Transcript: Swamp Notes — How do you win Pennsylvania?

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Swamp Notes — How do you win Pennsylvania?’

Sonja Hutson
Pennsylvania is one of five states that flipped from Donald Trump in 2016 to Joe Biden in 2020. And if Biden wants to stay in the White House, he’ll have to hold on to it in 2024.

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This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the FT News Briefing, where we talk about all of the things happening in the 2024 US presidential election. I’m Sonja Hutson, and this week we’re asking: how do you win Pennsylvania? Here with me to discuss is Derek Brower. He’s the FT’s US political news editor. Hi, Derek.

Derek Brower
Hi, Sonja.

Sonja Hutson
And we’ve also got Lauren Fedor, the FT’s deputy Washington bureau chief. Hey, Lauren.

Lauren Fedor
Thanks for having me.

Sonja Hutson
OK, so President Joe Biden was on the campaign trail this week. He made stops in Scranton, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, which are all cities in Pennsylvania. So what’s got Biden so focused on the state?

Lauren Fedor
Well, on one hand, I think there’s a point of personal pride and affection. Joe Biden was born in Scranton, and he loves talking about it. Despite him obviously spending most of his adult life in Delaware. So there’s probably a bit of sentimentality, but there’s also some pretty hard-nosed politics going on here. Pennsylvania is a critical swing state, and I know we talk about swing states being key, but I think Pennsylvania may be the most key. It has 19 electoral college votes, which is a lot. And it is a state that has been decided more or less by about one percentage point the last two election cycles. So back in 2016, Trump won there by just under a point. And then in 2020, Biden was able to flip it to the Democrats, winning by just over a point. It’s pretty widely accepted on both sides that if Biden is going to want to stay in the White House for another four years, he needs to, at the minimum, hold on to Pennsylvania in November.

Sonja Hutson
Derek, is Trump similarly focused on Pennsylvania?

Derek Brower
He is very focused on Pennsylvania. He was in Pennsylvania this week at a rally in a place called Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, about an hour and a half slightly north-west of Philadelphia. I was at the rally.

Donald Trump voice clip
I’m thrilled to be back in this beautiful commonwealth with thousands of . . . 

Derek Brower
And his message at this rally was really interesting because it was tailored to a very rural, very blue-collar vote that he needs in Pennsylvania and especially about natural gas.

Donald Trump voice clip
Pennsylvania, drill, baby, drill, get back to drilling. (Crowd cheering)

Derek Brower
Pennsylvania is a really big producer of shale gas, so it employs a lot of people in Pennsylvania. It’s kind of part of the identity in western Pennsylvania. And the Biden administration recently banned new liquefied natural gas projects. And the upshot of that is that Pennsylvanians who produce gas think that that’s going to cut off some of the market and it’s going to hurt jobs and so on. So the Trump campaign thinks this was a bit of a gift from the Biden administration to them, and they are seizing on it.

Donald Trump voice clip
He’s risking your lives. He’s risking your jobs, but he doesn’t care because all he cares about is the Green New scam, the Green New Deal.

Sonja Hutson
OK, so Trump’s really focused on energy. What about Biden? What’s he focusing on in Pennsylvania?

Lauren Fedor
Well, he’s going after the same voters as Trump, perhaps unsurprisingly. And, while this oil and gas issue is obviously a vulnerability for the Biden campaign when it comes to these blue-collar workers, they still believe that, quote unquote, Scranton Joe has an edge with the blue-collar workers as well. So when he was in Scranton this week, for example, he really leaned into a message about tax policy and the idea that Donald Trump would be giving tax breaks to his rich friends from Palm Beach, whereas Joe Biden would be fighting for working-class families and ensuring that their taxes didn’t go up.

US President Joe Biden voice clip
It’s a stark contrast from my opponent. He looks at the economy from Mar-a-Lago, where he and his rich friends embrace the failed trickle-down policies that have failed working families for more than 40 years.

Lauren Fedor
It’s the split screen that they’re trying to create between Scranton and Mar-a-Lago, they say.

US President Joe Biden voice clip
Scranton values are Mar-a-Lago values. These are the competing visions for our economy. And they raise questions of . . . 

Lauren Fedor
I don’t know if it’ll work, but that’s the message. I mean, but he’s also targeting specific industries, too, right? So later in the week, then he went to Pittsburgh, where he made this extremely kind of robust speech calling to triple tariffs on Chinese steel imports. This is, you know, throwing a bone really to the steel industry, which is also a huge driver of jobs and the local economy, particularly in the middle of the state.

Sonja Hutson
OK. So it seems like both Biden and Trump are bringing these economically populist messages to the state of Pennsylvania. Are they both coalescing around a similar economic strategy, or are there key differences that we haven’t quite talked about yet?

Derek Brower
I think there’s a lot of similarities. That’s the truth that neither campaign really wants to say (laughter). If we’re looking at this day as a battle to get those blue-collar votes, it’s all about Biden persuading steelworkers and union voters in the west, and particularly around Pittsburgh, that he has their interests at heart and persuade them. And Trump persuade shale gas voters that he has their interests at heart. And both of those messages, in a way, come down eventually to the same thing, which is about protectionism and about exuding American economic power on the global stage, about resisting China. And it’s already in terms of the Biden administration, leading to pretty significant policy interventions. Biden, as Lauren said, proposing to treble tariffs on Chinese steel imports and also calling for an investigation into unfair practices by China in trading steel, and also intervening to suggest that he, Biden, is not keen on the takeover of US steel by Nippon Steel, Japanese company. You know, these are rather nakedly populist messages for steel workers in a bid to secure the backing of the union and the votes of their many members.

