Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times,

Thousands turned out to the Bayfront Convention Center on Sept. 29 to hear former President Donald Trump speak. Hundreds more gathered outside the convention center to watch Trump’s speech on a jumbo display, while nearby stands were set up to register voters, hawk mail-in ballots, and hand out Trump-Vance yard signs and bumper stickers.

There’s a reason for that: Erie County, which hosts the city of Erie, is a strong indicator of who will win Pennsylvania. Since 1980, with the exception of 1988, the county has backed the winner of statewide presidential races.

While it doesn’t rise to the level of a national bellwether—it’s often backed candidates who went on to lose the general election—since 2008, it’s ultimately backed the candidate who won Pennsylvania.

That makes it a crucial county in 2024, when the winner of Pennsylvania is highly expected by pundits to win the entire election.

As recently as 2008 and 2012, the Democratic Party was king in the county: In his election and reelection bid, President Barack Obama won the county by 20 points and 16.9 points respectively. But in 2016, Trump shifted the county by 18.5 points in Republicans’ favor, and won the county by 1.6 percent.

In 2020, reflecting the razor-thin margins of the election in the state and nationwide, President Joe Biden carried the county by just 1 percent, or 1,417 votes.

The changing politics can be attributed in part to the area’s cultural and demographic background.

A few hours’ drive north of Pittsburgh, Erie County sits at the northwestern end of Pennsylvania, bordering the Great Lake of the same name, upstate New York, and Ohio.

The city of Erie, home to large immigrant and university student populations, is Pennsylvania’s fifth most populous, lying at the northern edge of the county. Beyond that, the area has several suburban areas and developments. The southern half of the county is largely rural, home to several scattered, small townships.

The county’s Rust Belt origins are on full display in Erie, with defunct factories and industrial centers dotting the city and its environs.

An Oct. 2 photo of one of the many former industrial centers in Erie County that have long been shuttered. Joseph Lord/The Epoch Times

Demographics

In many ways, the county, with its mix of urban, suburban, and rural voters, reflects larger voter distributions in Pennsylvania.

“I try to explain it this way: if you take all of Pennsylvania … and you shrink it down, it’s Erie, because we’ve got large industry, we’ve got tool and die … the small mom and pop places. The southern part of the county is all rural, strictly agriculture. You’ve got diversity,” Tom Eddy, chairman of the Erie County GOP, told The Epoch Times.

According to the Census Bureau, the county is home to around 271,000 people.

Around 83 percent of them are white. At an average household income of around $60,663, many voters in the area fall squarely into the white working class, a key electorate for both parties.

This demographic has trended toward Republicans since Trump entered politics. In 2008, about 55 percent of them backed Obama. In 2016, Trump’s first presidential campaign, 62 percent of the white working class voted for him. In 2020, their support dipped to 59 percent.

For Democrats, the goal is to largely hold onto their minority share of the demographic, while expanding among suburban, white collar, and Erie city voters—all demographics more favorable to the party in recent years.

Erie County Democratic Party Chairman Sam Talarico—a former schoolteacher who’s been involved in Democratic politics since 2000—acknowledged that in Erie and across the country, Democrats are increasingly struggling with the white working class.

On the other hand, he noted that suburban areas—such as Fairview Township and Harborcreek, which border the city center to the east and west—are shifting in Democrats’ favor.

“Fairview is our most affluent community, and it used to be a Republican stronghold. It’s about 50/50, right now, possibly a little more blue, and it’s turning bluer,” Talarico said.

Democrats are also striving to keep their substantial lead in the city itself, a lead aided by the city’s vast student and immigrant population—two demographics that also favor the Democratic Party.

Trump and the Republicans, meanwhile, are seeking to expand their lead among the white working class—which makes up a substantial swath of the Pennsylvania electorate—and to win over independents.

Signs along a major roadway show support for former President Donald Trump, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), and Senate contender Dave McCormick in Erie County, Pa., on Sept. 30. Joseph Lord/The Epoch Times

Eddy noted that Democrats do maintain a slight advantage in voter registration in the county, with about 10,000 more registered Democrats than registered Republicans. But the most crucial bloc for both parties is the county’s 35,000 independents.

“I think the big swing is going to be the independent voter,” Eddy said. “They’re the ones that make the difference.”

Speaking about the closing gap between registered Republicans and Democrats in recent years, Talarico said, “I’m not going to say it isn’t concerning. It is.”

But like Eddy, Talarico said the real “X factor” will be the independents.

