HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — One of the biggest questions on the minds of everyone following the presidential and U.S. Senate races in Pennsylvania is always a fairly simple, “How’s it going?”
No matter who is asking — a Democrat, Republican, reporter, or cable news producer — most people believe Pennsylvania will decide who the next president is and also perhaps whether Democrats keep a Senate majority or the Republicans retake it.
The best illustration of exactly how it is going lies in a new ad for Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), the Scranton Democrat who has held the seat for 18 years, that shows a married couple, Marygrace and Joe, with different political affiliations who claim their only political common ground is Casey.
“On politics, we just don’t agree — except for Bob Casey. He’s independent. That’s right! Casey’s leading the effort to stop corporate greedflation and price gouging. Casey bucked Biden to protect fracking, and he sided with Trump to end NAFTA and put tariffs on China to stop them from cheating,” the ad says.
The fact that Casey is running an ad highlighting how much he agrees with former President Donald Trump tells you everything you need to know about how Pennsylvania is going.
The first question that comes to mind as a reporter is how the Harris campaign feels about this new ad. The second question would be how Harris donors feel about their money being spent to promote Trump.
Casey has only faced one tough campaign in his entire political career, a primary race between him and Ed Rendell when both were seeking their party’s nomination for governor in 2002. That race was brutal, and Casey, who had always been seen as a very likable centrist Democrat who had been elected twice statewide for state auditor general, went negative. The negativity did not sit well with voters, and Casey lost.
Outside of that race, Casey has breezed through statewide elected races outside of auditor general. He also won handily for state treasurer and had three outsize wins for the U.S. Senate seat he has held since 2006.
Casey shed his moderate credentials around the same time his party started shedding moderate Democrats from its ranks in 2014. His voting record with the Biden-Harris administration, which has been widely unpopular in the state for over two years, has been in the 90th percentile.
The latest Real Clear Politics averages have Trump with a slim lead over Harris, which is likely dicey not just for Harris but also for Casey.
Harris and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), her running mate, have launched into scorched-earth screeds in Pennsylvania against Trump in the last few days.
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CNN’s poll number cruncher Harry Enten posted on X that there is a reason why Harris is doing that: “Trump’s more popular at this point in the campaign than at this point in either his 2016 or 2020 bids.”
“Harris’s popularity rise, on the other hand, has crested, and she’s fallen back [barely] into net negative favorability territory,” Enten added.