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I did once crack wise that "the term 'Pennsyltucky' is an insult to Kentucky."
FWIW, the exact James Carville statement was "From Paoli to Penn Hills it's all Alabama in between." (Paoli is the historic western end of Philadelphia's "Main Line" suburbs, and Penn Hills is a suburb on Pittsburgh's eastern border. His choice of another community in Allegheny County proved prescient, because the counties surrounding Allegheny, once reliably Democratic, went red in 2016 and haven't returned to the Democratic fold; Allegheny itself remains Democratic.)
I never heard your more elaborate version of the Carville quote, though I'm not denying he said it at one point (the simpler version is the one in the largest public circulation, be it simplified over time).
The point being, at least from my perspective, is more from a voting perspective than viewing people as unsophisticated 'hicks.'. The fact is, Donald Trump's largest millionaire/billionaire donors, practically to a person, live in large metropolitan 'Blue' areas. It's also not to say that all cities in red-voting regions are worthless. We love Lancaster, as well (esp its easy reach from Philly by train). Harrisburg city, itself, (also train-able) has a core area that echoes Society Hill (Philadelphia). I despise Texas' hardcore, regressive Red politics, but adore Austin, one of the more progressive (now) large cities in America - yes, heavily influenced by huge UT. It's also true that historically many of America's most forward-thinking, dare I say 'progressive' politicians and journalists/thought leaders are Lone Star-ers, from LBJ, himself, to Ann Richards, Jim Hightower, Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, the Castro brothers, Beto O'Rourke, Roland Martin, Bill Moyers, and many, many others. Houston, too, is solid Blue.
But while Lancaster is a worthy gem of town -- and former home of "Radical Republican" great, Thaddeus Stephens and served as a hotbed of Civil War abolitionism, these between-Philly and Pittsburgh regions can't overcome the SPLC's long-standing designation of Pennsylvania hosting more hate groups than any state. And the fact that, despite metro Philly's and Pittsburgh's overwhelming Blue-tilted population dominance, PA still went for Trump in 2016, and is still considered a swing state for this November election, ought to tell you something.
I never heard your more elaborate version of the Carville quote, though I'm not denying he said it at one point (the simpler version is the one in the largest public circulation, be it simplified over time).
The point being, at least from my perspective, is more from a voting perspective than viewing people as unsophisticated 'hicks.'. The fact is, Donald Trump's largest millionaire/billionaire donors, practically to a person, live in large metropolitan 'Blue' areas. It's also not to say that all cities in red-voting regions are worthless. We love Lancaster, as well (esp its easy reach from Philly by train). Harrisburg city, itself, (also train-able) has a core area that echoes Society Hill (Philadelphia). I despise Texas' hardcore, regressive Red politics, but adore Austin, one of the more progressive (now) large cities in America - yes, heavily influenced by huge UT. It's also true that historically many of America's most forward-thinking, dare I say 'progressive' politicians and journalists/thought leaders are Lone Star-ers, from LBJ, himself, to Ann Richards, Jim Hightower, Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, the Castro brothers, Beto O'Rourke, Roland Martin, Bill Moyers, and many, many others. Houston, too, is solid Blue.
But while Lancaster is a worthy gem of town -- and former home of "Radical Republican" great, Thaddeus Stephens and served as a hotbed of Civil War abolitionism, these between-Philly and Pittsburgh regions can't overcome the SPLC's long-standing designation of Pennsylvania hosting more hate groups than any state. And the fact that, despite metro Philly's and Pittsburgh's overwhelming Blue-tilted population dominance, PA still went for Trump in 2016, and is still considered a swing state for this November election, ought to tell you something.