And many of those independents, he noted, are young people—a demographic that tends to favor Democrats, particularly young women.

For Republicans and Democrats on the ground, the stakes are clear: As goes Erie, so goes Pennsylvania; and as goes Pennsylvania, so goes the election.

Republican Enthusiasm

With just about a month left until the election, Erie County appears more politically active than ever: Bumper stickers, billboards, and yard signs expressing support for one candidate or the other litter the area, with a noticeably stronger showing of “Trump/Vance” signs.

There are strong indicators of Republican enthusiasm.

At GOP headquarters in Erie—a small office space in a strip mall just outside the city center—county residents stopped by in droves.

Republicans’ base of operations in Erie County, Pa., on Oct. 1. Joseph Lord/The Epoch Times

Almost every 10 minutes, a new person came into the office requesting voter registration forms, mail-in ballots, or apparel to show their support for Trump. Many offered $20 donations in exchange for a dwindling supply of Trump shirts. Several purchased apparel for their children.

The office is filling yellow file envelopes with voter registrations and mail-in ballots almost every day—including many who have never voted before. Often, the Republicans run out of apparel to offer voters due to the high demand.

“The energy level is extremely high. That’s what I’ve noticed more than I’ve noticed in any of the other elections,” Eddy said.

The Erie County Democratic headquarters is a few miles away in downtown Erie, comprising a large office space a few dozen blocks from the city center.

Compared to Republican headquarters, the energy level is noticeably muted and less chaotic. Volunteers could be seen talking, watching television, and taking calls in the office’s large backroom area. A handful of other volunteers and voters circled through to collect party apparel, yard signs, or bumper stickers.

While it’s harder to access the building by vehicle, with only a limited number of meter-based parking spots outside, the subdued atmosphere reflects the uncertain position Democrats find themselves in.

Democrats’ headquarters in Erie, Pa., on Oct. 2, 2024. Joseph Lord/The Epoch Times

While Talarico noted that “on paper” his party’s prospects look bleak, Talarico told The Epoch Times that he still sees reason for optimism.

“The most compelling thing I’ve seen is enthusiasm,” he said.

Before Biden’s departure, Democrats had just 60 or so volunteers; since Harris took over the ticket, that number has jumped to 320. Around 250 people attended a vice presidential debate watch party hosted by the county party.

Talarico also noted that Democrats have seen vast success in the county in recent nonpresidential elections.

That’s true. In 2022, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) handily defeated Republican Mehmet Oz in Erie County, winning 53 percent of the vote to Oz’s 44 percent. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro enjoyed greater success the same year, defeating his Republican opponent by a landslide 22-point margin in Erie County.

Thus, Talarico said, Democrats’ position might not be “as dire as it looks on paper.”

‘Trump Factories’

It’s not just the Erie County Republican Party that’s hard at work trying to flip the county back to Trump’s camp.

Leo Williard, a small business owner, has set up what he calls “Trump factories” in two auto dealerships owned by his friend and located just outside downtown Erie.

While still managing his own business, Williard told The Epoch Times that he spends hours every week talking to and converting Democratic voters to Trump’s side.

Williard said he was inspired to do so by the city of Erie’s Democratic leanings: While the rural and suburban areas are more evenly divided, the city itself votes overwhelmingly for Democrats.

Many of those who come into the dealership are from the city, he said.

“And we started talking to those people, and I have a table set up in the corner of his office up there that I call the ‘Trump corner.’ I call this whole process the ‘Trump factory,’” Williard said, adding that he was bringing as many as five to 15 Democrats a day over to Trump’s side.

“You can’t believe the people we are turning from Democrat to Trump.”

For many, financial concerns—particularly inflation—are the most pressing issue, Williard said, agreeing that inflation could be described as “the No. 1 issue” in the county right now. The modest income of many residents makes the hit harder than it might be in more affluent areas, Williard said.

Williard said that Democrats’ decision to nominate Vice President Kamala Harris did energize the Democratic base in the city, but he is confident.

“I still think that Erie County, based on the work I see being done and the enthusiasm I see, will go red. I think it will turn the state red,” Williard said.

Republicans have seen strong signs for optimism—but recent Democratic victories in the county still undercut any sort of certainty.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

During the misnamed and mostly preposterous debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a moderator fact-checked Trump’s claim that crime is up.

In contrast to Trump’s claim, moderator David Muir said that the FBI reports that crime is down, a claim that likely struck every viewer as obviously wrong.

