Confronted with negative poll numbers in many states, including Pennsylvania, President Trump’s campaign seems to understand that the suburbs of America – rich and diversifying – have been swung by the Republican Party. Trump’s team is in a hurry to put an end to the collapse and win back voters. Contrary to established wisdom, though, the elections in 2020 will not be won by reclaiming old land already lost to Democrats. Instead, the GOP should skip the suburbs and look to the cities of America, where they will find a treasure trove of potential voters.
In Philadelphia alone, dozens of Democratic machinery policies, followed by more recent progressive governance, have provided limited services, poor public education, anemic economic growth, and increasing agitation. Conditions were only reduced this summer from insurgency and unrest. City Hall, along with the media, have largely erased Philadelphia’s dramatic rise in violent crime. City voters of all backgrounds live with the consequences – and many do not like what they see.
A number of these voters may warm up for a GOP that is ready to participate and offer real solutions. In fact, Philadelphia is crowned with untapped neighborhoods of swinging voters. They are waiting for candidates who understand their concerns.
Northeast Philadelphia, for example, includes a large segment of working-class whites who, in various ways, have more in common with voters in the urban Rust Belt cities than they do with fellow residents in Tony Center City as an upmarket, progressive mount. Airy. Last year, National Journal reporter Alex Clearfield identified the Northeast as “the forgotten battlefield of Pennsylvania,” along with part of the suburbs just above. It is “a region of 350,000 people. . . that, like many other white working class majority, [has] swiped sharply towards Trump, “he wrote.
Northeast Philadelphia voters are more Catholic and socially conservative than many in the region. They even elected Philadelphia’s only Republican state attorney, Martina White, who is now serving her third term in office. The areas that border the White District – ancestral Democratic but trending Republican in local elections – are ripe for GOP pickups for state and local office. This neighborhood streams Republicans, while Democrats flip the richer suburbs of Philadelphia’s cramped cities.
Just ask the voters of the Northeast about Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, or Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, and you’ll hear mockers. The neighborhood is home to many police officers, union workers, and small business owners. They are at odds with Democratic leaders who concentrate on identity politics, contribute to service problems such as garbage collection, and sanction or ignore the widespread looting that destroyed the city. In short, they are tired.
But it’s not just in white neighborhoods where Republicans can record votes. The poorest big city in America, Philadelphia, is a majority-black metropolis, whose inhabitants have been left behind by a Democratic Party no longer governed by old-school, union politics, which, for all its flaws, still focused on jobs. Modern Democrats are seen as a cadre of rich and progressive Twitter activists who are more motivated to drop statues and ‘deconstruct gender’ than provide jobs and better schools.
Most black residents of Philadelphia neighborhoods do not share the views of wake whites either. They do not want to “defend” the police. They see how sloganing has helped turn many urban neighborhoods into shooting galleries. This year, Philadelphia’s murder rate has increased by double digits.
While Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, is presenting a veneer of moderation, the party behind him – and his left flank – is leading a revolutionary march in downtown America. But Democrats ignore a significant portion of their historical base: relatively moderate minorities. On various issues – school choice, economic empowerment, public safety – the GOP has a compelling message for them. But Republicans need to have confidence in this opportunity and commit themselves to an outreach effort.
In this pandemic era, such a message to new territory is not easy to use. After all, Democrats have owned Philadelphia since 1951, when Joseph Clarke – former mayor and then U.S. senator – broke the city’s longtime Republican machine. Since then, Republicans have focused on the suburbs; the city’s voters have not heard from the party for generations. But in present-day Greater Philadelphia, finding votes in the city could prove easier than turning them back into suburbs.
Combining national trends with local issues, and Republican candidates the turn up and down could turn more voters. In fact, increasing the GOP’s top-of-the-box vote share by just 2% in Philadelphia would earn 13,000 more votes statewide – more than one-third of Trump’s statewide winning margin in 2016.
Such a strategy could extend beyond Philadelphia and into other cities, where voters are torn apart and unaware that Democrats have lost them, even though they have yet to find an alternative. An effective search for voters in urban constituencies could make winning the Electoral College, like Congress, more for Republicans in the future.
Will the GOP look to these city districts? Philadelphia voters are waiting for alternatives to the status quo.
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