It's looking more and more like whoever wins Pennsylvania's 19 electoral votes will win the presidency. That's not an exaggeration. The path to 270 electoral votes and victory for both candidates goes through Pennsylvania. If either Trump or Harris loses the Keystone State, the path to victory becomes far more treacherous and unlikely.
Pennsylvania is a state that's evenly split. In 2016, Donald Trump won by less than a percentage point. In 2020, Trump lost Pennsylvania by a little more than one percentage point. The 2024 vote is expected to be just as close.
A few thousand votes will make the difference between victory and defeat. And that's why Kamala Harris did a major league flip-flop on the issue of hydraulic fracturing or fracking. Pennsylvania has embraced fracking and there are 123,000 Pennsylvanians working in businesses connected to the process.
And yet, as Forbes notes, In a 2019 CNN climate town hall as a presidential candidate, Harris said “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”
By the time of her debate with Vice President Mike Pence in 2020, Harris had moved far away from that position, claiming that since Biden was in favor of fracking, so was she.
Now, in 2024, she's a born-again fossil fuel warrior.
“Let’s talk about fracking because we’re here in Pennsylvania," she said during the debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. "I made that very clear in 2020. I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as vice president of the United States. My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil.”
The senator who embraced Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (D-N.Y.) half-trillion-dollar "Green New Deal" is now a cheerleader for fracking and fossil fuels.
In addition to the more than 123,000 jobs hydraulic fracturing—known informally as fracking—supports in Pennsylvania, the association’s study, based on calendar year 2022, found that this form of fossil fuel exploration creates $41.4 billion in annual economic activity; contributes $24.4 billion to the commonwealth’s Gross Domestic Product; pays out $12 billion in wages; and generates $3.2 billion in state and local tax revenues. (The Marcellus Shale Coalition told Dispatch Politics these figures have not changed significantly over the past two years.)
“In order to have the possibility of moving any moderate Republicans and many independents to vote for her, [Harris] had to come to peace with the issue of fracking,” Jeff Brauer, a political science professor at Keystone College, near Scranton, Pennsylvania, told Dispatch Politics. “In Pennsylvania, where the race is going to be so very close in November, an issue like fracking could be the difference.”
“She will never allow fracking in Pennsylvania. If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day one,” Trump said during the debate, rebutting Harris. “If she won the election, the day after that election, they’ll go back to destroying our country and oil will be dead, fossil fuel will be dead. We’ll go back to windmills and we’ll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to get some energy to come out.”
The question of whether it matters that Harris has flip-flopped on fracking should be asked of the radical climate change advocates who are bitterly disappointed in her.
“Harris spent more time promoting fracking than laying out a bold vision for a clean energy future," said Stevie O’Hanlon, a spokesperson for the Sunrise Movement, one of the groups behind the Green New Deal. “Young voters want more from Harris’’ on climate change, she added. “We want to see a real plan that meets the scale and urgency of this crisis.’'
Trump's approach in trying to corner Harris on the fracking issue is scattershot. His attacks need to be more focused and more visceral. Trump is wrong in claiming Harris will try to end fracking "on day one." That's silly. Presidents can't end fracking without a major regulatory effort, and that takes years.
I doubt very much whether Harris has the power or the desire to end oil. I'm not the first person to point out that Trump needs to be more disciplined in his messaging. If he can achieve that, Pennsylvania is his.
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