"Among the white population, abortion rights is a lot more popular than the Democratic Party, but in the African-American population it’s the reverse. So in states like Louisiana and Mississippi with a larger Black population, abortion rights probably loses more votes than it wins."
I am pretty sure this is not sound math. Like the thesis could be correct, but this does not actually constitute evidence for it. Once you start to composite from sub-groups you get into Simpsons Paradox type issues.
The big-picture view, of looking at whether abortion is above water in Louisiana and Mississippi a state that Democrats typically lose, is actually more accurate than trying to stitch together an argument from demographic breakdown. Remember Yglesias Thought that its the marginal voter that counts, and that the white marginal voter and the black marginal voter are actually quite similar. Opposing a 15-week abortion ban is just above 50% in Louisiana, so being moderate pro-choice if anything helps even if it is not the most powerful lever to rehabilitate Democrats in the state.
The original populism issue-polling strategy is still the best approach, which is try to position yourself on issues that are 60%-80% in that state and raise their salience. If more sophisticated modeling is needed, you need to assess elasticity of position-taking - i.e. to examine if the 20-40% voters are motivated on the issue than the 60-80%. I imagine Matt talked to some pollsters about this, so maybe this complicated demographic argument is really based on received wisdom in Deep South politics based on extensive focus group tests. But even there I would doubt the validity of extending those findings to the post-Roe world.
I'm all for heterodox candidates in red states, but recommending John Bel Edwards on the basis of his strong anti-abortion stance is like recommending Hillary Clinton on the basis of her Iraq War stance - exactly the wrong kind of moderation! At best I'd say it is no more toxic than the reputation of being a former liberal, but still a lot of work to do to broaden appeal.
To your point, in Colorado we have the Democrats working to increase utility bills at twice the rate of inflation. In pursuit of an ineffective attempt to reduce carbon.
Ultimately, this comes down to being a religious issue that is the most obvious consequence of the horseshoe theory from both sides. (Abortion from the right-wing.)
I don't "believe" that climate change is real, I know it is real, but in being able to achieve anything towards the goal of carbon reduction, taking an absolutist position is definitely not what you want to do. The climate groups believe that climate change is real, but they don't know how best to address it beyond waving a magic wand to reduce carbon emissions.
This is an inspirational post. Every Dem member, senator, and policy wonk needs to read this and grapple with its implications if they want to improve people’s lives through electoral politics.
California's very high gas prices are giving Gavin Newsom and the State Democrats a bad look right now in a way that reminds me of how Biden neglected to deal with large flows of migrants crossing the border. Even though oil prices have been plummeting, gas prices in California have been rising (now generally over $5 a gallon) and look set to rise much higher when a couple refineries are shut down over the next year or so. What are the Democrats doing about it? Not very much by the look of it. If they don't do something I have a feeling they are going to get heavily punished at the next election just as Harris/Biden got punished for their neglect of an issue that bothers many voters.
One relevant part of the piece was the ranking of every issue in terms of whether the public supported the Ds and Rs and the importance of the issue.
Though, environment did not rate a very important issue, behind health care, economy, but more important than race and abortion, it was one of the strongest issues that the Dems had advantage over the Rs with a margin of 10%. which was more than healthcare and abortion. So in the general sense the environment is our issue.
It is also the issue which for a 75 year old grandparent is most important to me as I leave the world to my grandchildren. I am not a green catastrophist, as the future is always unpredictable, so my call is not "the sky is falling" but maybe "the sky might fall" and I can think of no greater risk to the coming generations. So to abandon this issue is malfeasance.
Yet, I understand that the American public, though nominally on the D side on environment, will not tolerate higher gas prices or radical life style change. People don't want to be told they cant have plastic straws, I also think that attacking extraction or pipelines is a useless exercise and just replaces the US as supplier with Russia, Venezuela, and Saudis - a rogues gallery. So, it is imperative not to campaign on unpopular issues, but absolutely important to campaign on support for wind and solar, public transportation, increased fuel efficiency, and engagement with the world on climate mitigation.
