I’m Lisa Scheller: This is why I want Pennsylvania’s vote in the midterm election to be secure. Please don’t make me ask again: Please, please, please!
I’m Lisa Scheller. The New England bureau chief for the New York Times Magazine. I write about everything from pop culture to politics, the media and social trends. My writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, USA Today, Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Observer. My most recent book was “Cultivating the Brand: The Corporate Culture That Changes Everything.” My Web site is lisacheller.com.
The president has a habit of making the people of a district feel like strangers during his campaign for reelection. He doesn’t tell your story, you don’t get to know his, and he just makes people feel bad, whether for the right or the wrong reasons. And then he goes on to do what he wants, like telling Republicans in his base to vote for their guy or making people with bad feelings about the president feel even less secure when they face him or his party in November 2018.
What does that mean for Pennsylvania?
PA-18 is an old industrial coal country, one of the five regions of the state, and one of the top battlegrounds of the 2018 election.
And it’s now in its fourth year of the president’s presidency. Over the same period of time, Pennsylvania has seen four different U.S. Senate hopefuls and a record number of special elections. But so far this cycle, the state hasn’t seen a single statewide candidate win an election, and that’s because it’s the president.
We’ll see where this goes. The president is in Philadelphia Wednesday for two primary debates at the University of Pennsylvania. I’ll be there with a colleague, Adam Bonica, the Washington Post’s chief political correspondent. It’s a historic race and a historic election in Pennsylvania.
The president�
