Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Quick thought about the Pennsylvania/Maryland area and Trump.

The last few days have been spent in the Pittsburgh area with a quick trip to DC.  (PS, as a quick note, never, ever, rent a Jeep Renegade. There was little to recommend this car and a lot to make me want to drive it off a cliff. My supercharged Mustang GT gets roughly the same real-life gas mileage as this 4 cylinder under-powered rat trap for example)

We did it all with a rental car once we flew into Pittsburgh... a fascinating city to be sure, but the real purpose was to go catch the Steeler - Bengals game.

I would venture to say that any two of our larger intersections: Padden/Andresen and, maybe 192nd and HiWay 14... have/had more campaign signs than all of those put together that we observed along a 250-mile route that has tens of thousands of commuters every day.

Here's the pull quote:  We did not see a single Clinton sign.  What we saw were Trump signs.

Let me reiterate:  We spent 3.5 days in Pittsburgh and environs... and 1.5 days in DC and the area around it.  We saw a few local signs... a few signs in the DC area for 200-year-old Eleanor Norton for DC Delegate... a woman who was there when the job was invented and has had it since what... the Hoover Administration?  Maybe 3 signs in the Pittsburgh area for state representative.

We saw absolutely nothing with Clinton's name on it.

Friday morning, I'm having some coffee at the Fairfield Inn and Suites in Pittsburgh, and they had CNN up; a panel of 5 leftist talking heads babbling about how Trump was a birther and it was all his fault and he's a racist and so on.

A guy in his late 30's, down there with his son, looks at me and quietly begins to rant about how "there's nothing those liars wouldn't do to get Hillary elected," etc. as if he just knew I was a Trump supporter.

Downtown Pittsburgh from Duquesne Incline in the morning.jpgI don't have any Trump swag to my name, but it's like I carry a vibe or something...  Later that night, we went up a tram (they call it an "incline" that goes from the roughly river level area up to the top of the ridgeline that runs parallel to Pittsburgh and the Ohio/Monongahela River... 400 ft or so.)

We're walking along the top of the ridge (Stunning views) and these younger guys are driving along in one of those toaster type cars,

And a couple of guys in the car were hollering "vote for Trump" as they drove down the street along the top of the ridge in one of those toaster cars.

What's it all mean?

You got me.  I know that if there weren't any Trump signs, you'd likely see no indication that we were in an election at all.

Makes you go "Hhhmmmmm....."

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Even more locally, I have noticed a near-complete absence of bumper stickers for either candidate. In 2008 and 2012, Obama stickers were "everywhere..." but I just haven't seen any Hillary bumper stickers. I have seen a few yard-signs for Hillary (one next door --sigh--) and a few others. I saw a sticker claiming "Democrats are not perfect, but the other guy is plain crazy" ... and that's about as close to a "Hillary" sticker that I've seen. (And it was on a car with Oregon plates.)