The Election, as Seen from Swing States

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, Wnyc, David, Arts, Yorker, Society & Culture, Storytelling, Books, New, Remnick, Politics

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2020

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

Joe Biden leads the Presidential race in Pennsylvania by around ten per cent, according to most polls, but Eliza Griswold says you wouldn’t know it on the ground. Republicans in the state have organized a huge registration drive in recent years, and, while Griswold was driving to Biden’s working-class birthplace of Scranton, she saw Trump signs blanketing the lawns and roads. Peter Slevin, reporting from Wisconsin, tells David Remnick that Democrats there organized early, to avoid the mistake that Hillary Clinton made in 2016 of taking the state for granted. Even so, Biden’s campaign has declined to do risky in-person events, but the Trump campaign, until recently, has proceeded as if coronavirus had never happened. Plus, Andrew Marantz talks with a Tennessee pastor who’s struggling with the intersection of politics and faith.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.5	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. If history is any guide at all, the 2020
0:15.9	election will be decided in a few key swing states, maybe even a limited number of swing counties. Today we're
0:23.3	going to talk with a couple of our reporters who are looking at what's happening on the ground.
0:28.1	I went to Lackawanna County because I wanted to see who these new Republicans were in Pennsylvania
0:33.9	and how they were trying to capture Biden's backyard. That's Eliza Griswold.
0:39.3	She's based in Philadelphia, and lately she's been spending a lot of time to the north
0:43.3	in Lackawanna County.
0:45.2	That's the county seat of the very familiar city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, the hometown of
0:50.7	Joe Biden.
0:52.0	In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the county, but just barely.
0:56.3	And since then, the Republican Party has registered more than 100,000 voters in the state of Pennsylvania.
1:02.8	These new voters are people who have been in the Democratic Party for decades whose families were largely Democratic,
1:11.7	belonged to labor unions, and have grown disaffected with the Democratic Party, and really
1:17.2	lots of institutions in Pennsylvania over decades. I mean, here in the past decade, we've had
1:23.1	the Penn State Sandusky sex scandal, the Catholic Church sex scandals, and also so many elected
1:31.6	local officials who have been indicted for embezzlement and other crimes. And that kind of
1:37.7	lack of faith in institutions has really resulted in a departure of long term Democrats from the Democratic Party and they've become Republicans.
1:47.8	Now, why would that drive them to Donald Trump necessarily?
1:51.5	You know, I think it's different for different reasons. For older voters, for older Democratic,
1:57.0	largely Catholic voters, you know, reproductive rights and abortion is just a hugely divisive issue.
2:04.1	And for that reason, as they've watched the Democratic Party move left, they have really,
	...

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