One of the primary explanations for Republican success in Pennsylvania’s elections over the past decade has been the pronounced absence of competition. Still reeling from the scandals of 2005 and 2006 which led to the conviction and incarceration of the Democratic House leadership and separate scandals involving the most powerful Democrat in the Senate (which also led to his incarceration but somehow failed to restrict his ability to disperse campaign funds to other candidates from his jail cell), the Pennsylvania Democratic Party had become an “old boys network,” so willing to accept its role as the minority Party it didn’t even complain when its districts were gerrymandered.

            In what should be a strong message to traditional Party Democrats all across the country, the voters of Pennsylvania just announced they are done with the bullshit.  Rejecting the incumbent Lieutenant Governor, they nominated John Fetterman, the working-class Mayor of Braddock, whose campaign ads featured his constituents and few of them were white. In the races for State Legislature from the Pittsburgh region, the voters rejected two longtime incumbents, the Costa brothers, whose names had become as familiar to voters as Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin; nominating, instead, two female Democratic Socialists.

            The message is clear. The People are finished with right-wing demagoguery and the flaccid Democrats who have enabled it. I’m sure Bernie Sanders is smiling.

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