Cyril Wecht (our famous former coroner) was just about the only major figure who didn't endorse her -- and his is an endorsement the candidates don't want, at least publicly, since he's under indictment. 

 

Maybe Obama should have come to Pittsburgh and invoked the ghost of 2 people: Fred Rogers  and more so, late county commissioner Tom Foerster. Maybe given a speech in front of the VA hospital, visited  Kane Hospital (part of Foerster's legacy) and talked about all sorts of humane legislation crafted by the Democratic Party. Foerster  held the heart of the Party and some residents probably keep saints' relics of bits of him, like snippings of his hair and fingernails kept in lockets. He made sure plenty of money got spent on the elderly, veterans, the handicapped, and the mentally retarded. He represented humanity in government.

 

As part of my thought process, trying to puzzle out the reason for Hillary's strength here, I thought I'd write down some truths from the past about Pittsburgh, and its longtime residents:

 

  We love steel.

 

 We love our Steelers. Even if we hate the fact that public money was used against our will to build them a new stadium.

 

 We venerate our steelworkers, past and present, because they had the guts to work with our beloved steel. 

 

  We also venerate our firefighters and when one dies we are apt to have a giant funeral parade like they do in NYC. Why? They save our lives, of course. But also because they often work with burning buildings made from steel. See steel, above.

 

  Laborers are a bunch of people, many of whom work with machines made of steel. We respect the hell out of that. So laborers mean a lot here, collectively.

 

  Bob O'Connor, the late mayor of Pittsburgh, personified many of its virtues and failings. Bob, whose one aim in life seems to have been to become mayor of this town, made some promises re: labor which the city couldn't afford and he had no business promising, in my opinion. But it won him the support of some pretty big unions. Namely the firefighters; you know, those guys dealing with the burning steel.

 

O'Connor died suddenly of a brain tumor not long after being elected. It was horrible. We are glad that he was the mayor when the Steelers won the Super Bowl, because it must have been such fun for him.  When he was running for the Dem nomination for mayor against Tom Murphy,  we suddenly remembered how long Bob had been trying to get there. Bob O'Connor's mayoralty may have been a Lifetime Achievement Award, not much more. 

 

 

  The name Casey is a long-familiar one in Pennsylvania politics. The Casey family is rather like the Flahertys in that respect, spawning lots of public servants. Of course not all Caseys are related. This one, Sen. Bob Casey, is the son of a former governor of PA. He was born in Scranton, where the TV show The Office is supposed to take place. 

 

 Pete Flaherty, a former mayor of Pittsburgh, was a Democrat of course. And he was a cheapskate. This doesn't sit well with many groups, including labor. But he kept this city from going broke when NYC and other cities went bankrupt in the 70s, by not repairing lots of stuff. We had potholes, but solvency. 

 

Bridges are made of steel, and during the Flaherty administration they didn't get enough repair and attention. (He failed to show love for steel.)

 

When Flaherty died I noticed the local fire stations did NOT have their flags at half-staff. I could hardly believe it.

 

But I swear there is a running pattern about the worship of steel here. Even though steel is gone, it is a martyr whose ghost we invoke.

 

  Another thing Pittsburgh likes is people with funny voices. They sound like home. Some notable ones were: 

 

Myron Cope (hilarious voice) - R.I.P.

Mister Rogers (not so funny a voice, but a definite Pgh accent) - R.I.P.

Sophie Masloff (superdelegate & former Pgh mayor, with hilarious voice)

 

 And we seem to trust men with beefy faces. Bob O'Connor had one, although he was in good shape and looked superb in a suit. Gov. Rendell has a big beefy face.

 

  Oldtime, traditional Pittsburgh food is sausagey, meaty, highly flavored and often thick. Sometimes edged with fat (like good kosher corned beef). Italian, Polish, Slavic, Irish, and Jewish foods comprise most of this traditional food. The best of it smells to high heaven. It is loud food.

 

  Pittsburgh is ashamed when it is accused of not being a friendly place. We go out of our way to be good to visitors, especially when someone's car breaks down on the road or something. We like it here and want you to, too.

 

  We have statistical patterns showing that the population stays here for long, long times. It's an extended-family-oriented city. Even our AIDS numbers are lower than expected, and part of it is due to the lower ingress/egress rate.

 

So we've got a place which, in its underpinnings, is frequently: friendly, thick, beefy, garlicky, steady, warm of character, steamy, outgoing, and talks funny. How could Bob Casey appeal to this norm*? He's melba toast.  He's got no flavor to him. He should go acquire some.

 

Yeah, this is a huge mass of exaggerations, but these things above really do mean something to long-time Pittsburghers. The city of course is also a well-educated one, full of some of the best medical facilities around, and universities. There's almost no steel being made or worked on here now. A couple or three places, I guess. We aren't the Smoky City and haven't been for over 30 years. The air is clear.

 

But steel is still an operant in the value system because it stands for not simply manual work, but extremely hard work. Take a look at photos and documents about the old steel mills. It'll show you. And the people's wish to continue doing that hard work has something in common with the hardcore ethic of the U.S. Marines, who cling to the hated/loved tradition of the arduous boot camp training, because afterwards you can say: Not only did I do this thing, I survived it. 

 

And often,  survival feels like conquest. 

 

Pittsburgh doesn't get as much rainfall as Seattle, but some years we have the same number of overcast, cloudy days they do. On such days, we look down on our 3 rivers and they look like flowing steel. Shiny and grey. It is rather like looking down on the Danube, whose waters appear blue to you if you're in love. 

 

And we are.

 

I wonder if Obama is sufficiently flavorful. Even if he is not, he is the grass-roots candidate, which Pittsburgh loves. And that's another area I forgot to bring up. The progressive political activists are passionate here, and even if the police are horrible to them, they seem to me to have wide popular support. 

 

Hillary was in town when the Blue-Green Alliance had a big conference here. Its existence is one of the most exciting things I have heard in a long while.  And they will need a candidate to help with a lot of things like tax incentives. The AFL-CIO plus the Sierra Club which make it up are two hefty bases of voter support. This state is hungry for work like this  -- in green industry -- and it's a laudable, not to mention necessary, direction to go in building a new economy. 

 

It's funny; I only found out about the BGA when I was wondering why Hillary had any union support and went looking for an answer. Union support means promises made. She can't exactly recreate the old heavy industry all over again and make all those lost steel jobs magically reappear, for example. That's long gone. But here -- after all -- in solar panels and wind farms, is new industry waiting to be made, and the unions are making sure they will get in the door. She must have said all the right things to them. I don't say this as a slam against her, or the AFL-CIO, as a matter of fact. They're trying to get people jobs and promote both the economy and environment simultaneously. (The firefighters union, as an example on the other hand, has acted in greedy, unbelievable ways in recent years.) 

 

Just imagine the future with solar and wind power being a major part of our energy production. I love it. It should have been done 30 years ago.

 

Maybe she's taken the fastest steps to work on this. But we have to get out of Iraq, and if Hillary won't do that, and soon, what good is she? None.

 

* When I use the word "norm" I do not mean average, typical, or normal. I am instead referring to things that represent positive values. Things associated with our ideals; model, as in "model citizen." Garlic and fatty meats obviously are not model things, but they can remind us of trusted, good or ethical things we knew from the past. But don't worry. If you hate pastrami but are an ethical, maybe even underdog candidate, your chances with us are excellent.

 

 

 

 

And here's a picture from the Brookline area of Pittsburgh, where dinosaurs are sometimes abandoned by their owners and wander the streets, unable to find food. Poor puppy. Give one a home today. Visit Petfinder.com.