Nice post...going back to the age of the Koch brothers and their shadowy funding of all things Tea Party-related or -adjacent, I always kind of viewed them as billionaire MIT-educated hicks from Wichita. In the Trump era, you've got Robert Mercer hiding out in his estate on a presumably red part of Long Island (which is somewhat red overall to begin with, excepting the NYC boroughs that are actually located on LI). Who else are the biggest donors to the cause of paying Trump's legal fees under the guise of 'building the wall'? How much is Peter Thiel contributing to the cause these days? I don't know any others offhand, though the overstock.com guy could well be up there, or the MyPillow guy, for that matter, heh
Central PA is full of depressing and economically depressed little towns, especially along the Susquehanna/the former US route 15, which is a key component of the driving route from Buffalo to DC. I have a friend from Ephrata PA and a friend from Lebanon PA. Look those two up on a map, if you (and VV) will. Both are geographically kind of in the southeastern part of the state, but from my understanding, they're central PA through and through. Lebanon friend works for a beer distributor here in Buffalo; he sometimes seems disheartened that he never completed his grad program in American history, as he's quite an intelligent, thoughtful guy. He was in the same history PhD program as another friend at SUNY Buffalo, and he kind of worked his way into our greater, long-established network of friends that goes back to childhood in some cases (college in 2004-2005 for me is when I got to know these guys). We do a fantasy football league together, the draft for which is the one date annually that is guaranteed to bring everyone together (unfortunately). Anyway, Lebanon guy remains elated that he escaped Lebanon, which he ridicules on the regular. You'd think he escaped the more famous Lebanon (the one with Hezbollah) with the way he talks about the place.
Ephrata friend I met online through a Facebook group I moderated, centered ostensibly on fandom of a guy who wrote a 1,900 page book of philosophy that he posted online before killing himself on Harvard's campus 10+ years ago. I became a co-moderator because I wished to assist in the effort to keep the text of 'Suicide Note' freely accessible online. So I'd make the occasional post; I was more vocal than the other two moderators (one of whom also happened to be from upstate NY). The guy from Ephrata liked what I had to say, and he reached out to me, confided that he was quite depressed and sometimes suicidal himself. It's no real surprise that such a FB page would attract people as intrigued by the author's final act as by what he'd actually written. Ephrata guy was clearly quite intelligent and wrote well, but he felt trapped in his hometown, a place where he felt he related to no one. Eventually we spoke on the phone, and the guy sounded like a British intellectual, accent and all--I could imagine where he'd find camaraderie hard to come by in Dead Small Town, USA. He ended up heading off to college at Marlboro, an unconventional small college in Vermont, before enrolling in a poli Sci grad program at Seton Hall. Last I spoke to him was April 2020, as I did one of my many early-pandemic aimless-walks-around-my-neighborhood-with-beer, and he was doing the same in New Jersey, except with whisky IIRC.
There's no place in Central PA for escapees like these two.
I think I agree that neither Lancaster nor Harrisburg would have cured what ailed them, and they might also have not been satisfied in either Philadelphia or Pittsburgh because they're still in Pennsylvania.
I am, however, aware of both Lebanon and Ephrata. I have the latter on my to-visit list because the burg in northern Lancaster County is home to a famous religious community, the Ephrata Cloister. (Thanks to founder William Penn's insistence on religious tolerance, just about unique among the original 13 colonies, Pennsylvania has more non-mainstream Christian religious sects than other East Coast states; the Philadelphia neighborhood I call home gets its name from the German Anabaptists Penn invited to settle in it in 1683.)
Lebanon is the seat of its eponymous county, to Lancaster's north, and it's best known for the lunch meat that bears its name, a Penneylvania Dutch specialty. (It looks like salami but tastes sweeter.)
Agreed that neither a tourist draw nor a unique lunchmeat are enough to sustain a community, but I wonder whether your friends would not have had the same problems in just about any small town in a predominantly rural region. Most of these are experiencing the same sort of decline and challenges you allude to in your introduction. Many of these places, like the depressed former steel towns surrounding Pittsburgh, fall into what I call "The Land of the Forgotten," and the desire these people have to, if not regain what they've lost, at least not continue to decline, that fuels their support for Donald Trump.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheProf
I never heard your more elaborate version of the Carville quote, though I'm not denying he said it at one point (the simpler version is the one in the largest public circulation, be it simplified over time).
