Also cross-posted it to DU, where it immediately got buried by the hundreds of pointless Oh Noes! OMFG!! This is HUGH!11!! blithery-blathery posts about Spitzergate (yawn). So feel free to read & comment on my Pennsylvania piece in its natural habit instead:
A small piece of PennsylvaniaEverybody's eyes are on Pennysylvania these days. Thanks to the whipsaw nature of the Democratic presidential primary race this year, Pennsylvania's in the spotlight when it comes to electoral politics on the national stage. People everywhere are talking about Pennsylvania -- what it is, what it's like, what it all means. Pundits are pontificating right and left about Pennsylvania voters -- who they are, who're they're for, what they're going to do on April 22. And, inevitably, most of them are wrong a lot of the time.
Pennsylvania is just like Ohio, the talking heads are telling us. Well, yes and no. Some parts of Pennsylvania are just like parts of Ohio, demographically speaking. Other parts, not so much. Pennsylvania is a very big place. And, like Ohio, it's a very diverse place, with different parts of the state displaying significantly different historical and sociocultural influences.
The Appalachian Mountains run diagonally through Pennsylvania from lower left to upper right, physically as well as demographically dividing it into several dissimilar environments. Fully a third of the state's 12 million residents live in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, which bustles along the Delaware River valley in the southeastern corner of PA and sprawls across the Delaware and New Jersey lines to include another 2 million of their neighbors.
Another 2-1/2 million Pennsylvanians live in the southwestern part of the state, in the greater Pittsburgh area, near the upper edge of some of the most rugged parts of the Appalachians. While the sociocultural roots of PA's two biggest population centers could hardly be more different, they are both large, sophisticated urban centers and day-to-day life for their residents is more similar than not.
The day-to-day lives of people in Pittsburgh and Philly may be similar, but they are quite different from day-to-day life in the old coal-mining and steel towns of the Lehigh Valley, or the bucolic farmlands of the northwestern region, or the high-tech haven of State College, or the Amish country along the Maryland border, or the forested hills that share a border with western New York. Nearly half the population of Pennsylvania is spread out thinly but relatively evenly in small towns and villages all across the state.
That's the reason for another oft-repeated (and, in many ways, also wrong) quote that the pundits love to trot out when they're discussing Pennsylvania politics. Yes, James Carville did in fact say that "Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between." But he said it in 1986, when the state's demographics were quite different than they are today. And he said it in the context of an in-state election, not a presidential primary, when Carville ran his first big race for former Governor Bob Casey, Sr.
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Erie, PA is in many ways an archetypical microcosm of middle American thoughts, tastes, and values -- so much so that it has always been one of the advertising and marketing industry's favorite test markets. (In fact, the "McSame" political ads that a pro-Democratic 527 group is rolling out were first tested in Erie several weeks ago.) If it works in Erie, it'll work most everywhere else. If it won't work in Erie, though, it probably won't work anywhere else between the coasts. Erie's not an easy sell, and never has been. According to George Burns, back in the vaudeville days the standard marker phrase was, "if you think you're good, play Erie."
I grew up in Erie, and I still have family there. I was able to spend a good bit of time in Erie during and since the 2004 election cycle, and I keep track of what the political feel is like on the ground there. Like the rest of the country, I'll be watching closely to see what happens in Pennsylvania in the weeks leading up to its April 22 primaries. But because of what I know about the current lay of the land in Erie, I think a lot of those pundits pontificating about what Pennsylvania's going to do politically in 2008 based on something James Carville said in 1986 are going to be surprised at just how wrong they turn out to be this time around.
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