"The next political ad I see, I swear I’m gonna throw my phone through the TV," Gary told me, as he perused the menu at an Allentown, Pa., restaurant, and anyone who lives here knows exactly what he is talking about.
Living in a swing state is a privilege, but with privilege comes responsibility, as they say, and in this case also a tsunami of TV and radio ads, signs and billboards everywhere, streets closed by motorcades, and yes, even annoying columnists from national outlets poking a pen at you and your thoughts.
It's exhausting. In fact, the owner of the restaurant, a fun place called Blended, was somewhere between laughing and crying as he got a notification that former President Donald Trump would be appearing Tuesday, October 29, at the PPL Center just down the street.
KEY BATTLEGROUND STATE VOTER REGISTRATION DATA SHOWS INFLUENTIAL SHIFTS FAVORING GOP
"Oh, it just shuts everything down," Eric told me. But resigned to the reality of running a business in the epicenter of presidential politics, he just went on with his evening.
He is, in a way, a symbol of this town made famous by Billy Joel's 1980s ballad about its economic decline.
Eight years ago, Eric was living on the streets, addicted to crystal meth, just blocks away, and yet metaphorical miles and miles from the successful small businessman he has become.
So too, Allentown is no longer the grim and grimy town where they’d taken all the coal from the ground. In its stead lies a clean, shiny city in which the old stone buildings, monuments of industrial power, stand proud and beautiful.
This prosperity has been general in my travels around Pennsylvania, and in this critical swing state it is not economic anxiety, but bigger-picture issues that drive most of the voters I talk to.
"I just hope whoever wins puts the country before themselves," Eric said, as Henry, Matt, and Zeke, all in their 20s, nodded along. They all plan to vote, but nobody seemed eager to discuss the race, in part because nobody really wants to talk about Hitler and who is or isn’t the modern manifestation of him.
Journalist Mark Halperin also just found this attitude in a Keystone State focus group, with one guy on his panel saying he was leaning toward Trump because "the Democrats and the left just keep going straight to Hitler all of the time with everything," adding "It’s so exhausting … it's so hyperbolic that it makes it impossible to have good discussions. And I think it ruins the discourse."
He should have come on over to Blended, he would have fit right in.
The exhaustion that Halperin and I are both hearing on the ground in Pennsylvania produces a unique late-game challenge for both Harris and Trump’s campaigns, and overcoming it requires excitement about the candidate, a commodity Trump is swimming in that Harris is sorely lacking.
Instead of excitement, Vice President Kamala Harris is pushing anger and fear, ringing the same tired and well-worn alarm bell about Trump’s alleged fascism that at this point produces little more than a headache for voters.
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If you had told President Joe Biden’s campaign six months ago that the race in Pennsylvania would not be about high prices and economic woes, but rather about who will be a better steward for the country, especially at a time of global peril, they would have done back flips as Biden ran around them in circles.
But against Harris, Trump is winning the battle over who is a stronger, better and more authentic leader.
Kenny moved to Allentown from Brooklyn, New York, about six years ago. When I asked why, he said, "You know, life brought me here."
We reminisced a bit about Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst, how we miss Gotham. He is a Democrat and wants Harris to win, but when I asked him if he thought she would, he twisted up his face a bit, slightly sighed and said, "I don’t know man, it don’t look good."
Here on the ground in Pennsylvania I concur. It does not look good for her, and if Harris can't come up with a message that doesn’t involve swastikas and concentration camps, it isn’t going to get better for her anytime soon.
And soon is now, it’s all the time she has.
