Report from Western PA

[Deep State Witch]

I traveled to the Pittsburgh area - specifically Cheswick and Harwick - for a funeral yesterday and today. It's a blue-collar area of Pittsburgh, straddling the Allegheny/Butler county line. It has a lot of older people that live there, like my late cousin who was a mill worker. On the way up from DC, I saw tons of signs for TCF starting at the Pennsylvania line. There were tons of TCF flags and other memorabilia on display in the front yards of these old houses. (My cousin may have been a bit slow, but he knew that TCF was bad news back in 2016.) On the way back from the funeral, it was even worse.

I wonder how these aging millworkers are going to feel when their Social Security and Medicare get taken away?

[DJ Synikus Makisimus]

1. Re: SocSec & Medicare going away

They won't believe it is ever going to happen ... until it happens. Then they'll blame it on liberals and immigrants and trans people, or find someone else other than Republicans, because that 's what they heard on FoxNews (or OAN, or NewsMax or their favorite internet screamer). In authoritarian regimes, it's never the fault of the rulers; always someone else they can scapegoat.

Or do you think the'll come to their senses?

[Jit423]

2. What senses?

[doc03]

4. They have been hammering the lie that illegal immigrants are getting SS and Medicare.

They have already been preconditioned into believing it was because of Democrats, and it hasn't even happened yet.

[Efilroft Sul]

3. The election here in southwest PA was treated like the white man's last stand.

Emphasis on preserving whiteness and maleness. In many ways, Pittsburgh is the northernmost southern city.

[doc03]

5. I live right next to PA in Ohio, that is why I was convinced

Trump was going to win weeks ago. I spend a lot of time in southwestern PA, as Red as Ohio is, it was easy to see
they were even more rapid Trump supporters than in Ohio.

[montanacowboy]

7. I was born and raised

south of Pittsburgh on the Ohio side. You couldn't find a republican anywhere then. My Dad was a strong Union man as was everyone else. He worked in the steel mills when the big one was Blaw Knox. Everyone was a Democrat and all the families on the street we lived on were immigrants from Poland, Italy, Germany, and many other western European countries.

Things sure as hell have changed.

[doc03]

9. I am in the same area, between myself, brother and father we worked

over 100 years in the steel industry. Back then every office in the county was held by Democrats.
This year the local election was settled in the primaries the Republicans had no opposition in the general.

[oasis]

6. Sorry bunch of backward idiots. I've got zero

sympathy for what happens to THOSE knuckleheads.

[Mc Mike]

8. 2 points, DSW:

My wife and I went from Pittsburgh to Cook's Forest, 2 weeks before the election. There were a ton of tRump signs and flags all along 28 north, through Armstrong and Jefferson Counties, but as soon as we got to even a small town like Clarion, we got big concentrations of Harris signs. All the sparsely populated hamlets and groups of 5 or 6 houses were for tRump, but anything bigger showed a lot of advertisement supporting Dems.

And we whomped shitler in Allegheny by more than 20 points. And Allegheny has more population in it than all the counties surrounding us, combined. More than Butler, Westmoreland, Fayette, Washington, Beaver, and Armstrong, all put together.

[Deep State Witch]

12. Rt. 28

Yes, these towns are along Rt. 28. It's a very economically depressed area.

[Oopsie Daisy]

10. What or who is "TCF"? Is this yet another new acronym/nickname for Trump?

[Deep State Witch]

11. The Convicted Felon

n/t

[Oopsie Daisy]

13. Ah... thanks. (So many acronyms... it's hard to keep track.) *

* I just refer to him as "Trump" to keep it simple and so that the un-cool kids (like myself) can keep up with the conversation better.