The center of the debate | PA 2024 Newsletter

📅 There are 59 days until Election Day.

In this edition:

— Julia Terruso, Jesse Bunch, Layla A. Jones, Fallon Roth, Oona Goodin-Smith, pa2024@inquirer.com

If you’d like to get this free newsletter in your inbox, sign up for free here.

📮 Have a question about this election? Email us and we’ll try to answer it in a future newsletter.

📝 We want to know what you think about this newsletter. By taking our quick survey, you can enter for a chance to win a gift card.

With the much-anticipated presidential debate coming to Philadelphia next week, national politics reporter Julia Terruso looks at the stakes:

The spotlight aimed at Pennsylvania is going to need a new bulb soon.

The likely most watched moment in an unprecedented presidential election campaign that has already focused overwhelmingly on Pennsylvania will play out in Philadelphia on Tuesday, when former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris debate at the National Constitution Center.

The stakes are obviously huge. The race is essentially tied in Pennsylvania, which could determine the whole election — and while polling shows that Harris has made up ground from where President Joe Biden was, she’s far from overcoming Trump, who still enjoys substantial support in the state.

Debates can be hugely consequential, as this election season has already shown. This could also wind up being the only debate between Harris and Trump before the November election.

So what do both candidates have to do? Trump comes in with an advantage of experience, as this will be his seventh general election debate — more than any candidate in history. His team also won the war over muting the candidates’ mics when they’re not speaking, which means he’ll have less leeway to interrupt or go on tangents.

His allies want him to stick to the issues, particularly immigration and inflation, and to tie Harris to Biden on both. He’ll also likely try to argue Harris, who is less well-known than the presidential candidates before her, is not yet ready to run the country. It’s all an opportunity to slow some of the momentum Harris had enjoyed coming out of the Democratic National Convention.

Harris, who will conduct her debate prep from — where else? — Pennsylvania, will look to hammer Trump on issues like reproductive rights and threats to democracy, while laying out her priorities. It will be the first time the two have shared a room since Trump’s State of the Union addresses when Harris was a senator, and comes after Trump has unleashed racist and sexist attacks on her.

The national news media will descend on Independence Mall as voters across the region participate in watch parties. (For those of us who grew up going to field trips at the Constitution Center, here’s hoping the debate is as rousing as those Freedom Rising intros used to be.)

💰 The stakes couldn’t be higher in the Lehigh Valley, where a competitive, nationally consequential race that could help decide control of the U.S. House is underway. And campaign money is pouring in from both sides.

📰 Voters in Pennsylvania and five other swing states were targeted by a sprawling Russian-backed misinformation network known as “Doppelganger,” Philly federal authorities announced this week. The group aimed to influence the 2024 presidential election by duping Americans into believing its Kremlin-produced propaganda were legitimate news stories.

🛠️ Biden is expected to block the impending $15 billion sale of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel to Japan, and Pennsylvania voters are a big part of the reason why.

✉️ Pennsylvania election officials can no longer reject otherwise valid mail ballots because voters failed to date or put an incorrect date on the outer envelope, a court has ruled. It’s a triumph for voting rights groups, which have fought the requirement for years, but one Philly official said she was “not ready to ring any victory bells” just yet.

🍩 Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, made his first solo trip campaigning in majority-red Pennsylvania territories this week. He phone banked, visited a farm, talked Super Bowl rings but not a lot about policy, and ribbed Republican VP candidate JD Vance, saying he has “no problem picking out donuts.”

🎤 Trump also visited Pennsylvania Wednesday — his 10th visit to the Keystone State this year — falsely claiming during Fox News town hall in Harrisburg that ABC would provide Harris with the debate questions ahead of time, and warning of “World War III.”

🛒 The blame game over consumer price inflation during Biden’s presidency is one of the defining debates of this year’s election — and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey has played a major role in shaping his party’s messaging.

👕 At a thrift-shopping extravaganza in Kensington, a group used fashion, music, and health and wellness to engage Gen Z and millennials in the 2024 presidential election. Said one worker: “We kind of aim to make it like a party and make them not feel like voting is so boring.”

🦅 The question: Did the Philadelphia Eagles really endorse Harris’ presidential campaign with a citywide advertising blitz at SEPTA bus shelters?

That was, well, all over social media on Labor Day, when photos of the supposed Harris-Eagles bus shelter ads ricocheted throughout the Philly community — and beyond.

✖️ The check: Definitely not.

