Our team was sent to Lansford, Pennsylvania, to distribute literature for Biden/Harris to Democrats who vote sporadically. 60 years ago Lansford was a prosperous town; my mom sometimes drove there to shop. Now Lansford, although I don’t have documentation, probably has the lowest per capita income of any borough in the County. Drugs are problem and the poverty is visible.
Trump signs are everywhere. At one of our stops a Latino told us in no uncertain terms that he was voting for Trump. Another woman, when she found out who we were backing, was positively insulting.
While we did get supportive responses (one young woman called me “hon” and one of our contacts had been making phone calls for Biden), Lansford is a town full of people in despair. We saw kids who will be attending school in a district in Carbon County that performs near the bottom in state tests. The property tax rate is high, but the schools are underfunded since property values are depressed.
I think people who have little to lose are most often the Trumpists. They’ve lost faith in America, they don’t care about the slide toward dictatorship, they could care less about global warming, foreign policy doesn’t compute, and they feel a combination of hopelessness and despair. Trump’s bluster and lies make them feel good. They aren’t “deplorable,” but they are poor, alienated, and not part of the American dream. Their main attitude is resentment.
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