Sonja Hutson
So we talked a lot about blue-collar workers, but they are not the only demographic in Pennsylvania. Who else do Trump and Biden have to win over?

Lauren Fedor
So, I mean, it’s not the most politically correct phrase, perhaps, but James Carville, who is the famous Democratic strategist from Bill Clinton’s campaign, refers to Pennsylvania as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in the middle (laughter). So we’ve covered the Alabama in the middle bit. But you do have these major metropolitan areas on either side of the state, which are huge centres of population and all the rest that comes with it. Philadelphia, for example, is a very diverse, socio-economically, racially diverse city. And then you have very affluent suburbs around Philadelphia, which we spend a lot of time talking about when it comes to Pennsylvania politics. These are voters who maybe historically might have voted Republican. And in the Trump era, particularly female voters have drifted away from him. And when we talk about these voters, the issue that comes up again and again is abortion. I know you talked about this on the show last week, but this is an issue that Trump is very concerned that he’s losing ground with these women and trying to moderate his position about as quickly as he can to try to stem those losses.

Derek Brower
Yeah, it’s really it could come down the election in general, but especially in this state, Pennsylvania, it could come down to how many votes Trump loses around Philadelphia and how many votes Biden loses in the Pittsburgh area, where steel is such a big deal and shale gas is such a big deal. It’s a really fascinating battle.

Sonja Hutson
What do you think that Pennsylvania can teach us about some of the challenges that Trump and Biden face across the country in this election?

Lauren Fedor
I think that Pennsylvania, you know, we’ve talked about how it’s a critical swing state, but it’s also a real kind of microcosm of the country. So we’ve hit on a variety of policy issues here and demographics. And the reality is these are issues and demographics and groups of voters that the candidates are going to be talking about in the other swing states and also more broadly across the country. So I think watching how those dynamics and balancing those messages plays out in Pennsylvania is also a real indicator of how the messaging will happen, but also how the voting obviously will happen in November.

Sonja Hutson
The other thing that really strikes me is that it must be so fun to live in a swing state, like I have always lived in states that were either reliably Republican or reliably Democrat, and it must be fun to, like, have the national spotlight on you in this way.

Lauren Fedor
I think in some ways, I mean, as a political junkie, yes, I share your feeling that it must be nice, particularly for, you know, these kind of ordinary voters who have chances to see these presidential candidates or the president of United States himself up close and personal. Equally, if you lived in one of these states and you had to watch the number of television ads and have the number of unsolicited phone calls and mailers stuffing your mailbox, you talked to voters in the state like Pennsylvania, and they are so ready for the election to be over come November. You might feel that way.

Sonja Hutson
All right. Fair enough. I don’t know how good I’ve got it (laughter). All right. We’re going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we’re going to do Exit Poll.

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Sonja Hutson
And we are back with Exit Poll, where we talk about something that did not happen on the campaign trail and apply rigorous political analysis to it. So the Washington, DC area is home to three different airports. There is Reagan National Airport, which is my personal favourite. There is also the Baltimore Airport, which will take you a good 45 minutes to drive to from DC And then there’s Dulles, which I can already hear the groans from anyone who has flown in and out of there. Earlier this month, Republicans in Congress proposed renaming Dulles after former president Donald Trump. So, Derek and Lauren, what do you think? Could this name change be good or bad for Trump?

Lauren Fedor
I think this is very bad for Donald Trump, and I think he should push back against it with all his might. As a fellow Washington, DC resident and one who travels a lot for work, I avoid Dulles like the plague. I think the people movers, which, are some sort of seventies contraption that look like a scene out of Star Wars, and if you have never been to Dulles and are listening, you should Google it and see what I’m talking about, are, you know, torture chambers. This is a horrible airport with horrible lines, and everything about it is horrible, and I would not want my name anywhere near it. And I can’t imagine that Donald Trump would either.

Derek Brower
I have two points to make on this matter. The first one is that nobody who lives in the DC area can really complain. Unless you also have lived in the New York metropolitan area about the airports. (laughter)

Sonja Hutson
All right, that’s fair.

Lauren Fedor
I have Derek, I have, I’ve been to Newark many times.

Derek Brower
You should know better then. You should know better (laughter). You have it so good down there. The second point is, how can you talk about draining the swamp and then having an airport in the swamp named after you? I mean, come on.

Lauren Fedor
It is in Virginia. It is in Virginia.

Sonja Hutson
I think it still counts as like the larger swamp area.

Lauren Fedor
Hmm. True.

Sonja Hutson
All right. I want to thank our guests, Derek Brower, the FT’s US political news editor. Thanks, Derek.

Derek Brower
Thank you.

Sonja Hutson
And Lauren Fedor, she’s our deputy Washington bureau chief. Thanks, Lauren.

Lauren Fedor
Thanks, Sonja.

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Sonja Hutson
This was Swamp Notes, the US politics show from the FT News Briefing. If you want to sign up for the Swamp Notes newsletter, we’ve got a link to that in the show notes. Our show is mixed and produced by Ethan Plotkin. It’s also produced by Lauren Fedor. Special thanks to Pierre Nicholson. I’m your host, Sonja Hutson. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz, and Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Check back next week for more US political analysis from the Financial Times.

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