In a Bellwether Pennsylvania County, a Modest Loss Could Be a Win for Harris
The New York Times
In white, working-class places, Kamala Harris’s goal is simply to lose by less. Thirty interviews in Beaver County, Pa., offered signs that with some swing voters, she is holding the line.
In 2008, Barack Obama and his new running mate, Joe Biden, kicked off their general-election campaign in Beaver County, Pa., a culturally conservative area northwest of Pittsburgh where the shuttering of steel mills years earlier still stung.
In 2020, Mr. Biden was in Beaver County hours before Election Day to make his closing argument. And in August, the first stop for Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota on a Western Pennsylvania bus tour was in Beaver County.
Each time, the Democrats were angling for the loyalties of the working-class, predominantly white voters who live in Beaver County and similar areas across Western Pennsylvania and the industrial Midwest. Each time, the party faced more skepticism and suspicion.
No longer dreaming of winning in such places, Democrats are simply trying to avoid the kinds of staggering losses that helped doom Hillary Clinton in 2016, and to keep pace with Mr. Biden’s slightly improved 2020 margins.
Their goal in white working-class areas sounds modest but in reality is enormously complicated: lose by less.
“The race is really close,” said Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Pennsylvania Democrat who managed to win Beaver County in his 2022 run for governor and, along with other top Democrats, has campaigned for Ms. Harris in tough blue-collar and rural territory. “Four, five, six hundred more votes in a place like Beaver County could be a real difference maker.”
