US election 2020: Trump, Biden and America’s agents of change
If Donald Trump is to lose the US election, it will be because of women like Lauren Carey.
If Donald Trump is to lose the US election, it will be because of voters like Lauren Carey. A lifelong Republican, this 40-year-old hairdresser and mother of two voted for Trump in 2016 because he promised something different.
But then came the coronavirus, forcing Carey to close her hair salon for 115 days straight, a fact she blames on the President’s refusal to take the virus seriously.
“We were closed for so long it really hurt us. It’s tough, even now business is slow, my customers are scared and I’m scared too,” she tells me as she rakes leaves in the yard of her home in the suburbs of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. “Trump knew it was serious, but he did nothing early on and look what has happened. Now I’m worried that he will also take away my healthcare (Obamacare) in the middle of a pandemic. So I am voting Democrat for the first time in my life. I’m voting for Joe Biden.”
As Trump barnstorms the US to try to catch Biden in the final weeks of this campaign, it is voters like Carey he is most worried about. Carey is a suburban woman, the demographic most hostile to Trump. And she is from Pennsylvania, the most important swing state alongside Florida.
Trump stunned Hillary Clinton by winning Pennsylvania in 2016 by just 44,000 votes, the first Republican to win the state since George HW Bush in 1988.
With its 20 electoral college voters, Pennsylvania is a must-win state for Trump and he currently trails Biden here by 4.9 points.
But, while Trump still enjoys strong support in rural Pennsylvania, he is bleeding support in the suburbs of its cities and towns and the main reason is a precipitous fall in support from suburban women such as Carey.
In 2016, Trump won white women in Pennsylvania by 50 per cent to 47 per cent for Clinton, but polls now show Biden winning this demographic in the state by anywhere between 13 and 23 points, with suburban women leading the charge. The reasons they most often cite for abandoning the President is his mismanagement of the coronavirus and his combative style.
It is a nationwide problem for the President, who now uses his rallies around the country to plead with suburban women for their votes.
Down the road from Carey’s house, in the middle-class outer western suburbs of Philadelphia, Linda Burris says she is also a lifelong Republican who will now be casting her vote for Biden.
The IT worker and mother of two voted for Trump in 2016 and believes he has done a good job with the economy. She respects his “business prowess” but says Trump has divided the nation and turned it into a country she can no longer relate to.
“Trump has been good for the economy and I voted for him to see if something different would happen,” she says. “But the comments he makes, I just feel that he has divided the nation. I don’t think that a vote for Biden is a vote for socialism so I would like to vote for how I am feeling morally. I think Biden gives us a better chance of this country acting properly towards each other again.”
Yet if Trump is to win Pennsylvania — and he still has a genuine chance — it will be because of voters like Ken Boxen from Beaver County, west of Pittsburgh.
The 55-year-old father of four was a lifelong Democrat until he voted for Trump in 2016. Boxen lives next to the rusted remains of a steel mill, a sad reminder of the days when Beaver County was a steel powerhouse. His home town of Beaver Falls was full of Democrat union workers who toiled at the mill.
“My father, my grandfather and all my uncles worked there and I was expected to follow them too,” Boxen tells me as he tends to his garden in a street full of run-down weatherboard homes.
But Boxen, who works as a dispatcher for American Airlines, believes Trump is now the better choice for middle-class working Americans.
“I think Trump has done a fine job,” he tells me. “I mean, the economy was booming before the pandemic and I think he is doing a fine job on COVID. I like his America First attitude, we’ve helped so many countries out around the world but it needs to stop, we need to take care of our own.”
Boxen is opposed to Obamacare because he says he had to pay far higher premiums than before and he says he is worried about Biden. “Biden is a career politician and he is more polished than Trump,” he says. “But I know he has had medical issues, he has had two brain surgeries, and I don’t think he is going to lead this country well.”
While many voters, especially women, are turned off by Trump’s abrasive style, others admire his willingness to fight for what he wants despite relentless attacks from his enemies and a largely liberal US media.
“It is just not fair what the man has to put up with every single day from the left and from the media,” says Sam Bruno, standing near a Trump 2020 sign in his yard in the hardscrabble town of Ambridge on the Ohio River.
Bruno, a 59-year-old council worker, says he likes Trump because he relishes a fight. “He is going really good because he cares for us workers and he cares for the United States, he is a fighter. Someone has to do something about these left-wing crazies like Antifa and Biden is not going to do it. In fact, Biden gave our country away for the past 47 years.
“I care about the economy and about work, and Trump will be much better for the economy. I think the stockmarket will actually crash if Biden wins.”
Walter Betke, a retired train conductor, says he thinks Pennsylvania will vote for Trump because “Biden wants to get rid of fracking”.
