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Losers In Scranton

It’s not the Democrats

Philip Bump of the Washington Post always travels to Scranton Pennsylvania in the days before the presidential election to check out the Get Out The Vote operations of both parties. His observations are very interesting this year. (gift link)

As I did in 2016 and 2020, I traveled to Scranton to see how the campaigns were tackling this task. Both of my prior visits were, at least in retrospect, revealing. In 2016, I was surprised to see little activity for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and a bustling turnout operation for Donald Trump. Four years later, it was Joe Biden — who often speaks of the time he spent in Scranton as a child — who was running an effective operation. Trump’s supporters seemed to be more focused on handing out lawn signs and boisterous parades of trucks.

In other words, in 2016 and 2020, the campaigns with the more robust GOTV field operations in Scranton (and presumably across the state) ended up winning. In Scranton in 2024, that was clearly the operation being run by Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign and its allies.

The Republicans:

Crossing a bridge over Roaring Brook brought me to the Republican Party headquarters for Lackawanna County, where volunteers in the parking lot were putting lawn signs into their cars.

Inside, about 20 more people were milling around. Some were there to knock on doors for the local Republican House candidate, Rob Bresnahan. Others were at a sign-in table where Robin Medeiros, 64, was preparing to lead a training.

Those volunteers, though, weren’t going out to turn out voters. Instead, Medeiros was helping them fill out the documents they’d need to be poll watchers on Election Day. Others were being trained to be greeters, welcoming people at polling places and providing information about Republican candidates. The focus was on managing those who came out to vote, not on making sure they came out in the first place.

Back in April, the then-new co-chair of the Republican Party, the Republican nominee’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, made clear that poll-watching would be a central focus for the party in November. It was an institutional bet on the idea that Trump’s 2020 loss was attributable not to having more Biden voters turn out, but to that pro-Biden majority being a function of some wrongdoing at the polls. Never mind that there were poll watchers in 2020, too (including some I spoke to then). The party would in 2024 have its volunteers combat imaginary illegal voters instead of turning out real, legal ones. That latter task would be mostly left to outside groups, including, in Pennsylvania, Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s America PAC.

Meanwhile, the Democrats:

Babij and Orren-King had come with others on a bus that morning, arriving at a building so nondescript that Ken August, who lives in a Trump-flag adorned house across the street, didn’t know it was Harris’s headquarters. That, despite the activity: There had been five busses from Montclair, N.J. on that day, Babij said. Inside, the office had dozens of people coming and going.

Importantly, they were being tasked with trying to encourage voters to vote. There were scripts for what to say and an app on their phones with the people they were supposed to contact. There were stations through which volunteers would progress from sign-in to getting their materials and maps of their targeted neighborhoods.

The reasons offered by the volunteers for their participation with the campaign were often very personal. For example, Daryl Fanelli, 34, teaches English as a Second Language at a high school in Scranton. “I want my kids to be able to stay here,” she explained, and to have the opportunities that America provides. Even though they were still in high school, she said, they were very “riled up” about the election.

Sheli Pratt-McHugh, 44, wore a sweatshirt for the gun-control-advocacy group Moms Demand Action. She was volunteering, she said, “for my daughter’s future.” That daughter, Penny, 6, hugged her mother’s leg as she spoke.

Any GOP activity like that?

I saw any number of door hangers and fliers for the Democratic candidates: Harris, incumbent Sen. Bob Casey, Rep. Matt Cartwright and others. I saw no one walking on behalf of Trump and only one pro-Trump leaflet, paid for by Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania. (An email to Musk’s America PAC inquiring about its efforts wasn’t returned. Other reporting has described its work as chaotic, if not exploitative.)

No voters I spoke to said they’d seen any Trump walkers, either. One man told me he’d heard from just about everyone then clarified that he’d seen a walker wearing “flag-themed attire,” and just assumed that they were supporting Trump.

In Scranton, at least, Lara Trump’s vision for the 2024 election appears to have been made manifest: prioritizing the prevention of illegal in-person voting in lieu of promoting in-person voting by Trump supporters. Not useful for maximizing turnout, but potentially useful for ginning up reports that might be used to once again claim the existence of rampant fraud.

Trump told everyone that he didn’t need a Get Out The Vote operation because he was all that was needed. He even said “we don’t need any more votes.” So they’ve put their efforts into contesting the vote that they must assume they will not win.

They are losers and they know it.

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