,” “Trump: Low Inflation / Harris: High Inflation.” His team’s “Kamala is for they / them” ad sparked legal threats but achieved its intended effect — the Democrats are worried about boutique issues rather than kitchen-table concerns like inflation. Harris, meanwhile, released a series of slickly-produced but culturally off-key ads attempting to portray PA working-class life.

Harris’ response proved telling. Her team launched what they considered their October surprise: a series of joint appearances with unpopular former Republican Liz Cheney focused on “saving democracy.” The rallies, held primarily in affluent suburban enclaves, epitomized the campaign’s fundamental misread of the Commonwealth’s political geography. Her campaign’s last notable attempt at working-class authenticity — a commercial featuring a supposed working-class local who seemed like an actor delivering focus-grouped lines about Trump being a “little silver spoon boy” — landed with my working-class relatives about as well as vegan bulgogi tacos at a union hall.

Here in the Keystone State, as elsewhere in the country, the Democrats’ obsession with building the perfect coalition has left them with hardly any coalition at all.

This messaging disconnect infected every Democratic campaign. DePasquale, running for attorney general, leaned heavily on his record as a fiscal watchdog and government reformer — but not as a prosecutor, because he never was one. A compelling pitch in theory, but it withered against career prosecutor Sunday’s relentless focus on fentanyl seizures and declining crime rates in York County. While DePasquale talked process and oversight, Sunday’s team plastered social media with bodycam footage of drug busts and arrests.

Kenyatta’s auditor general campaign highlighted the party’s deeper problems. The 34-year-old progressive rising star, known mainly for viral speeches and an unsuccessful U.S. Senate bid, campaigned on transforming the office into a vehicle for social change — which made sense when one realized he had no experience in the role. Against incumbent DeFoor’s straightforward nonpartisan message about cutting waste and protecting taxpayers, Kenyatta’s ambitious agenda read like a DEI solution in search of a problem.

Even Casey, who built his career on careful moderation and labor support, couldn’t easily find enough votes to secure a fourth term in office. After decades positioning himself as a blue-collar, Blue Dog Democrat, Casey’s recent selective embrace of progressive causes provided perfect fodder for McCormick’s advertising team. While Republican ads hammered Casey’s voting record and association with flip-flopping presidential candidate Harris, his campaign responded with a barrage of increasingly desperate fundraising emails, each one predicting imminent doom. The horrendously off-key messaging — subject lines included “To avoid a catastrophe” and “The worst news yet” — became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Who wants to vote for a loser?

Tuesday’s results suggest the party has lost its ability to communicate effectively with voters outside Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The state office margins — larger than the presidential gap — indicate problems deeper than any individual candidate’s shortcomings.

The results expose the bankruptcy of Democrats’ coalition-building strategy. Harris’s team believed they could unite urban progressives and anti-Trump suburbanites while holding just enough working-class voters through careful messaging and strategic positioning. Instead, they achieved a rare political feat: speaking convincingly to absolutely no one.

Governor Josh Shapiro, floated as Harris’ potential running mate, embodied these contradictions. His “Get Sh*t Done” gubernatorial slogan had promised pragmatic results but delivered historic inaction, just 111 bills signed in 18 months, the fewest of any PA governor in 50 years. For comparison, Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin pushed through 1,654 bills in the same period with a part-time (and divided) legislature.

The implications stretch beyond a single election cycle. Despite its slowly dwindling population, PA’s 19 electoral votes and competitive Senate seats make it essential to any future Democratic coalition. Yet Tuesday’s results suggest the party has lost its ability to communicate effectively with voters outside Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The state office margins — larger than the presidential gap — indicate problems deeper than any individual candidate’s shortcomings.

Much as they have since 2016, Democrats continued to try to thread an impossible needle: mollifying progressives with substance-free identity politics while also wooing suburban Republicans and maintaining their working-class base in the absence of genuine working-class policy proposals. The result was messaging so carefully calibrated it became meaningless, every bit as insubstantial as Kamala Harris’ cameo appearance on SNL.

Unless and until Democrats can craft a message that resonates beyond their urban strongholds — and find experienced, competent candidates capable of delivering said message without sounding like McKinsey consultants explaining steel manufacturing to career steelworkers — Tuesday’s results may augur a permanent realignment in a state they once considered to be winnable. Here in the Keystone State, as elsewhere in the country, the party’s obsession with building the perfect coalition has left them with hardly any coalition at all.


Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work. This piece originally ran in RealClear PA.

The Citizen welcomes guest commentary from community members who represent that it is their own work and their own opinion based on true facts that they know firsthand.

MORE ON THE 2024 ELECTION

Kamala Harris speaking with attendees at the 2019 National Forum on Wages and Working People in Las Vegas. Photo by Gage Skidmore

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