Fracking to extract oil or gas employs up to 50,000 people in Pennsylvania. At his rallies, Trump accuses Biden of pledging to abolish fracking, yet Biden says he would not end fracking, but would only ban new fracking on federal land.
Betke, 72, says Trump has done “okay” as President and he likes how he has “rocked the boat” in America.
“He is not a career politician and he talks before he thinks but that is okay with me,” he says, standing in front of an American flag in Beaver Falls. “He is creating jobs and turning it all around. The trouble with Biden and the left, they want to give a lot of stuff for free, like free college and other stuff. But somebody has to pay for it, nothing comes for free.”
In Pennsylvania the biggest issues for voters are the economy and the coronavirus, which has infected almost 200,000 in the state, killing more than 8600 people.
Danny Hill says he won’t be voting for Trump after watching his wife’s 89-year-old mother die of COVID-19 in late July.
Hill, 71, a former union worker, Democrat and grandfather to 14 children, says his dislike of Trump has turned to rage because of his handling of the pandemic.
“We buried my wife’s mother in August, she died of COVID-19 in a nursing facility,” he says. “She was doing well in life, her mind was fine. But when she got sick we could only look at her through a window. It was horrible, she was a great lady. And then we find out Trump knew how dangerous this virus was months earlier. She might still be here if he had told Americans about it,” he says.
In the suburbs of Philadelphia, Donna Longo, is pounding the pavement, dropping off leaflets at each house for a Republican candidate for the state Senate. She can’t understand why people don’t focus more on Trump’s policies rather than his personality. “He says what he thinks and sometimes he goes over the top but I’m not asking him out to dinner, I’m asking him to fix our country.
“The economy was doing great and I like how he got rid of those (environmental) regulations. Is protecting an endangered slug worth what it costs? And with the pandemic, is it worth keeping our schools closed and having higher suicide rates and drug addiction — is that really worth it?”
Longo, who lost her job as an event scheduler because of the pandemic, now knocks on the doors of voters each day; she believes Trump will win Pennsylvania. “There are very many people I speak to who will not put up a Trump sign because of the backlash they get. You have to have cojones to put up a Trump sign. There is a huge silent majority out here for Trump, I see it every day.”
This was my third visit to Pennsylvania during the campaign and the most common concerns I hear from Trump voters are law and order, the economy and fears that Biden would be beholden to the left wing of the Democrats.
By contrast, Biden voters speak mostly of Trump’s handling of the pandemic and his abrasive style. Not all Democrats are enthused by Biden as a candidate, but still see him as a safe alternative to the volatile incumbent.
Then there are some voters, like 71-year-old Janet Roth, who don’t fit neatly into the trends that polls claim to have uncovered.
Roth, a suburban mother of three, stands in front of a Trump flag in her frontyard in Boothwyn, Philadelphia, and tells me she voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but will now vote for Trump.
“I voted for Hillary last time but Trump has been a pleasant surprise to me,” she says. “I don’t like the way Trump speaks, he can be a little rough. But I like what he has done to the country. He has been good for the economy and for law and order, and he has kept his promises, which is more than I can say about ones in the past.
“I don’t feel he has got the respect and gratitude for what he has done. I am especially worried about the violence taking place in our cities. People rioting and destroying small business and taking away people’s livelihoods. We can’t see our freedoms being destroyed, socialism is not a good thing.”
As election day nears and with Biden still enjoying a 7.7-point lead over Trump nationally, Pennsylvania has become the central focus of the campaign. Trump this week held a rally in Erie in the north of the state and told the local crowd, somewhat bravely, that he was only visiting their town because the polls were tight in Pennsylvania.
“Four or five months ago when we started this whole thing … before the plague came in, I had it made,” Trump told the crowd. “I wasn’t coming to Erie. I mean, I have to be honest, there’s no way I was coming. I didn’t have to. And then we got hit with the plague, and I had to go back to work. Hello, Erie. Can I please have your vote?”
The Biden campaign also chose Pennsylvania this week for Barack Obama’s first public event of the campaign in a speech aimed at turning out the black vote in Philadelphia.
“Philadelphia, we got 13 days — 13 days until the most important election of our lifetimes,” Obama told a drive-in car rally outside the Philadelphia Phillies baseball stadium.
Carey, the hairdresser who is switching her vote from Trump to Biden because of the pandemic, believes Biden is not a perfect solution. “A lot of voters may not even particularly like him,” she says. “But at least he is not Trump. With Trump we are split in half, we are not a country anymore. It is one half against the other. I liked the old way where we used to get along.
“I voted for Trump because I wanted a change and he promised a change. But the change has not been a good one.”
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia.
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