Shoplifting was not a way of life before lockdowns. Most cities were not demographic minefields of danger around every corner. There was no such thing as a drugstore with nearly all products behind locked Plexiglas.

We weren’t warned of spots in cities, even medium-sized ones, where carjacking was a real risk.

It is wildly obvious that high crime in the U.S. is endemic, with ever less respect for person and property. As for the FBI’s statistics, they’re worth about as much as most data coming from federal agencies these days.

They’re there for purposes of propaganda, manipulated to present the most favorable picture possible to help the regime.

Lies, Damn Lies and Government Statistics

This is certainly true of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Commerce Department, which have been shoveling out obvious nonsense for years.

Professionals in the field know it but go along for reasons of professional survival. In truth, we’ve never had a real economic recovery since lockdowns.

Crime is up. Literacy is down. Trust has collapsed. Societies were shattered and remain so.

Only a few weeks following the officious fact-check at the debate, we now have new data from the National Crime Victimization Survey.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

“The urban violent-crime rate increased 40% from 2019–2023. Excluding simple assault, the urban violent-crime rate rose 54% over that span. From 2022–2023, the urban violent-crime rate didn’t change to a statistically significant degree, so these higher crime rates appear to be the new norm in America’s cities.”

But the FBI tries to tell you that crime is down. Sure, whatever they say.

The report isolates the “post-George Floyd protests” because no media source wants to mention the lockdowns. It is still a taboo subject.

We somehow cannot say, even now, that the worst abuses of rights in U.S. history in terms of scale and depth were a disaster, simply because saying so implicates the whole of the media, both parties, all government agencies, academia and all the upper reaches of the social and political order.

Politics Has Become Life and Death

The problem of political division is getting alarmingly serious. It’s no longer just about competing yard signs and loud rallies. We now have regular assassination attempts, plus even an extremely strange appearance of a bounty put on a candidate’s head by an official agency.

Surveys have shown that 26 million people in the U.S. believe that violence is fine to keep Trump from regaining the presidency. Where might people have gotten that idea

Probably from many Hollywood movies that fantasize about having killed Hitler before he accomplished his evil plus the nonstop likening of Trump to Hitler, and hence one follows from another.

Liken Trump to Hitler and that is the result you produce.

There’s private violence, public violence and many forms in between including vigilante violence. Rights violations against person and property are now normalized.

This springs from the culture of our times which has been heavily informed and even defined by the deployment of state violence in service of policy goals, at a scale, scope and depth never before seen.

The Role of Censorship

Censorship is a major part of it. Censorship is the deployment of force in service of state power, and other institutions connected to state power, for purposes of culture planning.

It’s exercised by the shallow state, in response to the middle state, and on behalf of the deep state. It’s a form of violence that interrupts the free flow of information: the ability to speak, and the ability to learn.

Censorship trains the population to be quiet, afraid and constantly stressed, and it sorts people by the compliant versus the dissidents. Censorship is designed to shape the public mind toward the end of shoring up regime stability. Once it starts, there’s no limit to it.

I’ve mentioned to people that Substack, Rumble and X could be banned by the spring of next year, and people respond with incredulity. Why? Four years ago, we were locked in our homes and locked out of churches, and the schools for which people pay all year were shut down by government force.

If they can do that, they can do anything.

Remember Free Speech?

Censorship has been so effective that it’s changed the way we engage with each other even in private. Brownstone Institute, which I founded, recently held a private retreat for scholars, fellows and special guests.

One very special guest wrote me that she was completely shocked at the freedom of thought and speech that was present in the room. As a mover in the highest circles, she had forgotten what that was like.

This censorship coincides with a strange valorization of violence that we are presented with from all over the world: Ukraine, the Middle East, London, Paris and many American cities. Never have so many held video cameras in their pockets and never have there been so many platforms on which to post the results.

One does wonder how all these relentless presentations of destruction and killing affect public culture.

Why They’re Doing It

What purpose are all these soft, hard, public and private exercises of violence serving? The standard of living is suffering, lives are shortening, despair and ill health are main features of the population and illiteracy has swept through an entire generation.

The decision to deploy violence to master the microbial kingdom did not turn out well. Worse, it unleashed violence as a way of life.

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society,” wrote Frederic Bastiat, “over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”

That is precisely where we are. It’s time we talk about it and name the culprit. Liberty, privacy and property were already unsafe before 2020 but it was the lockdowns that unleashed Pandora’s box of evils.

We cannot live this way. The only arguments worth having are those that name the reason for the suffering and offer a viable path back to civilized living.