During every even-numbered year, we’re told that we’re facing the most consequential election in our lifetime.
Perhaps each was at the time, but as Lt. Gov. Austin Davis said when he and Gov. Josh Shapiro rallied in Saint Clair on Thursday, it’s really true now.
Davis and Shapiro had a lot of good things to say, as did fellow Democrats Rachel Wallace, who’s running for Congress, and John Deatrich, who’s seeking a state rep seat. You can read the Canary’s coverage here.
Whether you love or hate Donald Trump and his Project 2025ers, this may be our only chance to register our opinion on their impulsive and disastrous invasion of Iran, their zigzagging tariffs, their inflation, their arbitrary deportation quotas, their wars on science and health, their corruption, their Christian nationalism, their sexism, their racism, their power grabs, their gleeful cruelty and their overall incompetence.
As one headline writer put it, Trump’s solution to all this chaos and misery is … more Trump.
Polls show fewer and fewer Americans are buying that, but I’m one of the many who Shapiro said have been feeling scared and angry.
Polls have been wrong before. Practically since Inauguration Day, the White House has been trying to sabotage and discredit this election. And Trump has already seized tremendous power.
So no one knows whether these are the last days of our country as we know it or whether we’ll begin emerging from this dark Trump/Project 2025 tunnel.
I do know that as of now, we have a choice.
Thoughtful adults vs. a megalomaniac’s puppets
We’re probably stuck with Trump for two more years, even though he’s becoming more unhinged every day.
Unfortunately, this manbaby is not on the ballot, but many elected officials who indulged his destructive whims are. And one of the most spineless (Shapiro’s word) is our own GOP Congressman Dan Meuser, who’s shown time and time again that he places the White House above constituents.
By contrast, Wallace has crisscrossed our huge district, listening to everyday people and generally acting more like a representative than Meuser does.
She’s held nine in-person town halls for constituents in less than a year; Meuser’s only held one in his eight years in office.
And Wallace walloped Meuser in the sole debate in this campaign by speaking plainly about the Trump/Project 2025 policies he rubberstamped.
Finding common ground vs. dividing and conquering
Wallace even attended the ultra-MAGA Berks County Patriots’ October meeting and listed three of her priorities: lowering costs (which we all know have jumped in the last 22 months), ending fraud and corruption (which we’ve seen at the White House again and again) and bringing people together to solve local problems.
“I think that we have a ton of common ground, and I don’t want to come here and argue with you about the 20% that I agree we disagree on,” she told the group. “We can agree to disagree on that 20%. I want to stand with you for the 80% that we do agree on and say, ‘Let’s get something done.’”
Compare that with Meuser, who calls his critics “lunatics.”
And we can’t forget how he fundraised at Mar-a-Lago and the Schuylkill Country Club while the people of Tremont and Upper Bern townships were trying to fend off the immigrant concentration camps that the Department of Homeland “Security” was planning.
Wallace held a town hall for Tremont area residents and attended others organized by groups opposing those monstrosities.
And it took the Shapiro administration, plus a change of leadership at DHS, to stop them.
Realism vs. reality TV
The Trump/Project 2025 regime has been a series of previously unspeakable shenanigans, from chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk’s whacks at the federal government to the D.C. vanity projects to the One Big Beautiful Bill for billionaires. And so forth and so on, ad nauseam.
It’s like a reality show that you can’t turn off because its stars could end up preying on you.
We in Schuylkill County narrowly escaped the concentration camps, but the data center developers have their eyes on us, and Trump and his enablers have their backs.
And of course, we’re all feeling the effects of Trumpflation, and the war of choice has only weakened our country.
Kindness vs. cruelty
In Georgia on Wednesday, former President Barack Obama offered a positive alternative to the regime’s lies, insults and violence.
His speech reminded me of a time when we weren’t bombarded with venom and craziness 24/7.
“I am tired of being angry, and I’m tired of being divided,” Obama said.
“I want friendship and neighborliness and joy and generosity. I want everybody rolling up their sleeves in the common enterprise of rebuilding America. I want everybody handing our country and our world off to our kids a little better than they are right now.”
He warned that just as it took years for our country to get into this mess, it will take time to restore it to greatness.
But, he added, “this election might just mark the moment when we begin to leave our worst impulses behind and start aligning our politics with our highest ideals.”
Photo: Coal Region Canary
Canary note: Opinions expressed in any Op-Ed column appearing on this site are the views of the writer and are not necessarily the opinions of Coal Region Canary.
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