Pennsylvania voters chose Trump despite Democrats’ warnings that he is a fascist

In the final days before the presidential election, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign pushed tough against the argument that former President Donald Trump would rule like a dictator.

Harris pointed to Trump’s former chief of staff’s comments about his compliance with the definition of fascism, and it has become a focal point for the party, which has made protecting democracy a cornerstone of its platform since President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.

For Rocco Vernacchio, a registered Democrat from South Philadelphia, the rhetoric was troubling, but the economic picture was worse.

“I think someone should put a sock in Trump’s mouth,” Vernacchio said after voting for him last week.

Like many voters, Vernacchio was able to reject Trump’s often brutal and anti-democratic comments because he liked what Trump was promising and felt heard on his No. 1 issue.

Political analysts and voters explained in their own words why the Democrats’ fascist warnings failed: The electorate was more interested in the economy than in democracy. For eight years, they heard Trump say inflammatory things, and his sometimes folksy demeanor was at odds with the idea that he could rule like a dictator.

Voters also seemed to have tiny memories, and even colorful images of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol at the end of Trump’s last term were blurred for many who were more focused on their weekly bills.

“People probably reasoned that Trump was president and didn’t govern that way, so the threat wasn’t as immediate as higher prices,” said Democratic strategist JJ Balaban.

“Fear of fascism can be a luxury for people who are financially comfortable.”

“We can’t afford eggs”

Several strategists said working-class voters were the reason Harris lost and Trump won, and the failed argument about fascism also reflects how Democrats have struggled to respond to people’s economic problems.

“When voters said, ‘We can’t afford eggs,’ the response was, ‘But the economy is good and it’s a democracy,'” said Alison Dagnes, a political science professor at Shippensburg University in Cumberland County.

“It is this tone deafness that makes people feel unheard and unvalued.”

In hindsight, the Democrats’ message was probably condescending to some voters, said Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist in western Pennsylvania. Even if there were signs that the economic outlook was good, people weren’t feeling it yet, so telling them otherwise was the wrong message. This may have been especially true in Pennsylvania, where the economic recovery from the pandemic has lagged compared to other parts of the country.

“As a party, we tend to shame people who don’t immediately agree with us,” Mikus said. “Sometimes even if they agree with us, the way we become so preachy turns off people who might agree with us.”

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And in politically divided times, it’s straightforward to point the finger back. James Pizzo, a Trump supporter in South Philly, has never been concerned about his increasingly violent and authoritarian rhetoric. He was more concerned about what Democrats were saying about Republicans.

“What about the Democratic Party?” Pizzo said after voting at the East Passyunk Community Center in South Philadelphia. “What about what they call us? I’m not trash. I’m not a fascist. I am not Hitler!”

That sentiment was shared by many Trump voters Tuesday at the polling place at 10th and Mifflin streets.

Anthony Cram, 66, said he voted for Trump because “the world is on fire.”

His wife Shannon added: “And he’s drowning too.”

Trump won Pennsylvania by the largest margin since Ronald Reagan and held Harris to the lowest Democratic margin in Philadelphia in two decades. It gained across the state, including in working-class communities from Allentown to Johnstown.

» READ MORE: Donald Trump won Pennsylvania with more votes than any other Republican candidate in history. Here’s how he did it.

“It smells like something familiar.”

Some voters have become desensitized to Trump’s weirdness. The former real estate mogul turned MAGA leader has been on the political scene since 2015, and as the nation has become accustomed to him, it has become increasingly hard to evoke outrage or even fear with his comments.

That doesn’t mean he didn’t say or do some fundamentally disturbing things. He tried to overturn the 2020 election, and his base of supporters attacked the Capitol during the January 6 riot. He said he would take revenge on his political enemies and suggested that those who did not support him were part of the country’s “internal enemy.” In the final days of his campaign, he joked that it didn’t bother him that journalists were shot at one of his rallies in Pennsylvania.

And many Harris voters voted at the polls on Tuesday precisely because they took Trump literally.

Fabiana Galper, 61, lives in Mount Airy but was born and raised in Argentina.

“I know what it means to live without democracy. I was there for Dirty Warcoups, no rights, dictatorships,” said Galper, who moved to the United States in 1991. “I see the signs. I recognize it. It smells like something familiar.

Carolyn Horton, a 73-year-old Democrat who voted for Harris in Montgomery County, also said she believed the future of democracy was at stake.

“Trump is moving towards wanting to be a dictator,” said a retired executive at Bell Atlantic, now Verizon.

But that fear, while forceful among Harris’ supporters, was not widespread enough to carry her to victory. Voters overwhelmingly supported Trump, indicating they did not see him as a real threat in the way Harris’ campaign purported to portray him.

» READ MORE: Kamala Harris had to surpass Joe Biden’s success in the Philadelphia suburbs to win the Pap. She did worse.

Chris Gregas, a hospice chaplain who lives in Pleasantville, New Jersey – a quintessentially blue state that Trump lost by just four points – said last week that he didn’t think Trump would govern authoritarianly.

“I think Trump’s personality favors people thinking he’s going to be a dictator,” Gregas said. “I really think he’s a strong leader, and I really think that against some of them who have harmed this country, and rightly so. I don’t think he’s attacking the moderate person, the average person.

There has also been abuse of this word fascismsaid Dagnes, a political science professor at Shippensburg. He remembers friends using it to describe, retrospectively, moderate former President George W. Bush.

And this is a word that has no major meaning for a large part of the electorate.

“The American public has heard for so long that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy that it’s like putting a Post-it note on your desk and thinking, ‘I need to remember this,’ but your eyes glaze over,” Dagnes said. “We were overwhelmed by Trump’s content, so when he literally screws up the mic, people shrug.”

At rallies in Pennsylvania last year, many Trump supporters said they took him seriously, but not literally. The campaign helped soften his image by placing him in roles where he didn’t look threatening, such as “working” the fryer at a McDonald’s in Bucks County. Even his own gaffes, such as dancing on stage for 30 minutes or trying to open a garbage truck door, convinced many voters that he was harmless. Voters may also recall his first term and argue that democracy did not end there.

“It’s easy to see why voters reject this assumption,” said Brock McCleary, a Pennsylvania Republican Party consultant. “A reasonable voter looks at Trump’s first term and concludes that he is either really bad at implementing fascism, or it’s just another empty nickname used by Trump’s powerful enemies.”

On Wednesday in Scranton, Matt Wolfson, a 45-year-old former construction worker, looked around at the poverty in the Rust Belt city and thought the nation needed a change of leadership.

Wolfson said he doesn’t like the dictatorial aspect of Trump’s personality, but thinks it will lend a hand keep the country out of war and perhaps bring peace to some other conflicts, including Ukraine.

“There is good and bad. People say he is a dictator. I believe in it. I consider him Hitler,” Wolfson said. “But I voted for this man.”

Authors Jenn Ladd, Sean Collins Walsh, Amy S. Rosenberg and Mike Newall contributed to this article.