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Rural Pennsylvania resists Biden

2020-11-10T03:57:00.566Z


The interior of the State reflects the polarization between the country and the city, which extends throughout the United States and that Biden will have to face the next four years


On the banks of the Lehigh River, the blast furnaces of the former Bethlehem Steel Corporation rise mightily in the center of the main valley of Northampton County, north of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Its immense abandoned warehouses warn the visitor of a glorious industrial past.

Here, in the manufacturing heartland that has returned to the hands of the Democrats with Joe Biden, half the steel with which the girders of New York's skyscrapers were built was manufactured and also much of the weaponry and artillery used in the First and WWII.

In this now-declining corner of inland Pennsylvania, more than 1,000 warships were built and the machines did not stop working for 100 years.

Now, on its ruins, the Las Vegas Sands company plans to build a huge casino.

The industrial past of Bethlehem (Belén, in Spanish), of about 75,000 inhabitants, formed a hard core of Democratic voters that was diluted in the early 2000s. When the large steel company declared bankruptcy, after its founding in 1899 , and the destiny of thousands of workers was also to reinvent themselves.

For cities like this, 80 kilometers north of Philadelphia, the area is known as the Rust Belt, a fundamental Democratic stronghold seized by Donald Trump in 2016 and returned to the party by the hand of Joe Biden in these elections.

Framed in a State, Pennsylvania, which has given him the victory by the minimum, with only a difference of 0.6 points and a handful of 45,600 votes.

Democrats celebrated taking back this region longed for since their fall under Hillary Clinton.

But the margin is not enough to speak of a reconquest.

Its population has been divided, like the whole country, between the big cities in which they have devastated - Philadelphia, Pittsburh and Allentown - and everything that surrounds them, rural areas and suburbs, where Trump's speech is more alive than ever.

This corner of Pennsylvania is a reflection of the reality of a country that has voted for Biden more than any other candidate in history, with 75 million votes;

but who has also largely voted for Trump, 71 million people.

A polarized context between the country and the city, which extends to the entire United States and which Biden will have to face the next four years.

Northampton County, where Bethlehem is located, voted for Trump in 2016 and on Saturday (at the end of the count) it became one of only two districts - along with Erie, on the Canadian border - that has been flipped in favor. of the Democrats.

The councilor of this party in the City Council of Bethlehem, Paige VanWirt, 53, explains how the electoral situation in this small city is a mirror in which the rest of the country looks: “It is not that there are Democrats who voted for Trump in 2016, or not significantly that many, but Democrats have come out to vote.

Republicans have, too.

And the advantage is not so great as to speak of a turnaround ”.

VanWirt plants some tulips while talking to this newspaper in a street planter in front of his red brick townhouse in the historic center of this formerly industrial and traditionally Democratic city.

She is convinced that there is still a lot of work to do.

“Now we speak of the silent democrats.

People in this area who have voted for Biden, but who prefer not to talk about it, "he says.

And he is aware that a few miles from there, Trump is here to stay.

Just three miles to the northwest, the Sons of Steel's Democratic heritage is fading.

And in this rural area of ​​white houses with gabled roofs and tea and newspaper on the porch, Trump's outbursts these four years have been effective for a working middle class.

Along the main street of the small municipality of Butztown, within the county of Northampton, the facade of one of those residences attracts attention a day after knowing the electoral result.

More than a home, it looks like a Trump party center.

There are up to 12 posters that bear his name, the amount of propaganda will be justified by its owner later, as some neighbors of the opposite party are dedicated to tear off some during the early mornings.

Its owner, Russell Barone, 42, a stocky man with half hair, wears a T-shirt with a message stamped on the chest: "The only thing worse than COVID-19 would be Biden-20."

He is not in any march or act of the Republican Party, he dresses like that on a Sunday morning.

He has a mechanical workshop and ensures that the area where he works, in the municipality that bears the county's name, Northampton, still cannot believe that Biden has won the election.

“I am independent, you know?

I do not trust politicians and until 2016 I had not voted for anyone for many years.

But Trump arrived, a guy outside of politics, a businessman, who has what it takes to know how to manage this country, we know that he is not going to get rich with this because he is already a millionaire.

He is the only reliable one, I voted for him then and I have voted for him now ”, he assures from the patio of his house.

“I know he says a lot of stupid things, but because he is not a politician, he is a citizen and he speaks like us.

Beyond that attitude, he has known how to lift the country ”, he adds.

As he talks, some neighbors honk when they pass his corner.

“I don't care what they think, they won't come to do anything to me.

I have weapons in here ”, he concludes.

About 40 kilometers further north, the landscape looks autumnal.

Over vast green meadows and a few ox ranches, forests of red oak trees that color orange and cherry rise the way to the small township of Northampton.

In this ghost town where nobody walks on a sunny Sunday after the elections, the facades follow one another with posters in favor of Donald Trump.

“No more hoaxes”, one of the Republican's campaign slogans, is read in one of the houses on the main street of the municipality.

In the garage of one of those two-story homes, Tyler Wider, 24, fixes a '94 Mustang. This young man with blond hair and very light eyes has only voted twice in his life, and he has voted for Trump.

Your house, unlike the rest, has no sign of your partisan preference, but you don't need it.

“Look, my father was a Republican, and well… You know.

This is like being with the Philadelphia Eagles, ”he explains.

Wider does not have a job and has not studied a degree either.

But he is convinced that this Mustang of his father will save him from the curse of his family, also unemployed.

"At least with him I can go out and look for him," he adds.

In front of a black photographer, he feels the need to justify his position: “It bothers me a lot that they call us racists.

I have no problem with people of color — no offense.

But I don't think the police are responsible for the bad things that happen, ”he says about the protests over police violence against the African-American population that gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement (Black Lives Matter, in English).

“It is a difficult job.

They risk their lives.

Sometimes it's shoot or die ”, he points out.

At the end of the conversation, he takes his greased hands off the engine of this old vehicle and throws an omen with which, he says, most of the town's residents agree.

"I did what I could."

I went to vote for him and I continue with my life.

I don't know what will happen in the next four years.

But I guess we'll have to wait ...

- What are you going to expect?

—I'm sure Trump will return in 2024. And if not him, someone with his character, with the guts to lead this great country.

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Source: elparis

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