It can be done in a politically profitable way, and to ignore this issue is wrong.
I dont think it ever was. If you look at Dem campaign issues in order of frequency voiced it would be abortion, the greedy billionaires, Trumps war on democracy, social security and Medicare. I heard very little about the environment and given that people favor the Dems on that issue, it would help. Not the message to ban fracking but support for solar, wind.
Sure, climate change, especially policies that impose clear costs on voters, shouldn't be a high electoral priority for Democrats and we should expand the tent to get Senators in more reddish states exactly like Matt says. We should pay far less attention to the pigheaded climate groups. No argument!
But Matt has beat this drum a lot, and I guess he has to, but his policy recommendations for what we should actually *do* to attack this problem are paltry. No, it's not like global health; it's far more pressing because the less we do the worse the problem will become. And no, just permitting and waving one's hands about nuclear reactors and upzoning are not a plan -- those are small pieces of a bigger plan which Matt never considers.
So, sure, keep beating the climate groups and their enablers in the Democratic party over the head; they deserve it. But at some point, can we have a serious discussion of what we *should* be doing?
Matt has written dozens of articles on climate policy over the years, so why are you pretending he hasn't?
It doesn't really matter anyways. The reality is that Democrats winning the Senate in 2026 is the highest priority and the only way to truly slow down anything the Trump admin might do to the climate.
I've read all of them. They're thin gruel. When they (briefly) stop pounding on the (admittedly) obnoxious activists, the proposals they offer are trivial or woefully incomplete: permitting (good!), upzoning (won't help for many many years), changes in historic preservation (huh?), getting rid of EV subsidies (but replaced by what?) and of course pumping up on natural gas during the transition to renewables which somehow will magically happen on its own.
And yes we need to do well in the Senate races in 2026 and 2028, along the lines Matt talks about. But we still need a real climate policy and that's where Matt, supposedly known for caring about policy, really falls down.
I wouldn't argue that his articles on climate policy are especially deep, but I do find them reasonably informative and maybe I'm not the level of expert you are. But that's exactly why I subscribed and what I expect. If I want deep analysis on climate policy or climate science, there are other places I can go to read about that.
I also don't really see why we "need" a "real climate policy" in May 2025. What does that accomplish? Again, if you want climate policy more aligned with your views than what the current Trump administration is delivering, then it makes more sense to reiterate the importance of winning the Senate than on debating the specifics of the ideal climate policy.
I agree with that! The Democrats' North Star for 2026 is relentless delegitimization of Trump, MAGA, and the Republicans. We need only the barest bones of a policy alternative.
That will likely be turned on its head for 2028 when the Democrats will need a positive program for not only how we'll recover from the vast damage of Trump but how to move the nation forward.
I just get a bit irritated at Matt because he spends most of his time on this issue telling us what he's against with little effort at about where we should look for a better program.
Agreed with you both, I made this point a bit below. Matt loves punching left on this stuff but sometimes he ends up on autopilot. It's also not like global health in that the truth is most voters would rank that maybe 7th on their list of priorities, if that, so it's not going to sway elections and you can keep quiet about it and then enact policies you want once in office. If Colin Allred voted for clean energy once in office after loudly promising he won't in the campaign, he'd be raked through the coals in his next election cycle AND it would hurt other frontline Dems too. I'm entirely in favor of big tent politics, but you've gotta find a way to square that with your actual policy goals.
Agree with you Marc. Climate is too important to either ignore or abandon because the climate groups are so annoying. If you see my post, it is an issue where Dems have the biggest advantage over Rs, more than healthcare and abortion, two Dem leaning issues. Not that people want Greta Thornburg in charge, but I think most people would favor support for wind and solar, hybrids and EVs, and rejoining the world efforts on climate mitigation.