The Eagles organization denied any involvement with the hoax and have not endorsed any candidate in the presidential election. And city officials confirmed that the posters — featuring a woman resembling Harris donning a green Birds helmet – were placed neither by the Harris campaign, SEPTA, nor Intersection, the agency which manages the bus ad space. So who’s behind them? Those in the local street art community say the stunt was likely the work of a daring creative, and that this isn’t the first time artists have broken into the city’s locked ad spaces to make a statement. By late Tuesday, Intersection staff had removed at least seven of the Harris-Eagles posters from areas like Center City and West and North Philadelphia, and were looking for more. The ad agency said it would consider filing a police report for what it considers vandalism and theft.

📈 National Constitution Center: Steps away from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, the National Constitution Center is getting its shining moment on the national stage next week. The center is the venue of choice for the ABC presidential debate on Sept. 10 — the first time Harris and Trump will meet. But that’s not the only noteworthy thing about Tuesday’s event. It will be the center’s first time hosting a general election debate in its more than 20-year history. The last time the institution hosted a debate of any kind, it was April 2008, meaning Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were the Democratic primary candidates and the Phillies were about six months away from winning the World Series.

📉 Pennsylvania General Assembly: In the case of counting mail ballots, time does not heal all for Pennsylvania. Local election officials are warning that the state might see a repeat of the prolonged ballot counting process that helped fuel false claims of voter fraud from conservative Republicans after the 2020 election. Why? Because despite four years and a lot of prodding from local officials, state lawmakers in Harrisburg haven’t taken the steps needed to update the Pennsylvania election code and expedite the ballot-counting process. County-level officials also want legislators to give guidance about which mail-in ballots can be counted and which can’t. It doesn’t look like they’ll get anything before November. Said Forrest Lehman, director of elections in Lycoming County: “They should be ashamed of themselves.”

Julia spent a few days reporting on Luzerne County this week for a story to come (stay tuned). It’s a fascinating purple area where registrations keep shifting Republican.

In a county where Democrats outnumbered Republicans by about 20,000 in 2020, the gap was down to about a +300 Democratic advantage as of Wednesday. Registration is often a lagging indicator of how people vote — and the county did a pretty substantial voter roll purge, impacting the numbers registered in both parties — but that’s still a significant rise in a key county that Trump won in the last two elections.

In addition to how many times each candidate refers to the “birthplace of democracy,” or tries to liken this moment to the battle for independence, here are some of the things we’ll be watching for as Harris and Trump try to appeal to Pennsylvania voters.

➡️ Fracking and U.S. Steel: Two issues that specifically impact the state have made their way into the larger presidential campaign discourse. Ironically, they’re also both issues Harris and Trump agree on now. But on both, Harris has only recently solidified her stance, saying she won’t ban fracking and also opposes the sale of U.S. Steel to Japan. Look for Trump to try and argue he’s the legitimate champion of the Rust Belt, for Harris to double down on her positions, and the rest of the country to wonder: Why so much focus on such Pennsylvania-specific issues?

➡️ Who is the change candidate? Even after Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee, voters have expressed frustration with the political system. Both candidates are longtime politicians who will try to present themselves as a fresh start. Some of Trump’s campaign signs read “Let’s Save America.” Harris has been vice president for nearly a term, but frequently talks to voters about “fighting for a brighter future.” As both candidates make a pitch that they’re the change the country needs, who does it more effectively?

➡️ Will things get personal? Will Harris respond to comments Trump has made about her race and gender? Thus far she’s established herself as above the often racist and sexist accusations he’s wielded at her. There’s also the question of whether Trump further alienates himself from some voters by doubling down on those attacks on stage.

➡️ How will the muted mics go? It’s not just personal attacks but Trump’s ranting that has lost him past debates. Will the muted mics help him present as more presidential and able to stick to the talking points? And how will Harris, who is eager to showcase her prosecutorial chops, do cross-examining her opponent with the format? In his 2016 debates against Clinton, Trump frequently called her names, and interrupted her and the moderators. A similar display in 2020 led Biden to retort, “Will you shut up, man?” But in a debate with muted mics, Trump the bully may not be as clearly on display.

➡️ Will there there be a big moment? The 90-minute debate will mostly be viewed later in clipped exchanges and soundbites, and there are bound to be some doozies. What will we be talking about in the days after the match-up?

You can catch our live debate coverage and analysis Tuesday at inquirer.com, where our reporters will bring you the latest from the National Constitution Center, watch parties, and highlights from across the city. And, as always, we’ll see you here in your inbox next Friday. 👋