PA Political Digest -- Philly Debate fallout reverberates, Pope weighs in on the race + what our Senate President and Kamala Harris both went through
Sharp analysis of PA politics and campaigns writ large
Welcome to the Friday End of the Week post here at PPD - I’m your guide, GOP political consultant Christopher Nicholas.
For you today, we have:
Did you notice? details the final Philly Debate recap you’ll need to read and questions the odd timing of Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris
5 Questions With… features GOP Senate President Kim Ward, who talks about her first Senate race, which was similar to our current presidential race in 1 key way
This Week in PA talks to
In Extras, a state database may confuse voters, Pope Francis weighs in on our presidential race while Harris visits Johnstown & Wilkes-Barre today.
Did you notice?
Did you notice the Philly Debate was a ratings smash?
It earned very strong ratings and a 70% Share — meaning that 70% of all TV sets in use that night were tuned to the debate…and that does not even include the streaming numbers, which were also strong. ABC announced it was their highest rated program since the Super Bowl.
Interestingly, there was no mention of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump earlier in the summer — I thought that would have warranted a mention and/or a question.
Trump spoke for 41.9 minutes while Harris spoke for 37.1 minutes, according to MSNBC.
It’s clear that Kamala Harris had a fair debate while Donald Trump had a bad debate, especially after the first 15 minutes, which saw the only question specifically on the economy.
A CNN insta-poll, taken immediately after the debate among voters who watched it, showed that Trump’s edge on economic issues was not affected by his performance, though strong majorities also said Harris won the overall debate.
National Review Online’s Andrew C. McCarthy summed up the GOP’s frustration with Trump’s performance Tuesday night this way:
“If you’re obsessing over how bad, how in the tank for Kamala Harris, the two ABC news moderators were, it’s because you don’t want to come to grips with the brute fact that Donald Trump was a disaster last night. He was unhinged, often incoherent, incapable of completing thoughts and sentences when he had points to make, and led into self-absorbed rabbit-holes…that diverted him from opportunity after opportunity to expose Harris as a radical leftist now pretending to be a pragmatic centrist who suddenly loves her some guns…
“Harris may be a cipher, and a demonstrably subpar one at that, but she’s enough of a trained lawyer that she can lock herself in a room for a week and learn her lines. The question was whether she could deliver them convincingly enough. On that, the secret sauce was . . . Trump.”
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, as strong a Trump backer as there is, lamented his performance and the missed opportunities therein, and said after the debate:
“She [Harris] said, ‘We inherited a mess,’” Graham said. “I was yelling and screaming, ‘No you didn’t — you inherited low gas prices, a secure border, a vaccine for Covid, you inherited the biggest Mideast change of my lifetime, the Abraham Accords, and now everything is to shit.’” (no paywall)
Long-time political commentator Ronald Brownstein tweeted that “Trump often sounded [during the debate] like he was calling into a Fox News show.”
Trump’s best moment came during his closing statement, delivered past 10:30 pm, when he called out Harris for not doing any of the nifty things she is now saying she will do…during her 3.5 years as Vice President.
Asked directly if she bore any of the responsibility for the haphazard and deadly withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Harris evaded the question and produced a word salad-like answer.
Overall though, Harris was sharper than Trump and prosecuted her case better than he did.
Afterwards, Democrats were ecstatic of course, a complete 180 from their reactions to the June debate between Trump and Joe Biden. Team Harris immediately challenged Trump to another debate, to which he first said No, then later said Maybe if it was on NBC or Fox, and then Thursday said No, again. So that’s where we are…for now.
Though this may end up being the only Trump-Harris debate, there will be another one…at the VP debate on Oct. 1 in NYC. Much of a VP debate is spent re-litigating what the top of the ticket said in their debate, so expect a lot of that in NYC.
What’s easier — explaining your own ideas in real time, or trying to clean up something your boss said prior?
What’s with the odd timing of Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris? To me that was an unforced error.
Less than 30 minutes after the debate ended, when all the TV networks and pundits were pummeling Trump for his performance, suddenly there was this important news, re: Swift.
Talk about stepping all over your own story. Why not let Trump twist in the wind for a day or two and keep the media focused on his debate performance…and then two days later have Swift drop her endorsement via her ginormous social media accounts.
That would have engendered news stories, a la: after his rough night at the debate, Trump is now reeling from another body blow — the biggest star in the country endorsing his opponent, etc.
Instead it got somewhat lost in the wash of the debate reviews, which were 90% bad for Trump…and among the stories on our 911 remembrance ceremonies.
When Fox New’s Brit Hume starts off their debate recap coverage by saying: “Make no mistake about it, Trump had a bad night,” why get in the way of that?
5 Questions With…
Today we feature Sen. Kim Ward. I first met Westmoreland County's Kim Ward when she was a staffer for Sen. Rick Santorum. Since then she won election as a Twp. Supervisor, County Commissioner and State Senator, and now serves as Senate President Pro Tempore, the 3rd highest-ranking official in state government. In August 2008, the GOP senator in her district resigned from the ticket and Kim, then a County Commissioner, was chosen as the new nominee with less than 3 months left in the election.
This Week in Pennsylvania
The only state-wide political show went on the road today at the Capitol and talked with David Thornburgh of the group Ballot PA, a special project that’s part of the Committee of 70, a government reform and watchdog group in Philadelphia this week.
My Democratic counterpart, Danielle Gross, and I argue about the big debate and Thornburgh’s push to allow Indies to vote in our primaries, plus we detail why Harris spent today in Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre.
Watch TWIP Sundays across the state:
Philly Phl17 6:30am (Sat.)
Pittsburgh KDKA+ Ch. 19 Noon
Harrisburg ABC27News 10am
Scranton WBRE Ch. 28 11am
Johnstown WTAJ Ch. 10 6:30am
Erie JET-TV Ch. 24 10am
You may also stream the show here — the new show loads around Noon on Sundays.
Extras
A New York Times report earlier this afternoon highlights the Pope’s view on our presidential race: “Asked his advice to Catholic voters in the coming U.S. presidential election, Pope Francis said they must choose the ‘lesser of two evils’ because “both are against life” — Kamala Harris for her support for abortion rights, and Donald Trump for closing the door to immigrants…Francis described the rejection of migrants as a “grave sin” and “cruelty,” and abortion as “murder.” He said that both “are against life” and clearly wrong.
Errors and misspellings in a state database make it difficult for nearly 100,000 voters to find their polling location, according to story today by SpotlightPA. (no paywall) Though the Dept. of State maintains the database, counties are responsible for the data in it. For example, do you spell the town Mount Union, or Mt. Union? There are nearly 9 million registered voters in PA.
Vote by mail ballots will not start to go out to voters next week, as planned, as there are still lawsuits winding their way through the court system about whether some 3rd party candidates can be on,the presidential ballot.
The deluge of campaign visits from national candidates continues unabated here. Harris will rally today in Wilkes-Barre and Johnstown, two towns Trump visited recently. Both regions are home to lots of WWC — white working class voters. Team Harris recognizes they have some work to do with those voters and these visits demonstrate that.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is set to come to Lancaster County next month to speak at the local GOP’s fall dinner, at the request of GOP Cong. Lloyd Smucker.
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