There’s a more compelling and accurate story Democrats could tell about fracking: that fossil fuel companies thought it was too expensive to be worth it until the federal government poured billions of dollars of funding into basic research and tax breaks. The industry relies on tens of billions of dollars a year in local, state, and federal subsidies. Despite all that support, fracking companies—particularly those in Pennsylvania!—have burned through shareholder money for more than a decade without turning a profit. All that meant they had to beg for a bailout during the pandemic so they could continue to poison the nation’s air, water, and politics. Now those same executives are trying to figure out how to lay off workers through automation and fuel demand for plastics we don’t need that keep showing up in our blood, brains, and placentas. The government has poured real resources into creating the shale gas boom; now is the time to refocus those energies on building an energy economy for the 21st century.

But leading Democrats, including Harris, seem incapable of talking about the downsides of fossil fuel production. All they can do is vaguely point to the need for an ill-defined “transition.” And to the extent they do attack Big Oil, they do so by claiming that the companies aren’t producing enough oil to make gasoline cheaper — which isn’t quite how it works.

The rest of last night’s debate, moreover, should serve as a cautionary tale about how foolish and dangerous it is for Democrats to continue to treat Republican talking points as their own. Harris emphasized throughout the debate how much harder Democrats are than Republicans on immigration: that they’re the party that fought to pass a draconian immigration bill earlier this year that would have made it harder to seek asylum in the United States and pumped money into ICE detention and deportation flights. Even without that bill, the Biden administration has worked to close the southern border and raise barriers to asylum seekers.