The point being, at least from my perspective, is more from a voting perspective than viewing people as unsophisticated 'hicks.'. The fact is, Donald Trump's largest millionaire/billionaire donors, practically to a person, live in large metropolitan 'Blue' areas. It's also not to say that all cities in red-voting regions are worthless. We love Lancaster, as well (esp its easy reach from Philly by train). Harrisburg city, itself, (also train-able) has a core area that echoes Society Hill (Philadelphia). I despise Texas' hardcore, regressive Red politics, but adore Austin, one of the more progressive (now) large cities in America - yes, heavily influenced by huge UT. It's also true that historically many of America's most forward-thinking, dare I say 'progressive' politicians and journalists/thought leaders are Lone Star-ers, from LBJ, himself, to Ann Richards, Jim Hightower, Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, the Castro brothers, Beto O'Rourke, Roland Martin, Bill Moyers, and many, many others. Houston, too, is solid Blue.
But while Lancaster is a worthy gem of town -- and former home of "Radical Republican" great, Thaddeus Stephens and served as a hotbed of Civil War abolitionism, these between-Philly and Pittsburgh regions can't overcome the SPLC's long-standing designation of Pennsylvania hosting more hate groups than any state. And the fact that, despite metro Philly's and Pittsburgh's overwhelming Blue-tilted population dominance, PA still went for Trump in 2016, and is still considered a swing state for this November election, ought to tell you something.
I've now lived here for 40 years, and in contrast to most of its Midwestern analogues, its politics have long been closely divided — this didn't start with 2016.
From the time Pennsylvania governors were allowed to succeed themselves in 1966 until Tom Corbett (R) lost his bid for re-election in 2014, the sitting Governor won re-election, then the governorship changed parties in the following election. That last pattern was also broken (in the Democrats' favor) in 2022, when current incumbent Josh Shapiro succeeded Tom Wolf. (That last has largely been attributed to his being a center-left Democrat — most Democrats who win statewide office here are center-left — running against a Trumpy opponent; far-right candidates (Corbett was the most conservative Governor in the state's recent history) do not do well statewide, generally speaking.
So I don't know what this "swing state" status tells me, or at least I don't know what you think it should tell me. What it does tell me is that Pennsylvania continues to behave as it has long behaved politically.
(Relevant aside: When I moved here in 1983, the usual rule was: The Democratic candidate ran up a huge margin in Philadelphia that was pretty much canceled out by the Republican candidate's margin in the city's four collar counties. The outcome then hinged on whether more people turned out in solidly Democratic Greater Pittsburgh or in the thoroughly Republican "T" [the remainder of the state after subtracting the two biggest metros].
(The dynamic has flipped but at the same time remains the same. It's just that this time, Philadelphia's suburbs vote like the city does, while the Democratic margin in Allegheny County gets offset by the Republican margin in the counties surrounding it. That means the election now hinges on whether more peoiple show up in Greater Philly or in the T. (At the Presidential level, this is complicated by the tendency for voters in the Northeast Pennsylvania and Lehigh Valley metropolises [Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and Allentown/Bethlehem/Easton] to vote Democratic as well, as does Erie.)
Biden (a Scranton native, as he will remind both you and Scrantonians) did win Pennsylvania in 2020, remember.
I try to avoid lumping the rural folk in the "unsophisticated hick" bin; my former Phillymag colleague Holly Otterbein, now at Politico, went back to her native York County in 2016 to profile the people who supported Trump there. Her sensitive reporting is what led me to adopt the term "Land of the Forgotten" to describe most of these areas.
As far as Trump's billionaire backers all living in blue urban regions are concerned: whoever heard of a billionaire living in the sticks?
BTW, Dallas is also Democratic, as is El Paso; Fort Worth less so, and San Antonio in between Fort Worth and Dallas. Texas has the same blue-cities/red-farms pattern as a lot of other red states; what makes most of these states red, however, is that those suburbanites who express a partisan preference in red states usually lean Republican rather than Democratic.
Adding a coda to the above, tangential to TheProf's noting the SPLC's singling out of Pennsylvania as a hate-group hotbed:
It is also true, however, that the rest of the state (including all of Greater Pittsburgh) has an animus against the Southeast in general and Philadelphia in particular. The rural folk regard the latter as a cesspool of corruption (a not wholly undeserved judgment, even if the rest of the state is hardly squeaky clean), while the Southwest simply argues that it isn't Pittsburgh. (Being a native Missourian, I understand this latter dynamic very well.)
