In the rectilinear brick edifice where the commonwealth was born, historian Colin Woodard laid out his theory for why Pennsylvania became the purple heart of America\u2019s political swing region.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Woodard, the bestselling author of \u201cAmerican Nations: A History of the 11 Rival Regional Cultures of North America,\u201d spoke at Philadelphia\u2019s Carpenters\u2019 Hall as part of the historic institution\u2019s series highlighting Pennsylvania\u2019s political history ahead of the midterm elections.<\/p>\n
While territories to the north and south were dominated by distinct communitarian or individualistic cultures, Woodard explained, Pennsylvania has been, since its inception, a kind of liminal zone, a region where pluralistic communities have developed a unique and enduring political fluidity. That culture has roots going back even before the commonwealth declared independence from Great Britain and drafted its first state constitution in Carpenters\u2019 Hall, at the Pennsylvania Provincial Conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an honor to be here \u2026 in the city where this country was created and first governed \u2013 and in a state which, in historical terms, has been \u2026 the quintessentially pluralistic colony, the quintessential swing state,\u201d said Woodard, who is also the director of the Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University\u2019s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, where he studies how America\u2019s historical cultures shape our modern politics and sociology.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the heart of that scholarship is a region he dubs \u201cthe Midlands\u201d \u2013 a horizontal swath extending west from Philadelphia into Ohio that, wedged between Northeastern Yankees and the Deep South and Appalachia, has evolved into what he calls \u201cthe most critical political bellwether in our federation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The key to understanding modern-day Pennsylvania, Woodard explained, is to remember that it was originally a meeting ground for \u201ctwo of the massive cultures which dominate our national life \u2013 and whose clashing values and influence have shaped the character of this country.\u201d Those cultures are Puritanism, the scolding Yankee conviction that humans are \u201cinnately depraved and cannot be trusted,\u201d and Quakers, whose pacifistic utopian vision, promoted by commonwealth founder William Penn, emphasized essential human goodness.<\/p>\n
Woodard explained that the tension between those competing visions lies at the heart of the regional divides that have characterized Pennsylvania for more than two centuries. To this day, while neighboring regions have clear and consistent philosophical leanings \u2013 in the Northeast, \u201ccommunitarian,\u201d with a deep sense of civic responsibility; in the Deep South, defiantly individualistic \u2013 Pennsylvanians are historically more willing to be persuaded in one direction or the other, including on Election Day.<\/p>\n
The roots of that flexibility, explained Woodard, trace back to William Penn, whose faith in humans\u2019 essential decency led to \u201ca surprisingly open immigration policy from the beginning,\u201d in contrast to colonies with strict protocols about who was allowed to enter.<\/p>\n
Colonial Pennsylvania, he said, welcomed \u201cpeople from all over the place \u2026 Right from the beginning, it was this multicultural and multiethnic place where no one group was in charge,\u201d he added. And while Quakers today represent a vanishingly small percentage of the region\u2019s population, their values persist, because \u201ccultures can be transmitted in the absence of the people themselves,\u201d Woodard said.<\/p>\n
Once the pacifist Quakers lost formal control of the colony, \u201call sorts of people streamed in: Amish, Mennonites, Brethren, Doctors, Moravians, Pietist and Palatinate Germans, Irish Catholics, Ulster Protestants, Welsh, Scots, Dutch, African Americans,\u201d he added. And ever since, the corridor extending from Pennsylvania to the lower Great Lakes has been \u201cthe Great Swing Region.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always highly contested. It\u2019s almost always the bellwether of the national consensus, because it\u2019s communitarian, and yet skeptical of top-down government solutions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In presidential elections, Pennsylvanians voted for the abolitionist Republican Abraham Lincoln; the New Deal and Great Society Democrats Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson; the Cold War Republicans Nixon and Reagan; and, in the last two elections, Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn tight elections, it\u2019s always on the edge. It\u2019s always close \u2026 and then it\u2019s almost unanimous in these big omnibus elections, switching over from one party to the other, along with the rest of the country,\u201d mused Woodard. \u201cAnd in many ways, Pennsylvania has also been the keystone that can hold our nation together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the rectilinear brick edifice where the commonwealth was born, historian Colin Woodard laid out his theory for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-312504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}