Shapiro’s way: listen and solve problems
By Richard Robbins
Our political divisions are deep, but the gaps can be bridged with follow through and a willingness to engage. At least that’s what Josh Shapiro thinks.
The headlines from Tim Alberta’s recent article in The Atlantic about the Pennsylvania governor focused on Shapiro’s reaction to Kamala Harris’s recent book about the 2024 presidential campaign, “107 Days.”
The former vice president wrote that Shapiro peppered her with so many questions about his potential role as vice president that she was stunned by his brashness. At one point in her interview of Shapiro as a possible running mate, she said she felt obliged to tell the governor that he would not be co-president.
The governor told Alberta that Harris’s characterization of their interactions was “complete and total” nonsense.
“I can tell you that her accounts are just blatant lies,” Gov. Shapiro said.
Last week on MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), Shapiro refused to back down. “I stand by what I said,” he told interviewer Symone Sanders Townsend.
But that was only a part of the Alberta article. Far greater space was given over to Shapiro’s diagnosis of the problems Democrats have when trying to touch base with Republican voters, Trump-only voters in particular, and his own success in doing so.
Four times over the course of several conversations, Alberta wrote, Shapiro pointed out that 30% of the ballots cast for him as governor in 2022 came by way of Trump voters.
In the current era of extreme political partisanship, 30% cross-over voting is astounding.
How bad is the current political divide? According to past and recent polling, it is the worst of the last two or three decades. Here are examples from the relatively benign years of 2000, 2004, and 2008.
Based on CNN polling, both the Republican candidate for president in 2000, George W. Bush, and his Democratic rival, Al Gore, enjoyed voter favorable ratings in the 60% range as election day neared.
President Bush’s Democratic opponent four years later, John Kerry, grew more and more popular as the campaign advanced, even after debating Bush three times on national television.
On the cusp of the 2008 election, both Barack Obama and John McCain “were viewed favorable by voters – 63% for Obama, 54% for McCain,” according to Paul Kane of the Washington Post.
In contrast, only 38% of voters held favorable opinions of Trump as election day neared in 2016, while Hillary Clinton got a 42% likeability rating.
Neither Trump nor Harris were overarching popular choices for president in 2024. While wildly popular with fellow-party members, both Trump and Harris drew scant support from the other side.
The partisan divide is also evident in Senate and House elections. Crossover voting, or ticket-splitting, is exceedingly rare nowadays.
Shapiro, who is widely assumed to harbor thoughts of running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2028, told Alberta that he has consistently shown throughout his political career an ability to win GOP votes.
It’s not, for example, in Shapiro’s political DNA to assault Republican voters, as Obama did when he remarked on small-town, economically frustrated Pennsylvanians reaching out for guns, religious bromides, and an immigrant or two to hate, in order to ward off social, economic, and political irrelevancy.
“Instead of offering his prescription for how he’d make it better, [Obama] insulted the very folks who were suffering,” the governor said.
Likewise with Hillary Clinton’s widely-panned “deplorables” comment about Trump voters in 2016, when she labeled half of them “racist, sexist,” and so forth and so on.
Shapiro told Alberta, “The vast majority of people that I confront everyday are really good people and, at least in Pennsylvania, are willing to split their tickets to vote for people that they think are gonna … make their lives better.”
The governor said, “I’ll talk to anybody.”
Seeing is believing. As governor for three years, Shapiro has been in and out of ruby-red Republican Southwestern Pennsylvania, including Fayette and Washington counties, any number of times.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail. com.