In terms of regional feel, the eastern part of the state, but especially the Southeast, is part of the Northeast while the rest of it is part of the Midwest — or, according to some, the South. (The Mason-Dixon Line notwithstanding.)
Nice post...going back to the age of the Koch brothers and their shadowy funding of all things Tea Party-related or -adjacent, I always kind of viewed them as billionaire MIT-educated hicks from Wichita. In the Trump era, you've got Robert Mercer hiding out in his estate on a presumably red part of Long Island (which is somewhat red overall to begin with, excepting the NYC boroughs that are actually located on LI). Who else are the biggest donors to the cause of paying Trump's legal fees under the guise of 'building the wall'? How much is Peter Thiel contributing to the cause these days? I don't know any others offhand, though the overstock.com guy could well be up there, or the MyPillow guy, for that matter, heh
The Mercer family, along with Steve Bannon. founded The Government Accountability Institute in 2012.
This institute's stated goal is to investigate and expose government corruption, and misuse of taxpayer money. It's registered as being 'nonpartisan', but it's largely focused on the investigation of allegations related to the Democratic Party.
Rebekah Mercer, who is the daughter of Robert Mercer, has been characterized as "The First Lady of the Alt-Right." She is the chair of the Government Accountability board.
I never heard your more elaborate version of the Carville quote, though I'm not denying he said it at one point (the simpler version is the one in the largest public circulation, be it simplified over time).
By the way, I just looked up the phrase, and what he reportedly said was even more elaborate:
Quote:
Between Paoli and Penn Hills, Pennsylvania is Alabama without the blacks. They didn't film "The Deer Hunter" there for nothing – the state has the second-highest concentration of NRA members, behind Texas.
The thrust of the Politico article, written back in 2008, was that the sentence should be put to rest because it glosses over the state's complex political reality. I think that's right and suspect you would agree.
But as for where to draw the line between "eastern" and "Midwestern" Pennsylvania, I think the person who argued that the Susquehanna makes a good dividing line is pretty much right.
And most of "The Deer Hunter" scenes set in and around Clarion, Pa., were shot in three other states: West Virginia, Ohio and Washington State. But yes, some of them were shot in Pennsylvania. (Source)
I think I agree that neither Lancaster nor Harrisburg would have cured what ailed them, and they might also have not been satisfied in either Philadelphia or Pittsburgh because they're still in Pennsylvania.
I am, however, aware of both Lebanon and Ephrata. I have the latter on my to-visit list because the burg in northern Lancaster County is home to a famous religious community, the Ephrata Cloister. (Thanks to founder William Penn's insistence on religious tolerance, just about unique among the original 13 colonies, Pennsylvania has more non-mainstream Christian religious sects than other East Coast states; the Philadelphia neighborhood I call home gets its name from the German Anabaptists Penn invited to settle in it in 1683.)
Lebanon is the seat of its eponymous county, to Lancaster's north, and it's best known for the lunch meat that bears its name, a Penneylvania Dutch specialty. (It looks like salami but tastes sweeter.)
Agreed that neither a tourist draw nor a unique lunchmeat are enough to sustain a community, but I wonder whether your friends would not have had the same problems in just about any small town in a predominantly rural region. Most of these are experiencing the same sort of decline and challenges you allude to in your introduction. Many of these places, like the depressed former steel towns surrounding Pittsburgh, fall into what I call "The Land of the Forgotten," and the desire these people have to, if not regain what they've lost, at least not continue to decline, that fuels their support for Donald Trump.
I've now lived here for 40 years, and in contrast to most of its Midwestern analogues, its politics have long been closely divided — this didn't start with 2016.
