PITTSBURGH — With inflation the highest it's been since the early 1980s and Americans feeling the pain of a downtrodden economy, Democrats in Pennsylvania — a state with two of the most high-profile races in the country — are hoping to convince voters that they should be an exception to an otherwise brutal midterm election cycle.
In hotly contested races that could decide control of the U.S. Senate and whether Republicans get control of a their own government trifecta in Harrisburg, economic issues could be at the forefront — whether the candidates like it or not, national political and economic analysts say. Hurting financially, many Americans are telling pollsters they feel worse off than they've been in years, are struggling to make ends meet, and are feeling more and more hopeless about their political leaders.
Democratic insiders in Pennsylvania told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this past week that they know the road will be tough — compounded, too, by the cyclical disadvantage of the political party in power entering a midterm election. But they insist that national pundits have it wrong about the extent of the damage coming this November, and that they can mount the kind of candidacies that are damage-proof to the current economic conditions.
