Well, we all knew this was coming but it didn’t make it go down any easier. Mother Jones is reporting that Senator Schumer has made fossil fuel advocate Sen. Manchin the new ranking chairman of the powerful Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Manchin has been a reliable friend of the oil, gas and coal industries, who, when not voting against Obama’s Clean Power Plan, even went so far as to make unnecessary votes like voting for the worst EPA chief ever to hold the office, Scott Pruitt, when a simple statement to the effect that a man deep in the pocket of the oil industry who sued the EPA fourteen times cannot be allowed to run the agency on simple ethical grounds of blatant conflict of interest. Apparently even that was a bridge too far for this man, who has taken over a million dollars from mining and drilling industries and votes with Trump 61% of the time.
To now have him potentially in charge of shepherding renewable energy legislation through the Senate should we assume control in 2020, or of making minority reports documenting outrages by the Republicans who run the committee and representing Democratic messaging to the press on the dangers posed by Global Warming, just for one example, goes beyond tone deaf into the realm of willful negligence and dereliction of duty by Senator Schumer.
To make such a giant leap backward at precisely the moment we need to be steeling ourselves for the climate/energy fight of our lives is an outrage visited upon future generations of Americans. There is no silver lining to this. There is no justification. This is simply more of the same bullshit we have been suffering through for 25 years now under centrist, corporate friendly leadership that has become woefully out of step with the needs of America today and nothing but a giant anchor on this Party.