This post feels incomplete from Matt. Yes, doubling down on failed politics is DUMB, and performative in a way that to me is extraordinarily hypocritical. But that then begs the question of what Dems' stated platform on climate should be. Colin Allred can keep quiet about climate or even champion oil and gas all he wants, but John Cornyn is still going to slam a vote for him as a vote for environmentalists - because it is, unless the national party loudly and proactively breaks with the movement. It's never going to do that, nor should it.
The question is, what SHOULD Dems be saying about climate change and public policy - and it seems to me that abundance offers a clear path out of the trap we're in here. Practically, that looks like an all-the-above approach to driving down consumer energy prices, including subsidy toward clean energy production; streamlined permitting for clean energy projects; massive research and operational investment in carbon capture, directed toward counties and metro areas that produce oil and gas today. We need to paint a picture of a clean and growing economy in 15 years and a roadmap for getting there that doesn't center on degrowth as a strategy.
And for what it's worth, this has been done before, with success, in California. We pay the highest gas prices in the country here, but we've also been on a long-term transition to all-electric vehicles (well, until this year) and get an increasingly large share of our household energy from clean sources. All of this has been loudly telegraphed by California dems for over a decade, and in that time Orange County (home to Rivian, for what it's worth) and parts of the Central Valley have turned purple; 2024 aside, the trend here is very clear.
What about states that don't need to focus on housing?
I grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, half a mile from the high school Mike Johnson graduated from. Yesterday, just for fun, I was looking at the housing prices there on Zillow. I'm not exaggerating--there are literally dozens if not hundreds of 2-4 bedrooms with yards there for sale for less than $50k. They are run down, but still.
States like Louisiana do not need to focus on housing. If I were running there, I would instead focus on raising the minimum wage. It's $7.25, or $2.13 for jobs that receive tips. I would also focus on the prison situation. Angola is the state prison, located in a former plantation. It is still a farm. The inmates there do the farm work. You've probably eaten the fruits of their labor.
Found the answer to my own question. There is no state where housing isn't a massive problem. In every state but Minnesota, less than 50% of the population under 35 own homes. Even in Minnesota, it's only 50.8%
There seems to be a wild sort of "have your cake and eat it too" strain in Yglesias thought right now where you can "fight climate change by making it easier to make renewable energy" while at the same time expanding use of fossil fuels. Yes, this is a great path to more energy and happy consumers, but it is absolutely not a strategy for addressing climate change, which necessitates reducing fossil fuel usage. You should be clear about the trade-offs you are proposing (more climate change in exchange for more energy, since that is what the public demands) rather than gloss over them.
I think the answer isn't "restricting fossil fuels won't lessen climate change, " it's that it's politically impossible to restrict fossil fuels on a global level that will make a difference, and trying to push for that just means the politicians who promote clean energy lose, making things even worse.
I don't think we should be expanding use of fossil fuels, but I do think that the activist's concentration on reducing US extraction and transport, eg pipelines, is misguided. Reducing US extraction is both unpopular, but also just shifts production to OPEC which can make up for any US reduction. Better to support wind, solar, higher fuel efficiency and subsidies for public transportation in other words use rather than production which will only disadvantage the US.
I agree that housing should be our biggest issue nationally. Even bigger than the environment, which is literally existentially important. This is a secure-your-own-oxygen-mask-before-helping-your-child situation. People just have to have houses and affordable groceries.
I'm tired of losing and I know a lot of marginal Democrats are as well. I'm not in this for environmental puritanism nor am I a believer in the religion of woke progressivism. I just want the America we had in 2016 (with some improvements) before Trump and the GOP started to fuck everything up. I'm a Democrat not because I'm a true believer but because Republicans are just stupid, greedy liars that ruin everything.
If the Democrats can't even deliver cyclical victory against a party led by a buffoonish con artist, why should I waste my time stressing about politics?
