Most folks here can recite the facts: July and August were the hottest on record; the Arctic sea ice is the second lowest on record; climate change is exacerbating the global refugee crisis. It’s blatantly obvious: this, not dumpster bombs, is the biggest threat humanity faces in the 21st century.
Yet, ever since Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President, he has successfully inserted a narrative about illegal immigration while the population of illegal immigrants is declining; about crime while crime in the US continues to be at record lows; about the evils of free trade while the US continues its economic recovery.
He has done this through showmanship (his only real talent), by parading victims of crimes and appealing to people’s worst instincts, sometimes through dog whistling, sometimes through open and blatant racism as with his long record of “birtherism”.
I support Hillary Clinton for President, and have donated to her campaign. But I’ve not seen a consistent message from her, the use of a single issue to unify and promote her agenda. That may be fine at this point in the campaign — it’s the coming weeks that really count.
But I would argue that the wall of issues approach the campaign has taken so far fails to bring new people on board. It mostly reassures people who are already inclined to support her that she is doing her due diligence and promoting reasonably progressive views.
There are three reasons why I believe climate change is well-suited as the “closing issue” for the campaign:
- It’s self-evidently the right thing to do. Climate change is an existential threat. The media are not doing their job because they’re ratings-driven, and a continuing trend like this is not nearly as exciting as the hunt for some disturbed individual. Hillary can make it an issue that is worth writing about from the media’s perspective.
- In spite of the media’s negligence, 64% of Americans already care “a great deal/a fair bit” about climate change. This is not a partisan issue.
- Hillary Clinton has a solid record on this issue, both in terms of policy positions (moderate as they are, e.g., on fracking) and in terms of diplomacy during her time as SecState. In contrast, Donald Trump’s “record” is atrocious even by his standards of having no political record; he’s “jokingly” called climate change a Chinese hoax and expressed climate denial in many other forms.
There are many, many ways to close the campaign with this issue. Key to the success of this approach however is for it to be as central to Hillary’s campaign as bigotry is to Trump’s: the subject of press conferences, social media postings, public appearances, outreach to pundits, surrogate interviews — including the continued argument that Trump has pushed climate denial in the same way he has pushed birtherism.
This won’t happen without pushing, pushing, pushing this issue above all others. It won’t happen without Hillary doing it. This takes some degree of showmanship — like a website blackout, a public countdown, a high profile appearance with Al Gore. As it is, it’s not even in the list of top level issues of the first presidential debate.
Hillary Clinton is great at playing defense — but in my view at least, this would be the time for a targeted offense on the issue that is key to the survival of civilization as we know it, one on which Trump pushes a position so irresponsible and foolish that his candidacy deserves to be obliterated for it alone.
Answers to common comments, 9/20
First, thanks for taking the time to read the post and to comment. A lot of people in the comments are arguing to the effect that: it clearly should be seen as central and important, but it isn’t. They’re right — at this point, climate change is clearly not central to people’s decision making; otherwise, Clinton would be leading by 20 percentage points or more!
The point I would make, though, is that a presidential candidate can drive the narrative of a campaign. That’s what Trump has done, through demagogy. Immigration was emphatically not a top priority for Americans back in 2014, ranking just above government surveillance. That percentage had jumped from 50% to 69% (!) in May 2016 which, as we have established, is completely counterfactual.
The hypothesis of this post is that the survival of our species can (and indeed must) be framed in a way that resonates, and that people are already “primed” for this belief, because they understand the facts without emotionally ranking them as important.
Finally, central is not exclusive. It’s an argument to move away from messages like this:
If you want to argue that in an emotional campaign, nerdy and wonkish messaging doesn’t resonate, I’m with you. Presenting a complex, interconnected set of issues is very nerdy and wonkish, and while this tweet was a while ago, it’s been (at least in my observation) consistent with Hillary’s overall approach to talking about the issues. Talking emphatically and consistently about how your opponent is putting millions of lives on the line through climate denial and conspiracy theories is not nerdy and wonkish — it’s necessary.