From the time Pennsylvania governors were allowed to succeed themselves in 1966 until Tom Corbett (R) lost his bid for re-election in 2014, the sitting Governor won re-election, then the governorship changed parties in the following election. That last pattern was also broken (in the Democrats' favor) in 2022, when current incumbent Josh Shapiro succeeded Tom Wolf. (That last has largely been attributed to his being a center-left Democrat — most Democrats who win statewide office here are center-left — running against a Trumpy opponent; far-right candidates (Corbett was the most conservative Governor in the state's recent history) do not do well statewide, generally speaking.
So I don't know what this "swing state" status tells me, or at least I don't know what you think it should tell me. What it does tell me is that Pennsylvania continues to behave as it has long behaved politically.
(Relevant aside: When I moved here in 1983, the usual rule was: The Democratic candidate ran up a huge margin in Philadelphia that was pretty much canceled out by the Republican candidate's margin in the city's four collar counties. The outcome then hinged on whether more people turned out in solidly Democratic Greater Pittsburgh or in the thoroughly Republican "T" [the remainder of the state after subtracting the two biggest metros].
(The dynamic has flipped but at the same time remains the same. It's just that this time, Philadelphia's suburbs vote like the city does, while the Democratic margin in Allegheny County gets offset by the Republican margin in the counties surrounding it. That means the election now hinges on whether more peoiple show up in Greater Philly or in the T. (At the Presidential level, this is complicated by the tendency for voters in the Northeast Pennsylvania and Lehigh Valley metropolises [Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and Allentown/Bethlehem/Easton] to vote Democratic as well, as does Erie.)
Biden (a Scranton native, as he will remind both you and Scrantonians) did win Pennsylvania in 2020, remember.
I try to avoid lumping the rural folk in the "unsophisticated hick" bin; my former Phillymag colleague Holly Otterbein, now at Politico, went back to her native York County in 2016 to profile the people who supported Trump there. Her sensitive reporting is what led me to adopt the term "Land of the Forgotten" to describe most of these areas.
As far as Trump's billionaire backers all living in blue urban regions are concerned: whoever heard of a billionaire living in the sticks?
BTW, Dallas is also Democratic, as is El Paso; Fort Worth less so, and San Antonio in between Fort Worth and Dallas. Texas has the same blue-cities/red-farms pattern as a lot of other red states; what makes most of these states red, however, is that those suburbanites who express a partisan preference in red states usually lean Republican rather than Democratic.
Nice post to you as well. Re: the question posed in the second-last paragraph, the example that comes to mind for me happens to have been a Pennsylvanian: John Rigas, former owner of the Buffalo Sabres. He was the founder and CEO of the former telecom company Adelphia, and as far as I'm aware, he continued to reside in his native Coudersport, PA even after he'd made his fortune. Coudersport is N-NW PA, not even all that close to Erie. It's 110 miles east of Erie, in fact, probably around double the distance I would've guessed. Rigas then lived in prison for some time (9 years) in his later years. Died in 2021 at age 96
ETA that Rigas was imprisoned when he was between the ages of 82 and 91. Pretty unreal
Nice post to you as well. Re: the question posed in the second-last paragraph, the example that comes to mind for me happens to have been a Pennsylvanian: John Rigas, former owner of the Buffalo Sabres. He was the founder and CEO of the former telecom company Adelphia, and as far as I'm aware, he continued to reside in his native Coudersport, PA even after he'd made his fortune. Coudersport is N-NW PA, not even all that close to Erie. It's 110 miles east of Erie, in fact, probably around double the distance I would've guessed. Rigas then lived in prison for some time (9 years) in his later years. Died in 2021 at age 96
ETA that Rigas was imprisoned when he was between the ages of 82 and 91. Pretty unreal
Actually, now that I think of it:
Sam Walton. Duh.
However, Northwest Arkansas has positively boomed since he opened that 5 & 10 in Bentonville that eventually grew into the world's largest retailer.
Gotta be Chicago, with Minneapolis a close second. Nothing else comes close. No, Austin isn’t really THAT liberal.
Austin is liberal......... for Texas which is a big caveat.
I think they embrace quirky and weird, but I don't think it's on the front-end of progressiveness. Having a large university (university places tend to be liberal), a massive music scene (another group that tends to be liberal) and a big tech industry (tends to lean liberal or libertarian) helps.
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