DNC wraps up as Sen. Casey talks ‘greedflation,’ other Pa. pols reflect on the week

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The Democratic National Convention ended after four days of speeches by Democrats and supporters, with Vice President Kamala Harris addressing the nation for the first time as the Democratic nominee.

“On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth,” she said, “I accept your nomination for president of the United States.”

Greedflation

Earlier in the evening, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania took the podium and promoted his top legislative priority, combating what he has called “greedflation,” when large corporations use inflation as cover to excessively raise prices and increase profits.

Casey said the nominee would be a partner in his crusade.

“I’ve been fighting to ban price gouging on food, and next year, when she’s president, Kamala Harris will sign a bill to do just that,” he told the crowd.

As an election issue, Democrats and Harris have trailed with voter confidence on addressing inflation, with a recent CBS News/YouGov poll finding that 61% of likely voters think GOP candidate Donald Trump will do a better job addressing the problem. Inflation rose to over 9% in 2022 under President Joe Biden’s administration, a 40-year-high, though it has since dropped to a more reasonable 3% this year.

Trump had been working to make that a top campaign issue when Biden was still in the race and is now attempting to pin it on Harris.

“Americans have been subjected to the longest period of high inflation in more than three decades,” the Trump campaign said in a press release while Harris was giving her speech.

Accusing companies of “corporate greed” may provide deflection against those charges.

Casey, who is being challenged by Republican nominee David McCormick for his U.S. Senate seat, filed a bill to prohibit “shrinkflation,” the practice of reducing the amount of product a consumer would get for the same price.

“Americans don’t expect stuff to be free, but we do expect it to be fair,” he said in his speech. “The people I’m talking to from Allentown to Erie, they don’t tolerate being ripped off.

Casey also touted the Biden-Harris administration’s effort to reduce prescription drug costs through negotiating the prices pharmaceutical companies charge through Medicare as another way to tackle rising prices. The first of those was insulin.

“When big pharma jacked up the cost of insulin, we passed a bill to stop them,” he said. “Now, for millions of Americans, it’s capped at $35 a month.”

‘A constructive convention’

Other Tri-State Democrats told WHYY News that they saw the convention as a successful introduction of their nominees, Harris and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz.

“This has been a wonderful and constructive convention,” said Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware.

Coons, who worked for then-Sen. Biden as an intern and served as co-chair of the Biden presidential campaign until he dropped out last month, had advocated for the president to stay in the race, and his speech to the DNC Wednesday focused on the legacy of his friend and mentor.

Coons, who had attended convention breakfasts with the Pennsylvania and Delaware delegations, now says that everyone is fully committed to Harris.

“If there’s any place in the country where there might be some folks still harboring some hard feelings about this transition, it would be there,” he said. “But what I heard was unanimous enthusiasm for the Harris-Walz ticket.”

U.S. Rep Madeleine Dean — who represents Pennsylvania’s 4th Congressional District, which includes Montgomery and Berks counties — shared Coons’ view that DNC attendees were enthusiastic.

“The feeling on the floor, anywhere you go in the arena, it is joyful, jubilant, excited, exhilarating,” she told WHYY News. “I don’t know all the superlatives to tell you. And it’s so bright. That’s what I keep looking at. People are beaming, smiling in ways that we haven’t had the opportunity to smile for a few years in this way.”

Dean added that she has also seen a shift in her district since Harris moved up to the top of the ticket. She said that the new campaign is running on a winning message of “joy.”

“I think joy is a powerful cocktail, and we’re going to ride it and work hard to make sure that the future looks joyful, not dark,” she said.

U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon — who represents Pennsylvania’s 5th Congressional District, which includes Delaware County and parts of Chester County and Montgomery County — echoed her colleague and added that this year is different from 2016, when Hillary Clinton became the first woman to be nominated by a major party.

“Because the stakes have become so much clearer, we have the contrast of having had four years of a Trump presidency, the conspiracy theories, the lies, the election denialism,” she said. “We understand the assignment, and I think is the word going around here that everybody needs to turn out. We need to turn out in overwhelming numbers because this idea of election denialism is particularly strong in Pennsylvania among Trump supporters.”