At Pa. pub, Trump is the toast of Dems

Y OUNGSTOWN, Pa. — Ken Reed sat down at the main bar at Tin Lizzy with two things in mind: to dig into the tavern’s oversized cheesesteak and watch the presidential debate.

“I am hungry and undecided in that order,” he said in a bar that dates back to 1746.

Kady Letoksy, a paralegal by day, a waitress and bartender by night, sat beside him. At 28, she has never voted before, but now she’s thinking it might be a good idea.

Letosky entered the evening undecided in a town that is heavily Democratic in registration. Her dad, she says, is “extremely liberal” and her sister’s the opposite.

“[Donald] Trump had the upper hand this evening,” she said, citing his exchanges with Hillary Clinton.

Reed, 35, is a registered Democrat and small businessman.

“By the end of the debate, Clinton never said a thing to persuade me that she had anything to offer me or my family or my community,” he said sitting at the same bar that had local icons as regulars, such as the late Arnold Palmer, who had his own stash of PM Whiskey hidden behind newer bottles of whiskey for his visits.

“Have to say Trump had the edge this evening. He came out swinging but also talked about specifics on jobs and the economy,” Reed said.

He noted that Clinton came across as either smug or as though she were reading her résumé, adding there was nothing on her résumé that reached his life.

“I am a small-business man, a farmer, come from a long line of farmers and coal miners,” he said. “The policies she talked about tonight ultimately either hurt me or ignore me.”

How apropos of this presidential election cycle that these patrons chose the Tin Lizzy as the place to watch the historic debate between Clinton and Trump.

The western Pennsylvania tavern’s namesake is the Model T, the first affordable automobile available to America’s working class, which eventually became slang for something quite different.

If someone said you were “going the way of the Tin Lizzy,” it meant your job or industry was in decline, no longer useful.

That is how today’s cosmopolitan and political classes view Main Street voters — as people whose values, traditions, skills, jobs and lives are being replaced by something new.

“I’ve been a Democrat all of my life, but when Clinton mentions her husband and the jobs he brought to the country in the ’90s, it’s not a fair assessment,” said Nathan Nemick. “She is no moderate Democrat the way he was. Her policies would not bring back jobs.”

It burns Nemick when Clinton references her husband, as she did in the debate on trade and jobs, “She is nothing like him,” he said of the Democrat he admired in his youth.

Pennsylvania is a high-stakes state for both candidates, but particularly Clinton, and Westmoreland is a high-stakes county, particularly for Trump.

She needs to win this state, and he needs not just to win this county, but to do so by 2,000 more votes than Mitt Romney did in 2012.

Westmoreland is one of about 10 formerly or traditionally Democratic-blue counties across the state where Trump must drive up a higher-thannormal turnout, or even flip them to Republican red, in order to offset an anticipated high turnout for Clinton in Philadelphia.

The other counties are Cambria, Greene, Fayette and Washington in the southwest corner of the state, and Bucks, Lackawanna, Lancaster, Luzerne and York in the east.

Democrats here are more traditional in their values — they are pro-gun, pro-life, pro-coal — something today’s Democratic Party has left no room for

Trump probably connects better with such voters than did Romney in 2012, or John McCain in 2008. A large part of the reason is his outside-thebox style.

Yet, for Trump to win the state, such voters need to turn out in force — here and elsewhere — to offset Philly’s overwhelming numbers.

Before the debate, the latest CNN poll showed a virtual tie in the Keystone State.

Outside the bar, a lone sign lit up the quiet corner of the old Lincoln Highway: “RIP Mr. Palmer, Forever in our hearts” honoring the golf legend who died Sunday.

“He was just a regular guy, just a working-class guy at heart like everyone else around here,” said Jim Sciabica, the unofficial bar manager and smallbusiness man, who kept “Mr. Palmer’s” PM Whiskey tucked in a corner away from patrons and workers.