Nov 11, 2018 By Richard Robbins 4 min read

Pennsylvania politics got better last Tuesday. Not great, but better.

And that’s not necessarily because Democrats had a good night: both Tom Wolf and Bob Casey coasted to easy victories and the state’s congressional delegation went from a 13-5 split in favor of Republicans to a 9-9 tie, reflecting, if imperfectly, the state’s political divide.

It stems from the fact that some of the races for Congress were close — so close the winners might very well be persuaded to cast aside their ideological blinders in favor of working, every once in a while, with the other side.

The hoped-for result: less stridency and partisanship, more problem-solving.

A case in point is Republican Mike Kelly, who has served several terms in Congress representing the northwestern portion of the state.

Kelly, of Butler, beat Erie attorney Ron DiNicola 52-47 on Tuesday. DiNicola, who has the distinction of having lawyered for Muhammad Ali the last 30 years of the champ’s life, was ahead part of the night.

Contrast this year’s narrowing contest with Kelly’s past election victories. In 2010, he beat the incumbent Democrat, Kathy Dahlkemper, by a 10 point margin. In 2012, he breezed to a 55-41 victory; in 2014, he was triumphant 60-40.

And in 2016, Congressman Kelly ran unopposed.

As a fiery conservative, Kelly once likened the Environment Protection Agency to a terrorist organization. He scored a 95 percent approval rating from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and 71 percent from the conservative Club for Growth.

On the flip side, he was panned by conservation groups and the ACLU.

Let’s see what Kelly does in the next two years, under the lash of a redrawn district (thank you, state Supreme Court). He should moderate some.

On Tuesday, four of the state’s 18 races for Congress were decided by 4 points or less. In half of the races, the winning candidate collected less than 60 percent of the vote. One of the races in the 50-to-60 range was in our own backyard, where Republican Guy Reschenthaler beat Democrat Bibiana Boerio 58-42.

That’s not as bad as it sounds, considering that Donald Trump ran up a 29-point margin in 2016 and Mitt Romney won by 17 points in 2016.

(The district, as presently drawn, wasn’t around during those two elections. The current 14th Congressional District encompasses all of Fayette, Washington, and Greene counties and a portion of Westmoreland County.)

For sure, the Reschenthaler-Boerio race failed to elicit much excitement outside the district. Going in, the Cook Political Report gave the Republican a 99 percent chance of winning. The contest never appeared on the radar screens of Capitol Hill Democrats, as they tried to figure out a way to regain control of the House in 2018.

Following the tally, Boerio told the Herald-Standard’s Mike Tony that the region suffered politically from the neglect of both state and national party leaders. The structural decline of the local Democratic Party apparatus was significant, she indicated.

“Democrats have lost ground in these four counties for a reason,” Boerio said.

Yet the problem is not so much structural neglect, although that is a factor, as where the party’s heart is. More and more the Democratic Party stands for issues important to educated, well-paid whites, suburban women, African-Americans, gays and lesbians, and the growing Latino population.

There is nothing wrong with catering to the needs of these constituent parts. What’s missing in the equation is rural and small-town America.

If Republicans have a black problem (and they do, a problem that has been accelerated under the racially-challenged leadership of the president of the United States Donald Trump), then Democrats have a white working-class problem.

Neither party will again be a truly national party, politically able to knit together a diverse array of Americans from sea to (shining) sea, until one or the other comes to grip with its shortcomings. The good news for Democrats is that they are in better shape for that task than Republicans, who are doubly handicapped by Trump and a recent history hostile to equality of both income and race.

Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.