Democrats kept calling Trump a fascist, but these Pennsylvania voters thought he could help them pay the bills

In the final days leading up to the presidential election, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign went hard at the argument that former President Donald Trump would rule like a dictator.

Harris pointed to remarks Trump’s former chief of staff made about him fitting the definition of fascism, and it became a focal point for the party that had made protecting democracy a cornerstone of its platform since President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.

For Rocco Vernacchio, a registered Democrat from South Philly, the rhetoric was troubling, but the economic picture was worse.

“I feel somebody should put a sock in Trump’s mouth,” Vernacchio said after voting for him last week.

Like many voters, Vernacchio was able to dismiss Trump’s often violent and antidemocratic comments because he liked what Trump was promising, and he felt heard on his No. 1 issue.

Political analysts and voters in their own words explained why Democrats’ fascist warnings failed: The electorate was more concerned with the economy than with democracy. They heard Trump say incendiary things for eight years, and found his at-times folksy demeanor at odds with the idea he could rule like a dictator.

Voters also appeared to have short memories, and even the vivid imagery of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol at the end of Trump’s last term was diluted for a lot of people who were more focused on their weekly bills.

“People likely reasoned that Trump was president and he didn’t rule in that way, so the threat wasn’t as immediate as higher prices,” Democratic strategist J.J. Balaban said.

“Fear of fascism may be a luxury for people who are financially comfortable.”

Working-class voters were at the core of Harris’ loss and Trump’s victory, and the failed fascism argument also reflects how Democrats struggled to answer for people’s economic woes, several strategists said.

“When voters said, ‘We can’t afford eggs,’ the response was ‘But the economy’s good and democracy,’” said Alison Dagnes, a political science professor at Shippensburg University in Cumberland County.

“It’s that tone-deafness that makes people feel very unheard and unvalued.”

In retrospect, the Democratic messaging likely came off condescending to some voters, said Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist from Western Pennsylvania. Even if there were signs the economic outlook was strong, people weren’t feeling that yet, so telling them otherwise was a failed message. That might have rung particularly true in Pennsylvania, where post-pandemic economic recovery lagged behind other parts of the country.

“As a party, we tend to shame people for not immediately agreeing with us,” Mikus said. “Sometimes even when they do agree with us, the way we become so preachy, we drive people who may agree away.”

» READ MORE: Pa. Democrats on what went wrong against Donald Trump and what’s next

And in politically divided times, it’s easy to point the finger back. James Pizzo, a South Philly Trump supporter, was never concerned about the increasingly violent and authoritarian rhetoric. He was more worried about what Democrats were saying about Republicans.

“What about the Democratic Party?” Pizzo said after voting at the East Passyunk Community Center in South Philadelphia. “What about what they call us? I’m not garbage. I’m not fascist. I’m not Hitler!”

It was a sentiment shared by many of the Trump voters at the polling station at 10th and Mifflin Streets on Tuesday.

Anthony Cram, 66, said he voted for Trump because the “world is on fire.”

His wife, Shannon, added: “And drowning, too.”

Trump won Pennsylvania by the widest margin since Ronald Reagan and kept Harris to the lowest Democratic margin in Philadelphia in two decades. He gained all over the state, including in working-class communities from Allentown to Johnstown.

» READ MORE: Donald Trump won Pa. with more votes than any statewide Republican candidate in history. Here’s how he did it.

Some voters have become desensitized to the outlandishness of Trump. The former real estate mogul-turned-MAGA leader has been on the political scene since 2015, and as the nation has gotten accustomed to him, provoking outrage or even fear from his commentary has become harder.

That’s not to say he hasn’t said or done some substantially troubling things. He tried to overturn the 2020 election and a base of his supporters stormed the Capitol in the Jan. 6 riot. He has said he’ll retaliate against his political enemies and implied those who do not support him are part of the “enemy within” the country. In the final days of his campaign, he joked about being fine with journalists getting shot at one of his Pennsylvania rallies.

And plenty of Harris voters at the polls on Tuesday were voting precisely because they took Trump literally.

Fabiana Galper, 61, lives in Mount Airy but was born and raised in Argentina.

“I know what it is to live without democracy. I was there for the Dirty War, the coups, the lack of rights, dictatorships,” said Galper, who moved to the United States in 1991. “I see the signs. I recognize it. It smells like something familiar.”

Carolyn Horton, a 73-year-old Democrat who voted for Harris in Montgomery County, also said she thought the future of democracy was at stake.

“Trump is heading toward wanting to be a dictator,” said the retired manager at Bell Atlantic, now Verizon.

But that fear, strong as it was for Harris supporters, wasn’t widespread enough to carry her to victory. Voters overwhelmingly supported Trump, indicating they didn’t see him as a real threat the way Harris’ campaign aimed to portray him.

» READ MORE: Kamala Harris needed to outperform Joe Biden’s successes in Philly’s suburbs to win Pa. She did worse.

Chris Gregas, a hospice chaplain who lives in Pleasantville, N.J. — a typically solid-blue state that Trump lost by only four points — said last week that he didn’t think Trump would rule in an authoritarian way.

“I think Trump’s personality lends itself to people thinking he’s going to be a dictator,” Gregas said. “I do think he’s a strong leader, and I do think those who have been detrimental to this country, he’s going to come after some of them — and rightfully so. I don’t think he’s going after the moderate person, the average person.”

There’s also been an overuse of the word fascism, said Dagnes, the Shippensburg political science professor. She remembers friends using it to describe the retrospectively moderate former President George W. Bush.

And it’s a word that doesn’t carry that much meaning with a large portion of the electorate.

“The American public has heard for so long that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy that it’s like when you put a Post-it on your desk and you’re like, ‘I have to remember this,’ but your eye glazes over it,” Dagnes said. “We’ve been overwhelmed by Trump content, so when he is literally fellating a microphone, people are like, shrug.”

At rallies over the last year in Pennsylvania, a lot of Trump supporters said they take him seriously — but not literally. The campaign helped soften his image by putting him in roles where he looked nonthreatening, like “working” the fryer at a Bucks County McDonald’s. Even his own gaffes, like dancing on stage for 30 minutes or struggling to open the door to a garbage truck, bolstered the view for a lot of voters that he was harmless. Voters can also look back on his first term and argue democracy didn’t end then.

“It’s not hard to understand why voters reject the premise,” Pennsylvania GOP consultant Brock McCleary said. “The fair-minded voter looks at Trump’s first term and concludes that he’s either really bad at instituting fascism, or it’s just another empty moniker from Trump’s powerful enemies.”

In Scranton on Wednesday, Matt Wolfson, a 45-year-old former construction worker, looked around at poverty in the Rust Belt city and thought the nation needed a change in leadership.

Wolfson said he didn’t love the dictatorial aspect of Trump’s personality, but thought it could help keep the country out of wars and maybe bring peace to some other conflicts, including in Ukraine.

“He’s good and bad. People say he’s a dictator. I believe that. I consider him like Hitler,” Wolfson said. “But I voted for the man.”

Staff writers Jenn Ladd, Sean Collins Walsh, Amy S. Rosenberg, and Mike Newall contributed to this article.