Even Governor Josh Shapiro couldn’t have saved Pennsylvania for the Democrats

Elections often tell you less about the winners than about the losers. Victory has many fathers, as the saying goes, but defeat shows you exactly what went wrong.

Pennsylvania’s 2024 results are offering a masterclass in the Democrats’ collapse: While Trump defeated Kamala Harris by two points in the presidential race, Republicans romped to victory in every statewide primary.

Dave McCormick earned a narrow victory Three-term Senator Bob Casey; Dave Sunday defeated Eugene DePasquale by 5 points in the race for attorney general; and incumbent Tim DeFoor defeated Malcolm Kenyatta by an even larger margin for auditor general.

The story of how Democrats swept Pennsylvania is unfolding in the final weeks of the campaign. Trump’s operation blanketed working-class neighborhoods with… simple, direct messaging: “Trump: secure borders/Kamala: open borders,” “Trump: low inflation/Harris: high inflation.”

His team’s “Kamala is for they/them” ad led to legal threats but achieved the intended effect: Democrats are concerned about boutique issues rather than kitchen table issues like inflation. Harris, meanwhile, released a series of slickly produced but culturally tone-deaf advertisements an attempt to portray working-class life in Pennsylvania.

Harris’ response proved telling. Her team launched what they considered their October surprise: a series of joint performances with unpopular former Republican Liz Cheney focused on “save democracy.” The rallies, held mainly in affluent suburban enclaves, epitomized the campaign’s fundamental misreading of the state’s political geography.

Her campaign’s last notable attempt at working-class authenticity — a commercial featuring a so-called working-class local who appeared to be an actor delivering focused lines about Trump as a “little silver spoon boy” — landed with my working-class relatives for about as long. as well as vegan bulgogi tacos in a union hall.

This disconnect in reporting infected every Democratic campaign. DePasquale, who ran for attorney general, leaned heavily on his record as a budget watchdog and government reformer — but not as a prosecutor, because he never was. In theory a convincing pitch, but it failed against the ruthless career prosecutor Sunday focus on fentanyl seizures and declining crime rates in York County. While DePasquale talked about process and oversight, Sunday’s team plastered social media with bodycam footage of drug busts and arrests.

Kenyatta’s campaign for Auditor General exposed the party’s deeper problems. The 34-year-old progressive rising star, best known for viral speeches and a failed Senate bid, campaigned on transforming the office into a vehicle for social change — which made sense when someone realized he had no experience in the role . In return for the clear nonpartisan message from the incumbent DeFoor On reducing waste and protecting taxpayers, Kenyatta’s ambitious agenda reads like a DEI solution in search of a problem.

Even Casey, who built his career on careful moderation and labor support, could not find enough votes to secure a fourth term. After decades of positioning himself as a blue-collar, Blue-Dog Democrat, Casey’s recent selective embrace of progressive causes provided the perfect fodder for McCormick’s advertising team.

As Republican ads undermined Casey’s voting record and association with flip-flopping presidential candidate Harris, his campaign responded with a barrage of increasingly desperate fundraising emails, all predicting impending doom. The terribly off-color messages – with the subject lines “To prevent catastrophe” and “The worst news yet” – became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Who wants to vote for a loser?

The results expose the bankruptcy of the Democrats’ coalition-building strategy. Harris’ team believed they could unite urban progressives and anti-Trump suburbanites while retaining just enough working-class voters through careful messaging and strategic positioning. Instead, they accomplished a rare political feat: speaking persuasively to absolutely no one.

Gov. Josh Shapiro, pitched as Harris’ potential running mate, embodied these contradictions. His “Get Sh*t Done” gubernatorial slogan had promised pragmatic results but delivered historic inaction as the The Commonwealth Foundation reported this – signed just 111 bills in 18 months, the fewest of any Pennsylvania governor in 50 years. By comparison, Glenn Youngkin of Virginia passed 1,654 bills with a part-time (and divided) legislature during the same period.

The implications extend beyond a single election cycle. Despite his slowly declining populationPennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes and competitive Senate seats make it essential for any future Democratic coalition.

Still, Tuesday’s results suggest the party has lost its ability to communicate effectively with voters outside Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The state office margins—larger than the presidential gap—suggest problems that run deeper than the shortcomings of any individual candidate.

Just as they have done since 2016, Democrats continued to try to thread an impossible needle: mollifying progressives with vacuous identity politics while also courting suburban Republicans and preserving their working-class base in the absence of real policy proposals of the working class.

The result was that the messages were so carefully tailored that they became meaningless, as insubstantial as Kamala Harris’ final guest appearance on SNL.

Unless and until Democrats can craft a message that resonates beyond their urban strongholds — and find experienced, competent candidates capable of delivering that message without sounding like McKinsey consultants explaining steelmaking to career steelworkers — the Tuesday’s results predict permanent realignment in a state unlike any they had ever experienced. considered winnable.

Here in the Keystone State, as elsewhere in the country, the party’s obsession with building the perfect coalition has left them with virtually no coalition at all.

Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work.

Reprinted with permission from RealClearPennsylvania.