Rebecca Leber at Mother Jones writes—The 2020 Race Has Its First Climate Candidate:
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee joined the Democratic primary frenzy on Friday, launching a campaign with climate change as its central focus, an issue that conventional political wisdom, pointing to the polling, dismisses as a lower priority for voters than health care and stagnating wages.
The race now has a candidate who says he “will make defeating climate change our nation’s No. 1 priority.”
“We have an opportunity to transform our economy and run on 100 percent clean energy that will bring millions of good-paying jobs to every community across America and create a more just future for everyone,” Inslee said in his campaign video announcement Friday. Later, in Seattle, with his wife, children, and the grandchildren he regularly calls his inspiration in the climate fight, Inslee will hold a press conference at a solar installation company.
Inslee plans to visit Iowa, Nevada, and California for a Climate Mission Tour, where he will echo the message he first began testing last month in two roundtables with college students in New Hampshire.
In more than two decades in politics, the congressman turned two-term governor has cultivated a reputation as a serious thinker on how to address climate change. A lifelong environmentalist, Inslee set out an early vision for a Green New Deal-type fight against climate change before the branding caught on. He co-wrote a book called Apollo’s Fire in 2007 about the transformative power of a clean energy economy. Under Inslee, Washington state has taken a lead with other states to fight the Trump administration’s climate denial, joining the US Climate Alliance of states that remain committed to the 2015 targets set in Paris.
But Inslee has waged and lost his share of political fights, including the nation’s first statewide carbon tax ballot initiative centered around environmental justice. Voters rejected the proposal last year after industry opponents raised more than $30 million against it. The Legislature, controlled by Democrats by a razor-thin margin, failed to pass a similar bill last year. This year, the Legislature, which picked up additional blue seats last cycle, is considering a new package of transportation and infrastructure investments in an effort to reverse the troubling trend from 2012 to 2015, during which Washington’s carbon emissions climbed 6 percent. [...]
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On this date at Daily Kos in 2007—The Party of Anybody But Lincoln:
With the Conservative Political Action Committee gathering winding down this weekend, you might think that calling John Edwards a 'faggot' would be the signature event of the conference. But while that clip will probably result mostly in more undeserved attention for the right's favorite harridan, there's another message from this week's events that is interesting for what it has to say about how these people view themselves. And where better to go for that view than the Fox News of papers, the Washington Times. After noting the ability of Giuliani to obscure his feelings over all the things that conservatives have been decrying for the last decade (unlike Santa's pal, this Rudolph spreads fog), Rev. Moon's paper notes the one thing that really brought the crowd down.
In interviews afterward, some attendees said Mr. Giuliani lost momentum when he heaped lavish praise on Abraham Lincoln.
That's right. Conservatives can put up with differences on abortion, gay rights, and whether or not its okay for your mistress to live at the White House. What they can't stand is talking about Abraham Lincoln. What's bugging them?
While many conservatives regard the Civil War president as the spiritual founder of the Republican Party, others deeply resent him as a man who ruthlessly suspended constitutional rights and freedoms in order to militarily challenge the South's belief in its right to secede.
A note to the constitutional scholars on the right. If it's personal rights you're worried about, the constitution specifically allows suspension of habeas corpus in cases of rebellion or invasion. But of course, that can't be what's bothering conservatives, or they wouldn't be so eager to support Bush's usurpation of those rights without justification. It's the last part of the quote that's at the heart of the matter: conservatives are still not over the Civil War. Excuse me, the War of Northern Aggression.
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