What is the worst thing a national and state party can do in the days before a local primary election? To my mind, it’s to subvert the local process by endorsing a candidate, especially a candidate who isn’t very well known. That’s insanity, right? And it’s precisely what House Democrats’ campaign arm did this week to the Lehigh Valley.

fetterman on fox — Senator John Fetterman (PA-D) hanging out on Fox (screen grab) recently

For local party activists in communities like Saucon Valley, which has rich and busy traditions of party engagement among both Republicans and Democrats, it’s particularly dispiriting. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has literally poured herbicide on its own grassroots.

At the municipal and county level where I live, Democrats follow bylaws that explicitly gainsay endorsement during primaries. We bend over backwards not to endorse because it stomps all over the sprouts of new candidacies before they’ve had a chance to take root.

For the primary cycle for Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District—the seat formerly held by Rep. Susan Wild and now occupied by Republican Ryan Mackenzie—three valid, impressive candidates with vibrant, passionate, local bases of support were simply ignored this week.

Instead, party bosses far away from the Lehigh Valley anointed a total newcomer, retired firefighter Bob Brooks, of Nazareth, because he simulates some out-of-state focus group’s condescending idea of a Pennsylvania working class dude.

He may be a nice guy, but he hits me as a kind of pro trade union bizarro-universe version of Joe the Plumber. I feel like America’s had enough of that schtick.

Like MAGA and John Fetterman before him, Brooks’ working-class performance often feels more about imagery than substance. He’s been spotted sporting cuff-links and starched shirts behind the scenes among ‘spectable, ejumacated folk, but expect a blue t-shirt if he’s coding “blue collar” for the masses. He offers jokily anti-intellectual, hyper-masculine dreck. He mouths populist bromides we’ve heard a million times before – better health care, better jobs, workin’ hard, more free stuff, etc. etc.

“I’m an everyday, blue-collar, working-class person,” Brooks declares in one ad. Who actually says that? Good lord. If voters are dumb enough to believe such rubbish, they deserve everything they get. Later, in one ad, he makes the groundbreaking claim that the public are “tired of lawyers” in Washington.

Who knew? I actually thought the problem was lawlessness. Washington isn’t corrupt because it has too many lawyers. It’s corrupt because we foolishly elected people who break the law, and this has directly led to an affordability and inflation disaster before us now. We all own that mistake.

What we don’t need now is some fake Dan Conner who goes around talking about being working class. We may watch shows like “The Connors” and “Shameless,” but no matter how realistic they purport to be, anyone who knows the authentic working-class sees pure fakery. At best, we suspend our disbelief to accept that these multimillionaire dollar productions of rich actors in flannel-and-jeans drag are the real thing.

I remember sitting one afternoon at a table in my small town of Hellertown with a big gathering of very active local Dems. It was the spring of 2022. The primary season was in full swing. We took a straw poll on how we felt about the primary candidates. There was state rep and poet Malcom Kenyatta, from North Philly, who was tracking very left; there was the slightly dorky center-left U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, from Pittsburgh; and there was tall Fetterman and his hoody and nifty goatee and air of the updated Bernie Bro (and the Bernie Bros loved him, I recall).

Virtually everyone at that table raised their hand in support of Fetterman. I recall one or two people who backed Kenyatta. And one person backed Lamb, and that was me.

It was disappointing. I felt like my fellow Democrats were, frankly, being idiots. Couldn’t they see how fake Fetterman was? I’m not boasting about my great insight—I never liked Fetterman. He was already proving himself afraid to debate other Democrats, and some of his views, if you look back now, especially, seem like little more than warmed-over MAGA populism, all stuffed into that hoody.

Fetterman promised to raise the minimum rage, fight for the working man, blah blah blah. It hasn’t worked out that way. He seems these days more focused on trolling those opposed to Israel’s policies in Gaza. Not exactly a big issue in smalltown USA.

But Fetterman was always about style over substance. That just-rolled-out-of-bed hoody and Carhart drag. He wasn’t remotely working-class, in his personal life, but merely dresses the part.

If you know Lehigh Valley politics at the granular level, you know that there is one candidate on our side of the town who has invested the most time and energy into getting to know us—one on one. That’s former Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure. McClure is scrappy, unpretentious, and gregarious. He lives and breathes Lehigh Valley, and he knows everybody and their mother. He nurtures local new political talent like few others. He can also campaign with an edge, to put it mildly. That may be good, but it can put people off, too. I know many people who love him, and I know some who don’t.

However you feel about McClure, he knows every major player in Hellertown and Lower Saucon. He’s massively popular. Many of his ardent allies—including many tiny municipal council members and the grassroots groups around them—have endorsed him, along with the mayors of Bethlehem and Easton.

(I myself don’t do endorsements—and it’s partly because my local hometown Dem group explicitly discourages them! I also think they’re often transactional in spirit and ickily self-important.)

But Democrats in Washington know better, apparently.

Rep. Wild’s endorsee is the accomplished engineer, educator and community leader Carol Obando-Derstine. She isn’t a lawyer, and she’s a bit left for me, but she has a blindingly long list of achievements and clearly offers voters an important counterpoint to the powerful white guys she faces for competition. Her story of succeeding as an immigrant from Colombia is the American Dream come to life. At the very least, she deserves a fair chance, a chance the DCCC has essentially now defunded.

Both McClure and fellow candidate former US Attorney Ryan Crosswell possess impressive legal educations, but Crosswell also brings youth, prosecutorial experience, and a clean-cut, military air which befits his past as a Marine Corps lawyer. I’m a huge fan. That’s no endorsement, mind you, but I almost have to hold myself back in saying good things about Crosswell. As a friend of mine put it, “He’s the real deal.”

Crosswell is smart and committed to exposing the mind-blowing corruption of the Trump administration and holding the perpetrators to account. He loves the Constitution. Young Lincolnesque is what comes to my mind. He may not walk on water, but he is deeply principled. Crosswell has also actually stood up and taken direct punches from the Trump Administration—and survived to fight another day. I’ve also met some of his supporters, and they are the same people you find at No Kings. I call them the NPR Totebag crowd, and all I can say is, as cringe as it sounds, those are my people.

Personally, I find Crosswell incredibly inspiring and surely the future. When you hear him speak, I swear, you almost hear patriotic music playing in the background. He’s a fantastic candidate, and I would take him or McClure or even Obando-Derstine any day of the week over the alternatives.

Real working class people do lots of things, but one thing they never, ever do is talk about being real working class. If you know the working class, you know the fear, the pain, the desperation, and aspiration, too. You respect the law, you respect the arts, and you want your children to live a better life than you. You don’t revel in the identity. That’s about the dumbest thing I ever heard. If you don’t believe me, ask Bruce Springsteen.

I’ve worked as a dishwasher and bus boy and mowed lawns, too. So that? I’ve also sold plasma for beer money and remember food stamps in childhood. Break out the violins. None of these hardships qualify me for a damn thing. That’s not what being working class means. It’s not a brand of motorcycle or piece of clothing.

It’s too bad the party ignored our most genuine candidates—the immigrant overachiever and the pocket Constitution nerd vet and the local power-schmoozer who are, at the very least, authentic. With their off-the-shelf suits and law degrees and a deep desire for public service and achievement, I’d take any one of them any day over a concocted cliché of working class heroism.

Voters are sick of identity games played by elites. What they want are truly effective, smart, honest leaders committed to genuine structural change and America’s future, no matter what class they come from or what they look like.

The national Democratic House establishment is trying to channel MAGA vibes in the Lehigh Valley—and betraying its own grassroots

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