Editorial: Pennsylvania still has lessons in wake of election

Everyone knew Pennsylvania would be a key player in the 2024 presidential election.

What was less certain was the state being a microcosm of the election as it played out across the country.

On Tuesday, as ballots were counted, the areas that voted for the Democratic and Republican candidates were exactly what was expected. The larger urban areas — the Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Harrisburg city centers — went for Vice President Kamala Harris. Rural and blue collar areas that picked Donald Trump in 2016 went for him again.

But what pushed the former president to a second win was less flipping counties (although he did that in Erie and Centre) and more eroding the margins of Harris wins, making them slimmer than President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.

As much as the national attention understandably focused on the top race, it was the tip of a larger iceberg. The Republican turnout for Trump appeared part of a flood through other contests. The state attorney general, auditor general and treasurer all went to GOP candidates. Pennsylvania Democratic political legacy Bob Casey Jr. was locked in a down-to-the-wire count with Republican Dave McCormick for the U.S. Senate seat.

So now what? What comes next?

For months, everyone with a political angle has come to Pennsylvania professing answers to all of the Keystone State’s problems. They knew how to bring us jobs, how to lower our bills, how to give us the lifelines we need when it comes to making ends meet and getting child care and accessing health care.

Now it’s time for the Republicans, from Trump down through the red wave he surfed through the state, to prove that. Trump could start with the vow he made to Malphine Fogel in Butler County and make sure her Oakmont teacher son, Marc Fogel, is brought home from Russia, but that’s just one of many promises to be kept.

It’s also time for the Democrats to swallow the loss and keep their promises about unity and working across the aisle. Harris has made a good start with the earliest concession call made to a presidential opponent since Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, to Barack Obama in 2012. It is the slow start to returning us to what used to be normal.

There is a role for the people, too. It is the kind of ending we expect from our children at the end of a hard-fought sporting event.

We don’t replay the wrongs. At the end of a hockey game, we encourage them to shake hands and acknowledge the win. The winning team doesn’t gloat, and the losing team doesn’t whine.

Pennsylvania was destined to be the rink where the election played out. Now it has the opportunity to show the rest of the country how to leave the fight on the ice and move on.