As the only Horizon regular who is also a resident of a battleground state in this here upcoming election (not that I can vote, mind), here is a Pennsylvania update for you locked-and-loaded CA and TX types.
If you think it might be cool or fun to live in a swing state, where your vote actually matters and candidates pander shamelessly to you—well, it is, sort of ... James Carville famously defined Pennsylvania as "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in between." Even if that formulation isn't strictly true—much of the state is more like Kentucky than Alabama—it still basically works. The Democrats get the big cities while the Republicans get the middle of the state. The only wild cards are the Philly suburbs, with large numbers of Republican-registered moderates and the industrial southwest, where blue-collar Democrats tend to vote Republican when nobody's looking ... this time, it looks like neither candidate is going to win the presidency without us. And that feels kind of good, but also kind of scary.
Posted by Alan Allport at September 20, 2004 11:42 AMYes, Carville is almost right. Pennsylvania is a border state. The Mason-Dixon Line starts 15 miles south of Philadelphia. People tend to forget that.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at September 20, 2004 12:31 PM