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by
Ben Bradlee
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October 26 - October 30, 2018
I decided to visit Luzerne and talk to a range of Trump voters about the choices they made. I wanted to see if the county might be a prism through which to explore the underlying reasons for one of the most shocking election results in political history.
Did the author also look at voters who stayed away? Was voter suppression a factor here?
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Kim Parker
To be sure, there was no scientific basis for choosing those I decided to feature. Mostly it was my subjective judgment about the degree to which they served as Trump voter exemplars, as well as the strength of their stories and how they told them.
Always nice to know decisions were based entirely on feelz.
reading is my hustle and 1 other person liked this
They have a contempt for Washington and the powers that be,
Equal contempt for the people who are working to preserve Social Security and Medicare, and the people who are trying to take those programs away? Apparently that contempt is not equally applied across the "powers that be."
And by whom did they feel forgotten? By the government and the two major political parties.
If that were the case, they would have voted for a third party or stayed home. Where is the honesty check here?
Jonathan Huffman and 2 other people liked this
Philadelphia and New York City are each about a two-hour drive away.
Only in your opium-fueled pipe dreams. Getting to NYC, defined as Manhattan, is a three hour drive. I know, having done it dozens of times. And that is on a good day, with decent weather, no construction on Route 80, and no accidents.
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Though a mix of urban and rural, Luzerne is covered by parts of the Appalachian mountain range and is on the whole more rural in character. While there are pockets of well-heeled suburbia, Luzerne is less Northeast Corridor than Appalachia.
Did Bradlee really spend weeks in Luzerne? Really? Geographically, there may be <i>some</i> merit to that characterization, but none at all in terms of the overall population, which is concentrated in small cities and suburbs. Many of the numerous cities, townships, and boroughs in Luzerne are separated more by street signage than geography, and would be considered neighborhoods in a larger entity, were it possible to join them together politically. According to Wikipedia, the Metropolitan Statistical Area that includes Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton had a population of over 555,000 as of 2017, (a pretty nifty trick, given that Luzerne, according to the 2010 census, had a total population of about 321,000, conjuring more an image of rust-belt cities, however struggling, than the image of rural decline the author suggests.
Yudichak says. “People felt left behind and felt the deck was stacked against them. When Trump used the word ‘rigged,’ that resonated.”
So voted for the party that was going to steal wheir wallet after they had been hit by a car and were lying in the street? There is something else going on here.
Tony Brooks, the lone Republican on the Wilkes-Barre city council and a Luzerne County historian, thinks another way to look at the 2016 campaign is as a struggle between “the givers and the takers.” “And the givers are fed up with the takers,” Brooks says. “Every single block in Wilkes-Barre will have a row of houses that are immaculate—generally retired, white working class, and union. Cut grass and a tomato garden in the back. But sadly, within the last twenty years, we’ve seen a lot of what I call economic refugees from New York and New Jersey who have moved in under Section 8 housing.
I wonder if Tony includes among the takers the one-percent whose taxes keep getting cut and the corporations which often pay little or no taxes at all. Only certain sorts of "takers" seem to qualify for scorn here. Any cognizance of Trump stiffing his employees and contractors, his investors? If Trump is not the king of all takers, who is?
Kristy liked this
As for Trump’s phrase “the forgotten people”—the people he said he was fighting for—it echoed Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 speech about “the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid” and also contained a dash of Huey Long from the same era.
The difference being that FDR actually was trying to help working class people, while Trump was trying to exploit them with his blatant lies.
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Though parents naturally want the best for their children, when the younger generation does move away in search of better opportunity, there can be a lingering sense of resentment on the part of friends and family left behind in Luzerne. “It’s a sense of, ‘Who does he think he is?’” says Charles McElwee, the county historian, who is an economic development specialist for the nonprofit Community Area New Development Organization in Hazleton.
The resentment of people who have moved out in order to move up is real, and palpable.
Suzanne and 2 other people liked this
The county voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976, but along with the rest of the nation, it tired of him by 1980 and elected Ronald Reagan. Thus began a decade of Republican presidential dominance in the county as thousands of Reagan Democrats crossed over to reelect Reagan in 1984, and to vote for George H. W. Bush in 1988, in hopes that the GOP could reverse the pattern of industrial decline and urban decay that had taken hold in the county.
Yeah, race-baiting had no influence on this whatsoever, right?
Kristy liked this
Sue Henry, the leading radio talk show host in the county, on WILK in Wilkes-Barre until she resigned early this year, says that Trump caught on from the start.