Pete Buttigieg opened up and engaged more in one interview with Andrew Shultz than Harris did in her entire campaign. Pete’s on the right track. I’d recommend he dress a little more casual for these but otherwise he’s doing the right work.
i like pete a lot, but he does seem allergic to big picture thinking and those guys were right to keep pushing him on that. as things stand, he is the great person to have in an administration, but not at the top of it.
I agree completely on the need to keep climate goals in a back pocket when the primary task is taking back Congress. If you haven't seen what longtime progressive communications guru David Fenton has said about this, it's worth listening. Here's my piece spreading your post and adding his perspective: https://revkin.substack.com/p/keep-your-climate-goals-in-your-pocket
Yet, environment is one of the strongest issues that Dems have, noted in Ezra Klein's recent evaluation of the 2024 election https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-david-shor.html Of all issues that voters favored Dems over Rs, environment showed the biggest advantage, more than healthcare or abortion.
I agree that the public tolerance for any inconvenience is low, so you don't campaign on higher gas taxes or abandoning fracking, but I would go all in on solar and wind, fuel efficiency, and restarting Paris, and reminding people that our children's future might depend on what we do.
"Among the white population, abortion rights is a lot more popular than the Democratic Party, but in the African-American population it’s the reverse. So in states like Louisiana and Mississippi with a larger Black population, abortion rights probably loses more votes than it wins."
I am pretty sure this is not sound math. Like the thesis could be correct, but this does not actually constitute evidence for it. Once you start to composite from sub-groups you get into Simpsons Paradox type issues.
The big-picture view, of looking at whether abortion is above water in Louisiana and Mississippi a state that Democrats typically lose, is actually more accurate than trying to stitch together an argument from demographic breakdown. Remember Yglesias Thought that its the marginal voter that counts, and that the white marginal voter and the black marginal voter are actually quite similar. Opposing a 15-week abortion ban is just above 50% in Louisiana, so being moderate pro-choice if anything helps even if it is not the most powerful lever to rehabilitate Democrats in the state.
The original populism issue-polling strategy is still the best approach, which is try to position yourself on issues that are 60%-80% in that state and raise their salience. If more sophisticated modeling is needed, you need to assess elasticity of position-taking - i.e. to examine if the 20-40% voters are motivated on the issue than the 60-80%. I imagine Matt talked to some pollsters about this, so maybe this complicated demographic argument is really based on received wisdom in Deep South politics based on extensive focus group tests. But even there I would doubt the validity of extending those findings to the post-Roe world.
I'm all for heterodox candidates in red states, but recommending John Bel Edwards on the basis of his strong anti-abortion stance is like recommending Hillary Clinton on the basis of her Iraq War stance - exactly the wrong kind of moderation! At best I'd say it is no more toxic than the reputation of being a former liberal, but still a lot of work to do to broaden appeal.
To your point, in Colorado we have the Democrats working to increase utility bills at twice the rate of inflation. In pursuit of an ineffective attempt to reduce carbon.
https://liberalandlovingit.substack.com/p/whats-the-puc-up-to
Ultimately, this comes down to being a religious issue that is the most obvious consequence of the horseshoe theory from both sides. (Abortion from the right-wing.)
I don't "believe" that climate change is real, I know it is real, but in being able to achieve anything towards the goal of carbon reduction, taking an absolutist position is definitely not what you want to do. The climate groups believe that climate change is real, but they don't know how best to address it beyond waving a magic wand to reduce carbon emissions.
On a different topic entirely, habemas papam!
That's going to be the topic of today's afternoon thread, right?
What say you, our resident Chicagoans?
I was presuming it would indeed be the subject of the afternoon post, so I was holding back from saying anything here.
This is an inspirational post. Every Dem member, senator, and policy wonk needs to read this and grapple with its implications if they want to improve people’s lives through electoral politics.
