The Midterm Fight for Pennsylvania’s Nostalgists

At its best, politics can prove quite simple. “You’ve got to make it,” John Peace told me, “personal and emotional.” Peace, the campaign trainer for Rural America Rising, added, “You don’t sell the steak, you sell the sizzle.” The sizzle is pricey. In the 2026 midterms, Americans will spend $11.6 billion on ads, door-to-door, and get-out-the-vote efforts. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has already dropped $42 million on his re-election race. The sizzle is costly but basic: a promise of a better future, premised upon nostalgia for simpler times.

Our times are inflationary. Over the past decade, prices have spiraled 3.1% per year. Since 2016, home prices have jumped 81%. When Trump was re-elected president, the average gallon of gas cost $3.13. Today, it is $4.48. In that same period, childcare costs have leapt by 10%. The pain hits college and non-college, alike. “Childcare,” Seth Trott shared “changed the entire trajectory of our professional and personal lives.” The scarcity and spiraling costs of childcare forced Trott, a lawyer and Chair of the Erie County Democratic Party, to move his family … to Pittsburgh.

Pennsylvanians can teach a masterclass in nail biting. Since 2016, 19,699,227 Pennsylvanians have cast a presidential ballot for Trump or a Democrat. In those three races, Trump has edged Democrats by 84,003 votes, a margin of .003%. Democrats control the state House by 3 seats; the GOP holds the state Senate by 4. Scott estimates that Trump’s “Soft Republicans” comprise 2-3% of the state vote. In the Keystone State’s “tight as a tick” elections, “soft” Republicans spell the difference between victory and defeat. They will decide control of the tightly divided state House and Senate. Five coin-flip congressional races in eastern Pennsylvania spell the margin of control in the House of Representatives.

In the Trump era, “soft” Republicans are college-educated, GOP-leaning professionals, who live in collar communities outside cities. Trump’s 2024 gains with these swing voters in Philadelphia’s “collar” counties amounted to almost half (44,782) his margin of victory in the state. Rural western Pennsylvania has fewer of these “lean” Republicans. But they exist. In Scott’s words, they often “work in the schools” and live in communities adjacent to the region’s smaller metros. In 2026, Shapiro is on the ballot. Scott reports these voters “normally would vote Republican but they like Shapiro. It’s something I’m running into all the time.”

According to polls, Shapiro leads his Republican challenger, State treasurer Stacy Garrity, by twenty points. The governor’s fundraising advantage, $13.3 million to $1.8 million, attests to his strength. Money and good polling do not always mean victory. “We had the same issue with Kamala Harris,” Shank reminded me. “She was going win, she had more money, and the polls were wrong.” Shank is right. Throughout the Trump era, Democrats have had the money, celebrities, and the polls. On Election Day, Lucy held the football, and the Democratic Charlie Browns fell flat in 2 of 3 presidential races.

“Soft” Republicans are key. But turnout is everything. A CBS poll shows an enthusiasm advantage for Democrats. 84% of Democrats reported they would “definitely” vote. 77% of Republicans reported the same. This is where Peace’s campaign sizzle matters. Turnout depends on enthusiasm. “Democrats,” he told me, “they’re too smart for their own good. They want to pitch a documentary; the Republicans have a good slogan.” Sizzle drives turnout. Turnout wins elections.

Rep. Kelly demonstrates the GOP messaging advantage. For Kelly’s reelection, billboards proclaim “250 Years of Freedom, Vote Nov. 3 to Defend It.” Featuring an American flag on one end and Kelly’s visage on the other, the slogan taps into patriotic nostalgia, tying the candidate to that emotion. “It is not in-your-face political,” Brewer told me. “It just hopefully tugs at the heartstrings, if you will.”

