A small piece of Pennsylvania

Everybody'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'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.

Diametrically opposed from Philadelphia (physically and, in some ways, metaphorically) is the small city of Erie, in the far northwest corner of Pennsylvania. If the Pittsburgh point of view is a lot like the rugged Appalachian heart of southeastern Ohio, Erie's is even more like the midwestern-oriented, middle-class mindset of the upper third of Ohio along the shores of Lake Erie. The population of greater Erie is only about a tenth of Pittsburgh's, but its location on the lake halfway between Cleveland and Buffalo gives it more influence in the region than its size might indicate at first glance.

Here's how I described Erie in a post I wrote last summer, talking about the high human cost of the war in Iraq (I encourage you to go back and read the original post as well, since it includes several particularly well-written excerpts from Erie's award-winning daily newspaper):

Two Funerals and a Waiting

Erie, Pennsylvania is a small city on the edge of a great lake. It is a quintessentially American community -- so much so, in fact, that it was designated an All-American City by Richard Nixon in 1972. Like many such cities, it has gone through some painful changes over the last few decades as its old industrial economy gradually gave way to a 21st-century technology/service/tourism economy instead. But Erie still typifies what most Americans look for in their home towns: wide streets, good schools, low crime rates, affordable housing, and a generally pleasant quality of life for its citizens.

And like the residents of most American home towns outside the Beltway and between the polarized left and right coast megalopolises, people in Erie are basically centrist by nature. They may differ widely on specific individual issues, but for the most part they share common values and common beliefs with each other and with the hundreds of millions of other Americans who live in what is sometimes referred to as "flyover country."

Politics is something that people do care about in Erie, at least when it impacts their daily lives in some particular way, but they don't obsess about it. They may lean left or right, but they do so with their feet planted firmly in the middle of the road. During the 2004 race, George Bush's single largest campaign-rally audience was in Erie. But in 2004, Erie voters chose John Kerry over George Bush by a solid margin. Professional pundits and politicians and prognosticators do well to pay attention to what happens in Erie, because it is and always has been a bellwether burg for how the American electorate looks at the world.

[ ... ]

Two funerals in two weeks. Two flag-draped coffins. Two men who gave the last full measure of devotion for the country they chose to serve. And one mother of two sons in harm's way, waiting and hoping and praying that they'll come back home alive again this time.

[ ... ]

A small city on the edge of a great lake. Three families, three stories. Two funerals and a waiting. All-American moments being played out against the backdrop of an unjustified, untenable war, like thousands of others just like them across the country every day the Bush administration is allowed to keep putting American sons and daughters in harm's way, surrounded by the lethal chaos of an Iraqi civil war a half a globe away.

In Erie, citizens pondering the fate of our troops and the Iraqis around around them struggle with their conscience and try to their reconcile their longtime belief in the fundamental rightness of America with their growing awareness of the fundamental wrongness of the Bush administration's failed policies in the Middle East. All across the United States, in flyover country and on the coasts, in sleepy small towns and bustling big cities, average Americans are watching and waiting to see what happens in Washington this time.

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.

(By the way... one year ago this month, peace activists all across the country held rallies and vigils in observance of the 4th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. One of those rallies was held in Erie, which to the surprise of many outside the region is a major locus of the international Catholic peace movement. I was in town for that event. If you'd like to read more about the unusually strong winds of political change in Erie these days, and see for yourselves what the many-faceted face of progressive political activism in Pennsylvania looks like, this is a field report on the Erie rally that I posted at the time, complete with plenty of photos: Waging Peace in Flyover Country )

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