California's very high gas prices are giving Gavin Newsom and the State Democrats a bad look right now in a way that reminds me of how Biden neglected to deal with large flows of migrants crossing the border. Even though oil prices have been plummeting, gas prices in California have been rising (now generally over $5 a gallon) and look set to rise much higher when a couple refineries are shut down over the next year or so. What are the Democrats doing about it? Not very much by the look of it. If they don't do something I have a feeling they are going to get heavily punished at the next election just as Harris/Biden got punished for their neglect of an issue that bothers many voters.
I think the case can be made that the democrats aren’t talking about climate change at all and could talk about it a little more.
Ezra Klein had a NYT Op piece "Democrats Need to Face Why Trump Won" that should be required reading for Ds. ( https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-david-shor.html
One relevant part of the piece was the ranking of every issue in terms of whether the public supported the Ds and Rs and the importance of the issue.
Though, environment did not rate a very important issue, behind health care, economy, but more important than race and abortion, it was one of the strongest issues that the Dems had advantage over the Rs with a margin of 10%. which was more than healthcare and abortion. So in the general sense the environment is our issue.
It is also the issue which for a 75 year old grandparent is most important to me as I leave the world to my grandchildren. I am not a green catastrophist, as the future is always unpredictable, so my call is not "the sky is falling" but maybe "the sky might fall" and I can think of no greater risk to the coming generations. So to abandon this issue is malfeasance.
Yet, I understand that the American public, though nominally on the D side on environment, will not tolerate higher gas prices or radical life style change. People don't want to be told they cant have plastic straws, I also think that attacking extraction or pipelines is a useless exercise and just replaces the US as supplier with Russia, Venezuela, and Saudis - a rogues gallery. So, it is imperative not to campaign on unpopular issues, but absolutely important to campaign on support for wind and solar, public transportation, increased fuel efficiency, and engagement with the world on climate mitigation.
It can be done in a politically profitable way, and to ignore this issue is wrong.
No one is suggests "ignore" the issue, just to not make it a top issue.
I dont think it ever was. If you look at Dem campaign issues in order of frequency voiced it would be abortion, the greedy billionaires, Trumps war on democracy, social security and Medicare. I heard very little about the environment and given that people favor the Dems on that issue, it would help. Not the message to ban fracking but support for solar, wind.
Sure, climate change, especially policies that impose clear costs on voters, shouldn't be a high electoral priority for Democrats and we should expand the tent to get Senators in more reddish states exactly like Matt says. We should pay far less attention to the pigheaded climate groups. No argument!
But Matt has beat this drum a lot, and I guess he has to, but his policy recommendations for what we should actually *do* to attack this problem are paltry. No, it's not like global health; it's far more pressing because the less we do the worse the problem will become. And no, just permitting and waving one's hands about nuclear reactors and upzoning are not a plan -- those are small pieces of a bigger plan which Matt never considers.
So, sure, keep beating the climate groups and their enablers in the Democratic party over the head; they deserve it. But at some point, can we have a serious discussion of what we *should* be doing?
Matt has written dozens of articles on climate policy over the years, so why are you pretending he hasn't?
It doesn't really matter anyways. The reality is that Democrats winning the Senate in 2026 is the highest priority and the only way to truly slow down anything the Trump admin might do to the climate.
I've read all of them. They're thin gruel. When they (briefly) stop pounding on the (admittedly) obnoxious activists, the proposals they offer are trivial or woefully incomplete: permitting (good!), upzoning (won't help for many many years), changes in historic preservation (huh?), getting rid of EV subsidies (but replaced by what?) and of course pumping up on natural gas during the transition to renewables which somehow will magically happen on its own.
And yes we need to do well in the Senate races in 2026 and 2028, along the lines Matt talks about. But we still need a real climate policy and that's where Matt, supposedly known for caring about policy, really falls down.
I wouldn't argue that his articles on climate policy are especially deep, but I do find them reasonably informative and maybe I'm not the level of expert you are. But that's exactly why I subscribed and what I expect. If I want deep analysis on climate policy or climate science, there are other places I can go to read about that.
