Donald Trump leads in most battleground states according to recent polls, and if you're in the Joe Biden campaign, you're probably feeling a little bit nervous about that. However, I would argue that it makes perfect sense because Biden has followed through on so many of his promises, and the results were exactly what many of us were warned they would be.
Biden's energy policies are as bad and extreme as his former boss, Barack Obama's. Obama's policies hurt the energy sector and sent gas prices soaring for the rest of us. Biden's policies similarly hurt the energy sector, and I don't have to tell you about gas prices today.
One battleground state that Biden is struggling to get a grip on is Pennsylvania. Polls there have been mixed, and Trump has a small lead there right now in the RealClearPolitics average. That's even with an outlier poll claiming that Biden leads there by ten points. Biden has to try hard to win Pennsylvania because he doesn't have a path to victory without it.
But has he doomed himself there because of his energy policies? According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, he may have.
In Pennsylvania, the largest 2024 battleground state, President Biden’s victory four years ago depended in large part on big gains among voters such as Thieler, a software company manager and former Republican who is now part of the city’s heavily Democratic professional class. But those gains have been overtaken by opposition from voters like Sabo, who works in the natural-gas industry, a sector that has given a boost to blue-collar workers in rural counties.
These energy-economy voters see Biden as hostile to fracking, which taps natural gas trapped in sedimentary rock deep underground. The sector has drawn billions of dollars in new investment in Pennsylvania, much of it in the state’s southwest corner.
Biden's energy policies have come under significant scrutiny. His cancellation of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and the temporary halt on new permits for exporting liquefied natural gas during the first days of his presidency have dealt significant blows, particularly in Pennsylvania, where local companies have felt the pinch in reduced demand for their services. On top of that, there's growing concern among voters about the potential impact of Biden's advocacy for electric vehicles, which may further erode job opportunities linked to the fossil fuel industry.
Related: An Ominous Sign for Biden and the Democrats in Pennsylvania
As such, the Wall Street Journal notes that Pennsylvania's "reliance on energy jobs helps explain why Democrats look to be losing more voters than they have gained here despite a Biden agenda that’s pumping billions of dollars into infrastructure and manufacturing."
Of course, the counterargument to this is that Biden made it clear in 2020 that he was opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline and fracking, and Pennsylvania voters picked him anyway. Maybe.
But the difference between 2020 and 2024 is that the voters are now feeling the pain of Biden's energy policies, and anyone who was kidding himself about Biden's true intentions isn't going to give him the benefit of the doubt again. Fracking is a big part of the economy in Western Pennsylvania, and it's hard to see how or why anyone would vote for someone whose policies are, by design, hurting their bottom line.