Bradlee fails to mention that Sue Henry was a right-wing talk-show host who railed about the usual sort of things, including one memorable tirade on what a waste of public money it was to be spending resources on mile markers on highways. She resigned to run for the state assembly, the 121st district. Someone else actually won the Republican primary, but the GOP powers that be paid no mind to that, installing Henry into the race due to the greater name recognition she had garnered from her radio career. In a recent debate with her Democratic rival, incumbent Eddie Day Pashinski, she repeatedly claimed not to know enough about this or that policy issue, and needed to learn more before committing to a position.
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Joe Dougherty, who manages an automotive paint store in Wilkes-Barre and calls himself a member of the middle class, thinks that “Washington has turned its back on people like me. The Democrats, especially, have been moving away from us. More specifically, eight years of promises under Obama did not get us anywhere.
Gee, ya think maybe having a Republican controlled legislature that blocked almost everything Obama wanted to do might just have a wee bit to do with that?
Jason Hojnacki and 3 other people liked this
I thought we needed a drastic change. Let’s give Trump a chance to shake things up and see what happens.”
How's that workin' out for ya?
Cheryl and 3 other people liked this
Aaron Kaufer, a Republican state representative for Luzerne County, thought the election came down to hard pocketbook issues, along with a tinge of resentment against welfare recipients. “It was about saving enough money to buy your own beer,” Kaufer says. “People here are sick of having the government buy beer for others.”
Not against corporate welfare, though. The translation is pretty clear, though. The resentment is against the non-white people who they perceive as receiving benefits that should be reserved for them.
Kristy liked this
There were plenty of women in Luzerne who voted for Trump, unfazed by his history of denigrating comments about women or by the numerous charges of sexual harassment or assault made against him during the campaign, all of which he denied.
I think that's called being a willfully blind.
Kristy liked this
Phillips mentioned something else that motivated her to vote for Trump: her resentment of elites who she thought were trying to dictate how she and others in the heartland should think. “People were tired of the elites like Obama ridiculing the country and places like Luzerne County.”
Really? So you vote for a billionaire? Obama never ridiculed the country. This is a Fox news fabrication. People can be so unquestioning.
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People in Luzerne are cynical about corruption and think it’s ingrained in the local culture, from the coal mining bosses of yesteryear to the Mafia, which established bases in Pittston and Hazleton from the 1950s into the 1990s. Congressman Dan Flood had to resign in disgrace in 1980 after being censured for bribery, while another area congressman, Joe McDade, was indicted in 1992, though he was acquitted. And in 2008, the so-called Kids for Cash scandal—in which two Luzerne judges and two businessmen were convicted of a kickback scheme to funnel arrested juveniles to a for-profit detention
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There is a very real sense here that corruption runs deep and strong. An attempt to address this a few years back was a total reorganization of the government structure in the city of Wilkes Barre. But it will be a long time before the general attitude that all politicians are corrupt can be changed.
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“Crime is a big problem in this area, and we’ve seen a drastic increase in gang activity,” says Stefanie Salavantis, the district attorney of Luzerne County. “In Wilkes-Barre, two factions of the Bloods shoot at each other in broad daylight right in front of police officers. I took office in 2012, when there were about five homicides a year in the county. In 2013, there were twenty-three. I’d say about 85 percent of those were related to drug abuse or addiction. We have people from New York and Philadelphia moving in here and transporting product.”
There is probably some truth to this, but it would be quite useful to see how crime rates in diverse areas correspond to the overall rise in opiod-related miseries. Is the increase in Luzerne the result of immigration-borne drug-trafficking, or representative of a wider problem? Maybe compare it to crime rate changes in areas less impacted by immigration?
Kristy liked this
The county coroner, William Lisman, reported a record 154 fatal drug overdoses in 2017, primarily from heroin laced with fentanyl, which is cheaper to produce than heroin, and stronger. In a county of 320,000 people, that death rate is four times higher than New York City’s.
Care to offer any analysis at all as to why this might be happening? Is there anything different about the starting-point health status of NYC vs Luzerne overdosers? How about the availability of emergency personnel and services? How about emergency response times? Anything?
Kristy liked this
Twenty years ago, Luzerne had fewer than twenty overdoses annually. In 2013 and 2014, there were sixty-seven overdoses, and in 2015, ninety-five—then a jump to 141 in 2016 and 154 in 2017.
How does this compare to other counties in the state? Any notable differences? Are we talking about a local problem here or a national epidemic?
Khristina Chess and 3 other people liked this
“Ten years after Hazleton, Trump said, ‘We’re going to build a wall,’ and that hit the nail on the head,” Barletta says. “They called him racist, and it reminded me of what they had called me ten years ago. I didn’t know what I did wrong. I just said ‘Illegal is illegal.’ I didn’t understand why people were objecting. “Now here was a candidate who was openly talking about the problem, and I didn’t remember a president talking that way. He was saying what I was thinking, and what others were thinking. He talked about securing the borders and defending the laws, and I was impressed that he
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Here is a link to a site that looks at Barletta's history on immigration policy
https://americasvoice.org/blog/lou-barletta/
He was pretty successful in appealing to white fear of Hispanic newcomers in Hazleton. It was successful enough for him in his home county of Luzerne, where he beat Casey by eight points, much lower than hoped or expected. Casey, a moderate Dem, won the state-wide contest by thirteen points.