I also don't really see why we "need" a "real climate policy" in May 2025. What does that accomplish? Again, if you want climate policy more aligned with your views than what the current Trump administration is delivering, then it makes more sense to reiterate the importance of winning the Senate than on debating the specifics of the ideal climate policy.
I agree with that! The Democrats' North Star for 2026 is relentless delegitimization of Trump, MAGA, and the Republicans. We need only the barest bones of a policy alternative.
That will likely be turned on its head for 2028 when the Democrats will need a positive program for not only how we'll recover from the vast damage of Trump but how to move the nation forward.
I just get a bit irritated at Matt because he spends most of his time on this issue telling us what he's against with little effort at about where we should look for a better program.
Agreed with you both, I made this point a bit below. Matt loves punching left on this stuff but sometimes he ends up on autopilot. It's also not like global health in that the truth is most voters would rank that maybe 7th on their list of priorities, if that, so it's not going to sway elections and you can keep quiet about it and then enact policies you want once in office. If Colin Allred voted for clean energy once in office after loudly promising he won't in the campaign, he'd be raked through the coals in his next election cycle AND it would hurt other frontline Dems too. I'm entirely in favor of big tent politics, but you've gotta find a way to square that with your actual policy goals.
Thank you! For someone who actually cares about climate change and considers it a BFD, the constant beating up on Teh Groupz gets tiresome.
Agree with you Marc. Climate is too important to either ignore or abandon because the climate groups are so annoying. If you see my post, it is an issue where Dems have the biggest advantage over Rs, more than healthcare and abortion, two Dem leaning issues. Not that people want Greta Thornburg in charge, but I think most people would favor support for wind and solar, hybrids and EVs, and rejoining the world efforts on climate mitigation.
This post feels incomplete from Matt. Yes, doubling down on failed politics is DUMB, and performative in a way that to me is extraordinarily hypocritical. But that then begs the question of what Dems' stated platform on climate should be. Colin Allred can keep quiet about climate or even champion oil and gas all he wants, but John Cornyn is still going to slam a vote for him as a vote for environmentalists - because it is, unless the national party loudly and proactively breaks with the movement. It's never going to do that, nor should it.
The question is, what SHOULD Dems be saying about climate change and public policy - and it seems to me that abundance offers a clear path out of the trap we're in here. Practically, that looks like an all-the-above approach to driving down consumer energy prices, including subsidy toward clean energy production; streamlined permitting for clean energy projects; massive research and operational investment in carbon capture, directed toward counties and metro areas that produce oil and gas today. We need to paint a picture of a clean and growing economy in 15 years and a roadmap for getting there that doesn't center on degrowth as a strategy.
And for what it's worth, this has been done before, with success, in California. We pay the highest gas prices in the country here, but we've also been on a long-term transition to all-electric vehicles (well, until this year) and get an increasingly large share of our household energy from clean sources. All of this has been loudly telegraphed by California dems for over a decade, and in that time Orange County (home to Rivian, for what it's worth) and parts of the Central Valley have turned purple; 2024 aside, the trend here is very clear.
What about states that don't need to focus on housing?
I grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, half a mile from the high school Mike Johnson graduated from. Yesterday, just for fun, I was looking at the housing prices there on Zillow. I'm not exaggerating--there are literally dozens if not hundreds of 2-4 bedrooms with yards there for sale for less than $50k. They are run down, but still.
States like Louisiana do not need to focus on housing. If I were running there, I would instead focus on raising the minimum wage. It's $7.25, or $2.13 for jobs that receive tips. I would also focus on the prison situation. Angola is the state prison, located in a former plantation. It is still a farm. The inmates there do the farm work. You've probably eaten the fruits of their labor.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/inmates-at-louisianas-angola-prison-sue-to-end-working-farm-lines-in-brutal-heat
Found the answer to my own question. There is no state where housing isn't a massive problem. In every state but Minnesota, less than 50% of the population under 35 own homes. Even in Minnesota, it's only 50.8%
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/realestate/millennials-gen-z-buying-homes.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
There seems to be a wild sort of "have your cake and eat it too" strain in Yglesias thought right now where you can "fight climate change by making it easier to make renewable energy" while at the same time expanding use of fossil fuels. Yes, this is a great path to more energy and happy consumers, but it is absolutely not a strategy for addressing climate change, which necessitates reducing fossil fuel usage. You should be clear about the trade-offs you are proposing (more climate change in exchange for more energy, since that is what the public demands) rather than gloss over them.
