Despite the blue tsunami, Republicans avoided the 2010 Barack Obama \u201cshellacking\u201d in 63 House seats and seven Senate seats flipped from Democratic control.<\/p>\n
President Trump was effectively on every ballot and the general low regard in which he is held affected all the races.\u00a0 With the possible exception of data centers, local races in the Lehigh Valley were all about national issues and Trump\u2019s character and erratic behavior.<\/p>\n
In my opinion, we lost some very good local Republican legislators in the blowout.\u00a0 The Trump \u201cstain\u201d tainted virtually all Republican legislators, down to Pennsylvania state senators and representatives.<\/p>\n
First-term U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie lost to a firefighters union leader who seemed to lack even the most rudimentary qualifications for high office and avoided debating Mackenzie. Mark \u201cwealth tax\u201d Pinsley, who never saw an election he did not like, beat the very effective state Sen. Jarrett Coleman, and long-term state Rep. Milou Mackenzie lost to a candidate with no observable platform. Here in the Valley, voters provided Democratic candidates with nearly a clean sweep.<\/p>\n
The winners of these local races now must show that they can do better than mouth platitudes about \u201cMedicare for All\u201d and \u201caffordability\u201d with no plans for addressing these issues.<\/p>\n
Now that Trump is a badly weakened lame duck president, remember that his second term was made possible as President Joe Biden and the Democrats energized Republican voters in 2024 by:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Embracing open borders that allowed millions of migrants to illegally enter our country.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Igniting inflationary pressures with the so-called Inflation Reduction Act spending surge.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Trivializing that one quarterly 9% inflation report as \u201ctransitory.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Naming Kamala Harris \u2014 the queen of word salads \u2014 as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee without any primary election process or other input from the voters at large.<\/p>\n
Trump carried considerable baggage into the 2024 campaign, especially that Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Many voters used those four Biden-era miscues to justify giving Trump another chance.\u00a0 He solved the illegal immigration\/open border disaster, attempted to pare back the federal government and reduced taxes, but started or compounded other problems.<\/p>\n
Many voters cited the war with Iran \u2014 intended to keep that country from obtaining nuclear weapons \u2014 as a reason for opposing Republicans. Iran, a large country of over 90 million people, operates as an authoritarian Islamic theocracy, very different from democratic or most authoritarian states.\u00a0 Like the Terminator, the Iranian regime cannot be reasoned with and shows no remorse.<\/p>\n
These characteristics, along with the Iranians\u2019 will to resist and the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz, were badly misjudged by the Trump administration when it commenced hostilities and later found it has no obvious viable exit strategy.<\/p>\n
One clear result for voters is the resulting increase in oil prices, which flowed through manufacturing and became especially visible in high gas prices.\u00a0 Although the war clarified Iran\u2019s commitment to obtaining nuclear weapons, many voters apparently looked the other way.<\/p>\n
It seems that Democrats at all levels campaigned for Medicare for All, including Bob Brooks and Mark Pinsley in the Valley.\u00a0 Here is my situation: I paid into Medicare for 40-plus working years with the Medicare payroll tax when I never needed or used Medicare. Today, I am in original Medicare (not Medicare Advantage) and enjoy very good medical coverage, but I do pay for it with monthly $284 Medicare premium and $377 Medigap supplement.<\/p>\n
The population of the United States is about 350 million people.\u00a0 A little arithmetic suggests that the cost of offering this kind of coverage at no charge to millions who never paid a dime for it is incomprehensible. Already teetering toward bankruptcy, our nation cannot do it.\u00a0 Additionally, the government would eventually have to manage all hospitals and medical providers to hold costs down with obvious reductions in quality of care.\u00a0 Using the Medicare for All slogan to influence voters is disingenuous and dangerous because it raises unwarranted expectations.<\/p>\n
Finally, voters in the Valley and across the country savaged the MAGA \u201cmovement,\u201d the coalition Donald Trump developed to augment his nominal Republicanism.\u00a0 Like most politicians who campaign against growing government deficits and national debt, Trump backed off when charged with governing.<\/p>\n
Will the new Democratic lawmakers do any better?\u00a0 For the sake of our wonderful Lehigh Valley and the nation at large, I sincerely hope so.<\/p>\n
This is a contributed opinion column. James Largay of Upper Saucon Township is a professor emeritus of accounting at Lehigh University. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author(s), and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication. For more details on commentaries, read our guide to guest opinions at mcall.com\/opinion<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite the blue tsunami, Republicans avoided the 2010 Barack Obama \u201cshellacking\u201d in 63 House seats and seven Senate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,1559],"class_list":["post-324815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324815","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=324815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}