Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
Scenes from a swing state. Plus, Ruth Reichl, take me away!
As our bus exited I-78 in Allentown, Pennsylvania, there was sudden silence.
It was October 2024. Looking out, all we could see were Trump 2024 signs, a sea of flags (American, Trump, and Confederate), and assorted shrines to the Republican candidate for president. They were everywhere: on front lawns, in storefront windows, on lamp posts, and outside police stations, as we continued on to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s election field office in Reading, PA.
Visiting northeast Pennsylvania during that time felt like personally starring in a horror movie, cast as the out-of-towner who warns the locals that an evil swamp creature is coming for them. Where, in the end, no one listens.
For geographic context, Taylor Swift was born in Reading, and grew up on a nearby Christmas tree farm. In November 2009, Taylor shared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that one of her chores on the farm as a child was to collect praying mantis egg sacs from the Douglas fir trees, so they didn’t hatch in people’s homes and ruin someone’s Christmas. (Food for thought, as the holidays approach.) The Swifts then moved from Reading to Nashville, Tennessee with 13-year-old Taylor’s music career in mind.
In addition to Reading and West Reading, I traveled to Wilkes-Barre, Plains Township, Pottsville, Shenandoah, and Coatesville during those final months of the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz presidential campaign. This piece in The New York Times perfectly captures just some of what I saw.
The schedules for these bus journeys were always the same. Depart New York at 7:30 am, drive 3-4 hours to that day’s destination, confirm individual assignments at the field office, knock doors (usually on foot) from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm. Then meet back at the local field office, report back in with the (paid) campaign staff, and board buses for the ride back to The Big Apple.
We packed our own breakfast, lunch, and dinner for these sixteen hour days — and ate on the run. We were careful not to waste even one minute, as we worked to get out the vote, in these towns and small cities.
“Are you from New York?” a group of women in their late 20s asked me outside a bar, on a beautiful October day in West Reading.
“Because we really like your coat,” continued one of the women. Her name was Kate.
Since the Trump 2024 campaign bizarrely never organized any kind of “ground game” in Pennsylvania, the locals knew anyone door knocking for the presidential campaign was a Democrat. Likely from New York or Washington, D.C., and in town just for the day.
I introduced myself to these women, asked if they had voted yet, and also asked if they might support Kamala. They reported that they had all early voted for Kamala, and for every other Democrat on the ballot too.
I asked if their families might also support. Kate answered. She shared that her mother was a long time Democrat, who had already early voted for Kamala. Kate’s father voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 — which, according to Kate, had put some very serious strain on her parents’ marriage in recent years.
So in the lead up to 2024, Kate’s mother matter of factly told her husband, “You say you love me. You say you love our daughter. It’s time to prove that you now also, actually, like us.”
Kate’s mother also told her husband that if he voted for Trump 2024, she would not divorce him. But she would wake up every morning for the rest of their lives, and some (not so small) part of her would hate him. At which point there would be nothing he could do to fix it, since the election would be over.
Kate then shared that a few days after her mom’s chat, Kate’s father had called, asking her to come home. When she walked in the house, she found her father and two voting age younger brothers sitting at the family’s dining room table, completing their mail-in ballots. When they finished filling them out, they held them up so Kate and her mother could see that each one of them had voted for Kamala.
Her father and brothers sealed their ballots, handed them to Kate, and asked her to immediately deliver them to their local polling station. Kate told me she felt proud and hopeful. For her family, for Pennsylvania, and for our country, too.
I had lots of conversations with women on the trail. Many were afraid to open the door, some would only speak to us through an open window, so the neighbors couldn’t see them. Others would barely crack open the front door, to whisper that they would vote for Kamala.
The campaign warned us about “outing” women who might have secretly registered as a Democrat. Because we only knocked on the doors of registered Democrats — whose names were on the lists provided to us by the campaign — our showing up at their house could accidentally spill their secret.
And, boy, did we meet many an angry “man of the family” as we canvassed. They would open the front door on the family’s behalf, declare their wife/daughter/mother “unable” to speak to us, and then slam said door in our face. We always worried about the women who were inside, especially since there was no one to call for help, if they needed it.
In West Reading, my canvassing partner Susan and I found ourselves on a deserted street, when a white pick up truck suddenly sped past us. It had an enormous American flag affixed, and “I Like Big Girls” written in large type on the back window. It proceeded to circle around us- over and over. To scare us into abandoning our work.
