The following is a lightly edited transcript of the November 4 episode of The Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
It’s finally Election Day. If Donald Trump is going to be defeated in this contest, it will probably come down to women. By many indications, from polls to the early vote, female voters look poised to vote for Kamala Harris in startling numbers, and if she’s going to win, this is probably how it will happen. Liz Cheney went on The View on Monday and flatly predicted it, “Women will save us from Trump in this election.” She also laid out a clear argument for why women, including right-leaning and conservative women, should and will vote for Harris in the numbers needed to defeat him. Today, we’re discussing this with Stella Sexton, who’s the vice chair of the Democratic Party in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, because if women are going to decide this election in Harris’s favor, it will be in places like Lancaster. Stella, thanks so much for coming on.
Stella Sexton: Thanks for having me, Greg.
Sargent: Stella, let’s start by talking about Lancaster County. It’s southwest of Philadelphia, went for Trump in 2020 by 57 to 41 percent. It’s a mix of the small city of Lancaster and rural and ex-urban stretches. Can you tell us about Lancaster’s demographics and why it’s so important for understanding where Pennsylvania is going in this election?
Sexton: Sure. Lancaster County is a really interesting place right now because it is probably just about the next most flippable county after the collar counties around Philadelphia all flipped during the Trump years. We have a really incredible mix of population here, from certainly the traditional Pennsylvania Dutch folks and folks of that heritage to a really diverse group of individuals from all over the world because we are really the refugee resettlement capital of the nation. So we have wonderful communities here and it makes it such a great vibrant place to live. We have a growing economy, good schools, a lot of in-migration from other areas which accelerated during Covid due to cheaper real estate prices. And a lot of folks just moving here for the quality of life.
Sargent: There are some big rural stretches, right? It’s pretty Trumpy in some parts. Can you talk about that a bit?
Sexton: It is. There are definitely some Trumpier areas, but there are also a lot of areas that are rapidly purpling. There’s 550,000 people in this county. So while folks talk about it as a rural county—and we certainly do have many beautiful rural areas—it is no longer really a rural county due to the population size.
Sargent: This is the place where Harris has to really cut into Trump’s margins to win, I think. Let’s listen to a clip of Liz Cheney on The View. Cheney was asked whether women will save us in this election and here’s how she responded.
Liz Cheney (audio voiceover): Well, number one, yes, women are going to save the day in this election. I really do believe that. And every time you see people like Charlie Kirk or Donald Trump—those people come out and act as though they’re somehow horrified that a woman might make her own decision about how she’s going to vote. They have actually talked about repealing the 19th Amendment, some of those people working for Donald Trump. So people need to really, really remember the misogynist aspect of all of this.
Sargent: Stella, this seems like it’s directly aimed at right-leaning independent women, maybe moderate Republican women. There are a lot of women like this in Lancaster, right? What is your experience of that demographic there? Are they thinking along the lines of what Liz Cheney said here?
Sexton: Yes, I would say they are, Greg. I’ve knocked a lot of doors in this county. Going back to when Dobbs first happened in 2022, I was working on a state house race in a suburban area for a Democrat, and we had to go talk to a bunch of college-educated Republican women, independent women to win that state house seat, and, of course, win our area for Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman—that echo from 2022 really is just one long string going straight through to today.
Women are very, very mad, and they don’t want to see what has happened in other states happen in Pennsylvania. I really think there’s a lot of strong echoes between the current race we’re in and the race that Josh Shapiro ran against Doug Mastriano. We’re talking about the same issues. We’re talking about a competent candidate who is going to run a sane and good government and protect our rights, and somebody [who is] just totally unhinged on the other side. And the same types of folks who crossed over to vote for Josh Shapiro are the types of folks that I think are going........