During Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate (which many Swatties watched at a viewing party in Sharples Commons) observers may have recalled a time when they expected Vice President Kamala Harris to select Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro to be up on that stage. Harris’s decision to select Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate is just one of many surprises in what has been a chaotic election cycle, but one with massive implications. In the coming weeks, The Phoenix will continue covering the elections and the impact that candidates’ policies could have on Swarthmore.
While the race for president is only one of the elections in Pennsylvania for influential offices, it has captured a huge amount of the cycle’s attention. During a presidential debate in June, then-nominee President Joe Biden delivered a weak performance that heightened questions and concerns about his age. Because the debate came at an early point in the campaign cycle, Biden’s performance launched a massive internal fight within the Democratic Party, where high-level officials and top Democratic donors slowly put pressure on President Biden to end his re-election campaign. Notably, Pennsylvania’s two Democratic senators, Bob Casey and John Fetterman, were some of Biden’s strongest defenders in the U.S. Senate. Eventually, Biden ended his campaign, and endorsed Harris to become the Democratic nominee. The vast majority of the party soon followed suit.
Since Harris took her place at the top of the ticket, commentators and viewers have been analyzing her speeches and proposals to get a sense of where she aligns and differs with Biden. Assistant Professor of Political Science Warren Snead thinks this approach is misplaced because there are a number of factors at play that determine a president’s approach. “Presidential agendas — and their ability to enact them — are largely a function of their broader coalition and the makeup of other governing institutions,” Snead said in an email to the Phoenix.
Building on this, Snead added, “On the domestic front, I largely expect a Harris-Walz administration to reflect the priorities of the Biden-Harris administration. I expect Harris-Walz to continue using the administrative state to implement environmental regulations, bolster the status of unions in labor relations, and chip away at student loan debt. Like President Biden, I also expect a future President Harris to pursue an extension of the Child Tax Credit in Congress. She will also nominate a diverse slate of judges whose rulings will be largely favorable to civil rights and reproductive freedom.”
That’s not to say there aren’t notable differences between them. “One key difference may be antitrust enforcement. President Biden appointed Lina Khan, an aggressive regulator to chair the FTC [Federal Trade Commission]. Some Democratic donors reportedly think Khan has gone too far and it’s possible Harris makes a more moderate appointment to head the FTC,” he said. (For more Phoenix coverage of Lina Khan, check out last week’s feature on antitrust expert Associate Professor of Economics Marc Remer.)
Associate Professor of Sociology Daniel Laurison agrees that the focus in politics should be on actual policies and how candidates are reaching out and building coalitions with people who otherwise might not be involved in politics. “What I am most concerned with is 1) which outcome will be better for the lives and livelihoods of people who mostly don’t follow politics like a sport and 2) figuring out how politics and campaigns might bring those people — people who don’t normally vote, who are disproportionately poor and working-class and people of color — into the political process,” he said in a message to the Phoenix.
“And I do see some evidence that the Harris campaign is working on that — Harris spoke recently at a town hall in Philadelphia hosted by APIAVote, which empowers Asian and Pacific Islander communities though voting and civic participation, and her campaign manager met with Hispanic leaders in North Philadelphia. But I think there’s a lot more to be done, and a lot of the way professional politics works tends to disincentivize the things that can make the most difference, which are various forms of on-the-ground real-life contact with potential voters. There are a lot of organizations doing that work in Pennsylvania, and that is what I think will ultimately make the difference in this election — who is able to connect with, and then turn out, the most people who might not otherwise vote.”
Current polling of Pennsylvania suggests that Harris has an extremely slim lead in the state, with ABC News’ 538 averaging and weighting recent polls to result in 50.3% for Harris versus 49.7% for Trump. This margin is likely more representative of the closeness of the race, experts say, than the national margin (which has Harris a few points ahead), because of Pennsylvania’s status as a likely tipping-point state.
On the state’s swingy politics, Laurison added, “Pennsylvania has lots of particularities, but at the end of the day we’re swingy for the same reason any state is swingy: because we have a roughly even mix of strong partisans for both parties, and a set of people who are much less committed to and interested in politics for all the reasons, who the campaigns are each trying to win in their own ways. The consensus seems to have settled on ‘PA’s Latine Hispanic community will be decisive,’ which is a good thing both for mobilizing that community and hopefully getting campaign promises that would be good for them made, but also potentially leaves out all the other communities that could also be decisive and also have unmet needs.”
