It’s safe to say that things aren’t going well for Vice President Kamala Harris in the pivotal swing state of Pennsylvania, as the 2024 presidential election draws nearer and nearer.
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Not only is the Harris-Walz campaign dead in the water in the Keystone State; if Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is right, Pennsylvania voters are going gaga over former President Donald Trump — bigly.
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In an extensive interview with The New York Times published on Saturday morning, Fetterman opened up about the state of the presidential race in his key battleground state, referring to voter support for Trump as “astonishing,” and even suggesting that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s endorsement of the former president is “going to really matter”:
There’s a difference between not understanding, but also acknowledging that it exists. And anybody who spends time driving around, and you can see the intensity. It’s astonishing. I was doing an event in Indiana [Pa.] County. Very, very red. And there was a superstore of Trump stuff, and it was a hundred feet long.
[There were] dozens of T-shirts and hats and bumper stickers and all kinds of, I mean, it’s like, ‘Where does this all come from?’ It’s the kind of thing that has taken on its own life. And it’s like something very special exists there. And that doesn’t mean that I admire it. It’s just — it’s real.
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Admire it or not, the often mercurial Democrat has the honesty to admit what he sees. And what he sees is Pennsylvania voters enthusiastically supporting Donald Trump like no presidential candidate in recent state history.
Fetterman seemed to be just as surprised, if not more so, that Musk, who endorsed Trump and appeared with him at a rally at the site of the first assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, PA, appears to be working with voters in his state:
And now Musk is joining him. I mean, to a lot of people, that’s Tony Stark. That’s the world’s richest guy. And he’s obviously, and undeniably, a brilliant guy, and he’s saying, Hey, that’s my guy for president. That’s going to really matter.
Hey, John — Musk’s enthusiastic support for Trump is just one more reason for your Democrat colleagues to loathe the multibillionaire. Not as much as they love Trump, of course, but just sayin’.
Fetterman said he was “alarmed” when Musk began showing up on the campaign trail for Trump, and added he’s a “bigger star than Trump” in “some sense.”
I was truly alarmed about that when he started showing up. I mean, I’ve been there, not at that rally [in Pennsylvania], but when they were having the A.I. conference in Washington, he showed up at my building at Russell, and senators were like, Ooh, ooh. They were like, ‘I got to have two minutes, you know, please.’
So if senators are all like ooh! Then can you imagine what voters in Scranton or all across Pennsylvania — you know, in some sense, he’s a bigger star than Trump. Endorsements, they’re really not meaningful often, but this one is, I think. That has me concerned.
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Fetterman is viewed by many of his Democrat colleagues as a bit of a loose cannon, meaning they’re not fond of his honesty and willingness to speak his own mind, regardless of “official” Democrat narratives. Still, he told The Times that he’s confident that enough Pennsylvanians will opt for Harris:
It’s visceral. And that’s why the people that are left that haven’t made up their decision are going, you know, what do I want for the next four years? And I do believe enough people will choose Harris. But it’s going to be much, much closer than anyone would want.
That it is. And it’s my belief that if it is, Trump will win the Electoral College vote.