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“The next political ad I see, I swear I’m going to throw my phone through the TV,” Gary told me as he perused the menu at a restaurant in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and everyone who lives here knows exactly what he is. talk about.

Living in a swing state is a privilege, but with privilege comes responsibility, as they say, and in this case, a tsunami of TV and radio ads, signs and billboards everywhere, streets blocked off by motorcades, and yes, even annoying national columnists outlets that stick a pen at you and your thoughts.

It’s tiring. The owner of the restaurant, a nice place called Blended, was somewhere between laughing and crying when he got a notification that former President Donald Trump would be appearing at the PPL center down the street on Tuesday, October 29.

“Oh, it just shuts everything down,” Eric told me. But resigned to the realities of running a business at the epicenter of presidential politics, he went about his evening.

In a way, he is a symbol of this city made famous by Billy Joel’s 1980s ballad about economic decline.

Eight years ago, Eric was living on the streets, addicted to crystal meth, just a few blocks away, and yet metaphorically miles away from the successful small businessman he has become.

So Allentown is no longer the grim and grimy town where they dug all the coal out of the ground. In its place lies a clean, shining city in which the old stone buildings, monuments of industrial might, stand proud and beautiful.

This prosperity has been common throughout my travels through Pennsylvania, and in this critical swing state it is not economic anxiety but bigger picture issues that drive most voters I speak to.

This is an excerpt from an article by David Marcus.