This article originally ran on Forbes.com on November 5, 2024. All rights reserved.
On this Election Day 2024, a few issues have come to dominate the national discourse. The right of a woman to an abortion, the fate of our porous borders and of those illegal/undocumented immigrants, and the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine are all important to American voters. But, as usual, it is impossible to get away from the American economy as that which looms largest to those casting ballots on or before today.
Former President Trump criticizes Vice President Harris for causing the inflation that has risen over the last four years. When asked what he would do to bring that inflation rate down, Mr. Trump often mentions energy - being as it is an input for every product we purchase or consume.
Ms. Harris has changed her position completely on the basic issue of hydraulic fracturing -- "fracking" -- which, together with horizontal drilling, has been so responsible for the shale revolution that has allowed the United States to become the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas. In 2019, when she first ran for President, Ms. Harris insisted that she would ban it on her first day in office. Now she claims she would not do so. When asked to explain her position shift, the Vice President has struggled, resulting in some voters wondering what her position on the issue really is.
It does not take much research to understand the importance of the issue. During both the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and the aftermath of the Iranian revolution in 1979, oil and gas prices spiked and the availability of the product plummeted, causing massive lines at gas stations, large increases in inflation, alternate day gas fueling, and a large transfer of international political power to potentially nefarious regimes in the Middle East. That hasn't happened in 2024, at least so far, despite the Russian supply going offline and that from the Middle East now potentially unstable. Indeed, so massive has the American production been that the Energy Information Agency expects oil and gas prices actually to fall in 2025. (Source).
This has put the Vice President in a bind, yet also provided her with an opportunity- which, so far, she has refused to take. She could have been explaining that while she was, and remains, concerned about the possible environmental impacts of fracking, these last two years have shown the importance of energy independence. It remains a mystery as to why she has struggled so hard to explain her views, and it remains to be seen if, in a race seen by most as too close to call in advance, that indecision costs her critical votes, especially in energy-rich Pennsylvania which is the largest swing state.
The fracking issue exemplifies the difference between the ideals and the practical. Most agree that a transition away from fossil fuels is a good and needed thing, but very few who study the issue closely believe it can be done quickly, or without massive dislocation and collateral impacts, some or many of which cannot really be predicted, let alone dealt with, in advance. Should Donald Trump win back the White House, and should his success in Pennsylvania be critical to that effort, it may be that President Trump will return to the White House on the wings of fracking.