Kristy liked this
A study by Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy found that media coverage of Trump during the general election campaign—from the second week of August 2016 to the day before Election Day—was more negative than Clinton’s coverage. The Trump coverage was judged 77 percent negative to 23 percent positive. But over the course of the entire two-year campaign, it was Clinton who received the most negative coverage. The study found that overall, 62 percent of her press was considered negative and 38 percent positive, while Trump’s was 56 percent negative
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This is the first instance in the book of Bradlee doing any reality testing of his subjects' opinions. page 116 in the hardcover. Geez, took long enough, didn't it?
Kristy liked this
Many of the newer immigrants are renters not paying property taxes, thus not helping fund the school costs. It’s all being shouldered on property owners, many of whom don’t even have kids in school anymore. The renter-versus-homeowner topic related to property taxes is an important one in understanding what’s happening, certainly in Hazleton.”
Wait, doesn’t the owner, who is profiting from the renters, pay property taxes? And educating children is the job of the community, not just the parents of public school children. Is she going to object next to people under 65 paying social security taxes? She already objects to the cap being raised on the amount of income subjected to the tax, which is the simplest way to make the system more secure. So she wants income over $128K a year to continue to be exempt from Social Security taxes. Wait, doesn’t that mean that the more you earn, the lower your effective SS tax rate is. Who benefits from that?
Kristy liked this
“I feel we pulled out of our commitments too early under Obama. That was a painful day when I saw that last tank leave Iraq. We had Al Qaeda and the insurgent groups in Iraq—we had them beaten. But instead, we created fertile ground for ISIS to regroup.
Did this vet not know that the treaty mandating US withdrawal from Iraq was negotiated and signed by the Bush administration? Did he also not know that one of the major reasons for the rise of ISIS was the abandonment of Iraqi military personnel under that same president? Out of work, and well-armed, ex-soldiers became a major source of anti-government terrorism, which evolved into ISIS. Yet blames Obama. Typical.
Kristy liked this
Steve began dabbling in racist groups while in high school. He felt frustrated that he couldn’t drive safely through neighboring Coatesville, which is largely black, at night. That, along with changing demographics and rising crime, drove him to the Klan.
So I guess he had no choice about becoming a Klansman?
Kristy liked this
He was also a conservative Republican who believed there should be little or no separation between church and state: “The Bible commands that ‘everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities,’” he says, quoting from Romans 13:1. “So it stands to reason that we need to ask: To what type of government do we want to submit?” Ray wanted to “reverse the trend of ungodliness that has taken over in our society and government.”
I guess that part of the constitution mandating separation of church and state is not worth keeping. Tell me again how people who proclaim themselves as conservative, as in wanting to conserve things of traditional value, seem so eager to get rid of values the nation has held dear since its founding. I think any reasoning person would consider that radicalism.
Kristy liked this
Jess was hardly alone in continuing to believe the canard that Obama was a Muslim.
Page 195 of the hardcover and this is only the third time, that I noticed, that the author has offered a counter to the litany of uninformed beliefs his subjects express. Taking a break from stenography?
She loved to read and excelled academically, yet she felt “a deeply anti-intellectual vibe,” and that it was never cool to do well in school. She never thought she was someone who could be dated or thought of as attractive. She actually made up a fake name—Lauren—in an attempt to be more accepted, but never used it. “My friend said, ‘Alia, no one is going to start calling you Lauren!’” Off at Barnard, Habib felt liberated. “I was surprised that people think I’m pretty! It was shocking to me. Or that people like that I’m smart. I never looked back.” She thinks many whites in Luzerne County view
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The "she" is Alia Habib, 40, a Wilkes Barre native, who suffered from local racism and anti-intellectualism. This passage very well sums up much of the take on things by local whites.
Kristy liked this
Trump’s base continues to love him anyway, mostly because, on his Twitter feed and at his ongoing campaign rallies, he has fed them a steady diet of entertaining, rhetorical red meat. They love his feistiness, how he never apologizes, how he stands up for their values, and how he sticks it to his enemies every day.
Really? Like the value of hard work? honesty? Decency? His supporters may follow him mindlessly, but the book would be more honest if there were some indication that this is what they feel and not something with any basis in reality. The primary values he expressed for his followers were a hatred of the other and a feeling of victimization. In those cases, mission accomplished.
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