Tomorrow is the day.
By Jim Brunner
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee will get his turn in the national cable-news spotlight this week, taking voter questions Wednesday during a CNN Town Hall.
It’s part of a weeklong presidential campaign tour that also will take the governor to the early 2020 caucus and primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Inslee is scheduled to leave the state Tuesday morning, returning the following Tuesday, according to the governor’s office.
Inslee’s CNN town hall, moderated by Wolf Blitzer, will be broadcast Wednesday from Washington, D.C., starting at 7 p.m. Pacific.
Tune in. Tell your friends.
On Friday, Inslee will travel to Hamburg, Iowa, where he’ll tour damage from recent flooding and visit a flood assistance center to meet with volunteers. Later that day he’ll discuss his campaign’s singular theme of fighting climate change at a meet-and-greet with Democrats and community members in Council Bluffs.
From Mother Jones:
By REBECCA LEBER
Democratic candidates have typically treated climate change as just another talking point to breeze through before getting to their real policy priorities. Ever since a cap-and-trade bill flamed out on Capitol Hill a decade ago, the Democratic establishment has remained convinced that focusing too heavily on climate change is a losing strategy.
But the 2020 race might be different. Liberal Democrats rank global warming and environmental protection as two of their top four issues, according to Yale polling. And a majority of adults under 30 say that addressing climate change should be a top priority for the president and Congress, according to the Pew Research Center. As incoming House members and the Sunrise Movement’s young activists have injected a new sense of urgency into the discussion, you can’t find a single Democratic candidate who won’t say that the climate is a priority. In his 2020 announcement video, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said climate change is “an existential threat to our country and the entire planet.” Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) have lined up behind the broad principles of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal.
“You can hardly point to anything you care about and say it isn’t necessary to defeat climate change to protect it.”
Then there’s Jay Inslee. He was the climate candidate before the climate was a cool—or hot—topic. The genial, wonky 68-year-old governor of Washington state is pushing the envelope by betting his long-shot presidential run on an audacious pitch: Climate change isn’t a niche issue, Inslee insists; it is the issue, the one that ties together everything voters care about, from the economy and health care to immigration and national security. “You can hardly point to anything you care about and say it isn’t necessary to defeat climate change to protect it,” Inslee told me from the “real Washington” as he recharged between campaign stops. “So we can’t succeed on these other issues unless we defeat climate change.”