The presidential race soaking up all the attention doesn’t mean it’s the only race in Pennsylvania worth following. Much of what either Harris or Trump would want to accomplish as president is dependent on the number of votes in the Senate and House that their party has, with most bills requiring 60 votes in the Senate due to the filibuster, and all bills requiring a majority in the U.S. House pass. While Harris has announced she is in favor of eliminating the filibuster to codify the abortion protections of Roe v. Wade into law, this would also require at least 50 votes in the Senate.
While Biden did squeeze a handful of large legislative bills — most notably a pandemic stimulus bill, and two large infrastructure and clean-energy packages — through a 50-50 Senate with Harris’s tie-breaking votes, the difficulty of passing meaningful legislation without large majorities “raises the stakes of the presidential election,” according to Snead.
“With a gridlocked, unproductive Congress, most new policy making would come from executive agencies (like the EPA, FTC, NLRB, etc.) who are enacting the agenda of either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.” This setup also allows the judiciary branch to have more influence, especially given the Supreme Court’s notable ruling last term that reduced agencies’ regulatory authority. “The problem for Harris in this scenario is that the U.S Supreme Court is very conservative and extremely skeptical of federal regulation via administrative agencies. As such, much of her regulatory agenda could be rebuked by the judiciary. In contrast, President Trump’s agenda to cut regulations and implement Draconian immigration policies will likely face less scrutiny from the Supreme Court,” Snead said.
If either party were to win the presidency and have a majority in the House and Senate, however, this would massively expand the amount of new policy that can be enacted. For Harris, majorities in Congress could allow her to pass long-time Democratic priorities like the codification of Roe v. Wade, an expansion of the Child Tax Credit, tax increases on the wealthy and corporations, the PRO Act that expands workers’ rights, increased environmental regulation, and more. For Trump, legislative priorities could include further tax cuts, stricter immigration policies, deregulation, and more. These policy implications call attention to the races for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House in Pennsylvania.
Generally, Democrats running in down-ballot races are focusing on abortion rights, given the popularity of pro-choice policies in Pennsylvania, as well as an economic agenda focused on affordable housing, minimum wage increases, and bringing down the cost of living. Republicans across the state are highlighting border security, deregulation, and new foreign policy approaches on China, Ukraine, and others.
Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senator Bob Casey is running for his fourth term against Republican David McCormick. Casey, who before being a senator was the auditor general, is well known in the state and has won his past elections by wide margins. This year, he is running on a platform focused on abortion rights and cost of living, with proposals to raise the minimum wage, build affordable housing, and regulate corporate price-gouging. McCormick is a former Bush administration Treasury official running on a platform focused on a more aggressive stance towards China, boosting oil production, along with more traditional Republican campaign issues. Because of Pennsylvania’s very slim margins, the race for senate is considered competitive, though most polls show Casey ahead by five to ten points.
As for the U.S. House, because the Republicans hold a very slim margin, every potentially close seat will be hotly contested. There are potentially close races in Pennsylvania’s 1st, 6th, 7th, 8th, 10th, and 17th Districts, with Democrats in those races running campaigns. Swarthmore’s Democratic representative Mary Gay Scanlon is running against Republican Alfeia DeVaughn-Goodwin.
In Pennsylvania, former Auditor General Eugene DePasquale is running for the office of attorney general, the highest law enforcement office in the state, against York County District Attorney Dave Sunday.
One particularly contentious policy question in Pennsylvania is hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. Because of the western Pennsylvania’s widespread use of the practice, which involves injecting a pressurized liquid into the ground to get natural gas and petroleum to flow more easily, politicians hoping to win in the state are very careful about their stated positions. In Harris’s case, when running for the Democratic nomination in 2019, she promised to ban fracking. Harris then reversed her position as the vice-presidential nominee in 2020 and remains in favor of fracking as the presidential nominee. Some more progressive voices within the party, however, question that reversal, citing fracking’s detrimental environmental effects.
Questions such as how politicians approach fracking on the campaign trail represent why the 2024 elections in Pennsylvania are being closely watched. Together, the offices that are up for election will create the patchwork of state and federal offices that enact new policies and manage government agencies that enforce existing policies in different ways. These offices can have a huge impact on policy matters relevant to Swarthmore, our surrounding communities, and beyond. Because of this, The Phoenix will continue to publish information about the election and its implications with an angle relevant to the Swarthmore community.
