Lexington | The great switcheroo

摘要

IT IS WORTH underlining, in a week dominated by reminders of the skulduggery that helped send Donald Trump to the White House a year ago, that the main reason for his victory was democratic. Mr Trump persuaded about 7m people who voted for Ba-rack Obama in 2012, most of them white, working-class and malcontent, to vote for him. Many had not voted Republican before. In north-eastern Pennsylvania, where Lexington went to talk to some of these switchers, the rush to Mr Trump was dramatic. A birthplace of trade unionism, the region's main towns, Wilkes-Barre and Scranton (which was also the birthplace of Hillary Clinton's father), were so Democratic that Republican gerryman-derers designed the 17th congressional district that contains them as a Democratic sink. Mr Obama won the district in 2012 by double digits. So did Mr Trump. "Soon as I went to vote and saw like 50 people queueing up, I knew it was over," says the barman at the Anthracite Cafe, a popular joint in Wilkes-Barre, with mining memorabilia on its walls and a vast lump of coal out front.