When Susan asked if we should call the police, I responded that this might be the sheriff’s brother, or even the (off-duty) sheriff himself. We finished our work.
In Plains Township, outside Wilkes-Barre, an absolutely incensed neighbor drove at my canvassing partner Tim, out of nowhere, in his giant white pickup truck with Trump 2024 flag affixed. His giant truck missed Tim by about two feet.
In Shenandoah, the campaign gave us a driver. His name was Andy, he held a position with the City of Pottsville’s Democratic Committee, and he knew the area well. Outside certain houses, Andy left the car engine running- and facing in the direction of our exit. Getaway style. In case someone came at us with a gun.
On these trips, my fellow volunteers compared notes about their other recent campaign visits to Pennsylvania. To include in areas south of Allentown, where they described their conversations with locals as “politically concerning”— for their racist undertones.
Fast forward to 2025, and Pennsylvanians now experience the consequences of their 2024 Republican Party support, as they face amplified concerns about losing their jobs, keeping food on the table, and keeping their families healthy. The bottom appears to be falling out, all around them.
Food wholesaler United Natural Foods, located in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, announced layoffs of more than 700 jobs in June. These layoffs have been attributed to tariffs imposed by this Republican regime. And it’s coming home to roost in those affluent areas south of Allentown too. Where layoffs took place at Mack Truck in Macungie, Pennsylvania, just days after Trump’s “Independence Day” April tariffs were announced.
Pennsylvania now finds itself in the top ten worst states to find a job — ranked number seven — according to a recent study conducted and published by WalletHub.
And the horrors continue to escalate, as this Republican regime does everything it can to end SNAP food assistance, and eliminate government subsidies that allow families to keep their healthcare. Rural American hospitals now struggle just to survive- against Republican cuts to Medicaid.
The Trump Administration has eliminated life-saving safety nets in places like Reading, West Reading, Wilkes-Barre, Plains Township, Pottsville, Shenandoah, and Coatesville.
So now Democrats must work that much harder — for Pennsylvanians, and our fellow Americans. We must all roll up our sleeves to get these communities, and others, the help they need. We all deserve access to food, healthcare, and employment; respect from others for our individual differences; and a government by, for, and of the people.
We must build back better. And finally put this long, national, nightmare behind us. You can register here to get involved.
Ruth Reichl, Take Me Away!
The bus rides back to New York were so quiet, as we all processed what we had just seen and experienced. To distract, I would mentally drop myself into an alternate universe of “internationalists” — after a day spent in these isolationist battle grounds— thanks to Ruth Reichl’s The Paris Novel.
It was the perfect escape during these drives back, and it captures the magic that can happen when you place your faith in strangers.
The Paris Novel breaks down borders, bridges alliances, and celebrates French perspective through fashion, food, literature, history, and old world refinement. It’s like a Disney movie for worldly adults, complete with a happy ending.
“Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”:
John Berendt’s best selling novel Midnight in The Garden of Good and Evil alludes to the hoodoo concept that a window of time exists for “good magic” (11:30 pm to midnight) and a separate one for “evil magic” (midnight to 12:30 am). They are two different portals.
The 2024 and 2025 U.S. elections embodied the concept, as windows for progress (or the opposite), that opened, and then closed.
Last week, we witnessed “green shoots” behind democracy with Gavin Newsom’s sweeping election victory approving the redistricting ballot measure in California, representing “a new moment” for the Democratic Party. “Clarity, conviction, purpose, energy. On our toes, not on our heels. A resurgent Democratic Party, and it’s a party that understands what’s at stake for our democracy,” Newsom said.
And Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill both prevailed — former Washington, D.C. roommates now making history — with Spanberger elected as Virginia’s first female Governor, and Sherrill now the first Democratic woman elected Governor of New Jersey. That, plus every county in both Virginia and New Jersey moved blue.
I thought about Kate in West Reading, and her mom. And how they might be feeling about things.
And as I look ahead to the hard work we have ahead of us, behind our democracy and human decency, I’m reminded of a quote from former Republican Congressman Adam Kingzinger of Ohio: “History is recording your name.”
What I’m reading/listening to this week:
The Atlantic’s David Frum on “MAGA’s politicized stupidity” on his podcast, The David Frum Show.
Great article. Tks for your hard work on the ground. Democracy is back breaking work that we can never give up on. We will prevail.💪