I think the answer isn't "restricting fossil fuels won't lessen climate change, " it's that it's politically impossible to restrict fossil fuels on a global level that will make a difference, and trying to push for that just means the politicians who promote clean energy lose, making things even worse.
I don't think we should be expanding use of fossil fuels, but I do think that the activist's concentration on reducing US extraction and transport, eg pipelines, is misguided. Reducing US extraction is both unpopular, but also just shifts production to OPEC which can make up for any US reduction. Better to support wind, solar, higher fuel efficiency and subsidies for public transportation in other words use rather than production which will only disadvantage the US.
I agree that housing should be our biggest issue nationally. Even bigger than the environment, which is literally existentially important. This is a secure-your-own-oxygen-mask-before-helping-your-child situation. People just have to have houses and affordable groceries.
I'm tired of losing and I know a lot of marginal Democrats are as well. I'm not in this for environmental puritanism nor am I a believer in the religion of woke progressivism. I just want the America we had in 2016 (with some improvements) before Trump and the GOP started to fuck everything up. I'm a Democrat not because I'm a true believer but because Republicans are just stupid, greedy liars that ruin everything.
If the Democrats can't even deliver cyclical victory against a party led by a buffoonish con artist, why should I waste my time stressing about politics?
Pete Buttigieg opened up and engaged more in one interview with Andrew Shultz than Harris did in her entire campaign. Pete’s on the right track. I’d recommend he dress a little more casual for these but otherwise he’s doing the right work.
i like pete a lot, but he does seem allergic to big picture thinking and those guys were right to keep pushing him on that. as things stand, he is the great person to have in an administration, but not at the top of it.
Yeah, Pete’s the guy we need to fix the air traffic control problems he left us with.
I agree completely on the need to keep climate goals in a back pocket when the primary task is taking back Congress. If you haven't seen what longtime progressive communications guru David Fenton has said about this, it's worth listening. Here's my piece spreading your post and adding his perspective: https://revkin.substack.com/p/keep-your-climate-goals-in-your-pocket
Trump killing EnergyStar is indeed something to highlight. https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=acc27629dfc230bb&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS1004US1004&hl=en-US&udm=2&fbs=ABzOT_Dgt8iPZ9gW18rC6PlWgCdc1D_JMUuheiZDX6zm8J7gz6KTOxGAX5XUkk8BOOu6U3trIZRMfO_z8E30mgdbViPfVKm1NnctoOSUFGdao2kgPzKJ55kMJ5sryix8G1XrfpbSPsX1-HWCbmxAcWAUdHnQTgZTMbY1qQjqxJAirBvgYcIb7sKOsnmIQpwi9A-Z5Q2xLANHKvfQMIc8Ua-N3FRPcJsqvXOMImY7D98-zULT0Ao37H0&q=energy+star+trump&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiIkLentZaNAxVslokEHQuDK4MQtKgLegQIERAB&biw=390&bih=669&dpr=3
Yet, environment is one of the strongest issues that Dems have, noted in Ezra Klein's recent evaluation of the 2024 election https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-david-shor.html Of all issues that voters favored Dems over Rs, environment showed the biggest advantage, more than healthcare or abortion.
I agree that the public tolerance for any inconvenience is low, so you don't campaign on higher gas taxes or abandoning fracking, but I would go all in on solar and wind, fuel efficiency, and restarting Paris, and reminding people that our children's future might depend on what we do.