Western Pennsylvania Democrats have access to their heartstrings of nostalgia.  This month, Michelle Obama visited the state’s swingiest county, Erie. She was met by a capacity crowd, nearly 8,000 strong. Obama did not choose the state’s bellwether county in mid-October by mistake. A strong Democratic showing in Erie matters for 2026 — and 2028. For Democrats, Obama nostalgia is real, but it goes beyond winning and losing. “The Obamas have become an important symbol of the promise of democracy,” Schultz told me. “And that has become only more vital with Donald Trump’s two terms.” Young and multiracial, the Obamas represent, to many young voters, a time before Washington’s gerontocracy. The University of Illinois-Chicago historian told me: “They [the Obamas] embody a sense of Americanism.”

For many Democrats, Trump’s election called that promise into question. MAGA is nothing if not nostalgic. Trump uses the longing of a simpler past to envision a better tomorrow. This caused an equal and opposite Democratic reaction. “Because of Trump,” Spencer Goidel observed, “the Democratic Party … adopted a very anti-nostalgic stance.” The Auburn University political scientist added, “In the 2020 Democratic primary they were almost competing over who could take the most critical stance on America’s past.”

What earns an A in a history class does not necessarily work in an election. “Statistically,” Peace reminded me, “the American public has a 7^th grade reading level.” For all of Obama’s high-mindedness, “hope” and “change” is how he became the first Democrat since FDR to win back-to-back majority vote presidential elections. Following in that path, Peace instructs his candidates, “You’ve got to connect to the thing that they [voters] care most about.” That thing is a longing for a better age.

For working-class Rust Belters, their nostalgia is not misplaced. In 1950, the region was home to nearly half of all American jobs. In 1975, a western Pennsylvania steel worker made $83,000 per year (in 2026 dollars). The Ohio Valley, an area encompassing Rust Belt cities of Cleveland, Erie, Pittsburgh, and Youngstown, featured some of the highest home ownership rates in the nation. That world, and those jobs, have disappeared. Today, the Ohio Valley is a leader in Deaths of Despair. In a symbol of this, the Erie County (Pennsylvania) Health Department now dispenses free Narcan from a 24-hour vending machine.

Lawrence Quill wrote the book on political nostalgia. Many political theorists deem nostalgia “something unpleasant, conservative or possibly right wing.” But Quill sees it not as a “conservative” phenomenon, but a driving force in politics across the Western world. “A large group of people who are now told that their world no longer exists because it was bad, outmoded, or unfashionable,” he told me. “They feel disconnected and dispossessed. Into that vacuum, you say, I hear your pain, I understand your loss. I speak for you. I represent your interests.”

In 2008, a self-described “guy with a funny name and big ears” did just that. He won Erie County and Pennsylvania twice. Trump, likewise, has won Erie and Pennsylvania twice by speaking to what Quill calls the “legitimacy crisis.” “The political system,” he explained, “no longer represents the interests of large groups of people. It is a spiral of silence; they can no longer issue complaints in the old way.” Political nostalgia is the language of the voter who feels left behind.

MAGA swims in nostalgia, Western Pennsylvania’s native tongue. Ironically, a reformist tradition once saturated in nostalgia is now allergic to it. Radicalized by Trump, “They [progressives] see the past,” Quill shared, “as a place that you would you would never want to return to … almost irredeemable.” The American past, to be sure, is filled with pain and hypocrisy. But FDR and MLK once celebrated the American commitment to do, what Quill described as, “a genuine attempt to do the right thing and reflect on past wrongs.” It was an impulse that Richard Rorty, an iconic leftist political philosopher, termed “Achieving Our Country.”

Schultz sees the irony. To him, the Obamas still embody a sense that, “The democratic promise is still alive. That anybody from any background can achieve the highest levels.” That is the sizzle of political nostalgia. Midterms are referendums on the incumbent. So Democrats can win in 2026 without it; 2028, like every presidential race, is about the future. Republicans know, as Brewer told me, “To reach the median voters you need something that makes them feel good.” Do Democrats?

Jeff H. Bloodworth is professor of American political history at Gannon University and a Fellow with the Truman National Security Project. Follow him on X: @jhueybloodworth.