Joseph Sabino Mistick: Voting for the things that count

Everybody has a theory about this election. Despite Kamala Harris’ late entry into the race — she had a little over 100 days to work with — she ran a very good campaign. She built coalitions, won the debate, gave two presidential speeches to national audiences, flooded the airwaves and social media, crisscrossed critical states and mounted a ground game.

But try as she might, she could not fully separate herself from the woke policies that are fashionable in some parts of the Democratic Party. Some of those problems were of her own making, positions she took at one time that she has since changed her mind about. But that was a hard message to communicate to the voters.

The voters also made her account for some of the policies that are dragging Democrats down wherever they are in control. The Democratic Party has brought us national and universal programs like Social Security, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act. But lately, identity politics seems to have led the party to care more about political correctness than the general welfare of the people it has always served.

We have been seeing that happen in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County for some time now. Here are just a couple of examples of the kinds of things that push some voters too far.

In Pittsburgh, there was the early misguided call to defund the police, which has turned into a reality. Mayor Ed Gainey allowed the number of street-ready officers to steadily decline, starting with attrition and a lackluster attempt to fill the ranks. Then, the mayor cited those vacancies in the ranks as an excuse to cut funding for the police.

More recently, it was disclosed that the mayor had cut a secret deal when a new chief of police was hired in 2023. The deal would have allowed the chief to leave his post and referee as many as 60 out-of-town college basketball games per year. In a big city with full-time crime, this would have resulted in a part-time police chief. The chief resigned instead of sticking to the Gainey deal. But the fact that there even was a deal was a terrible signal to send.

The 2024 Allegheny County budget included $500,000 to replace the “stigmatizing” red uniforms of Allegheny County Jail inmates with more neutral colors. Democrats own this bill. It was a very small number in a very large budget. But now that the county executive has proposed a record real estate tax increase for 2025 to pay for basic services, the uniform proposal will be another example of misplaced priorities and wokeness gone amuck.

Governing is hard at both the national and the local level, and these issues and many others are important. But families are struggling to raise their children in a safe environment and suffering because wages have not kept up with inflation. They want help from their elected officials — now. They are feeling ignored and slighted, and their votes on Tuesday show that they are out of patience.

With Donald Trump — in spite of all the ugly things that he says and stands for and has threatened to do — the voters have found a guy who will walk into a room and knock over all the furniture. He may not help them at all, but they know now that they will have everybody’s attention.