Daily Kos staff member David Nir recently posted this article explaining the process by which Daily Kos chooses who to endorse. This article didn’t garner much attention because it is primarily a nuts and bolts functioning article with no real news. However, it caught my attention not for what was in it, but what wasn’t in it. There was no explicit mention of a need for endorsements to go only to those Democrats working to mitigate climate change at a level that will effect change at the speed needed. The closest it got to it was the following quote only in reference to the courts.
In addition, we support candidates for state supreme courts. These courts rule on issues touching every aspect of daily life, including abortion rights, climate change, and gerrymandering.
This lack of focus on mitigating the climate crisis is a severe oversight. A significant part of why the current climate crisis is so severe is a lack of emphasis on getting politicians into office who will do something about it. Electing Democrats is not sufficient. There are too many Democratic leaders for whom the climate crisis is either not enough of a priority, or in a few cases they actively work against appropriate measures.
The climate crisis requires a significants response at all levels of our society. As we read news article after news article of crazy weather, receding ice caps, and the coming devastation, what is most frequently missing are explicit, detailed connections as to what we can do about it. For a brief period we could at least point to politicians who were for or against the “Green New Deal”. That was helpful to elucidate who inside the Democratic Party were part of the problem or part of the solution. They didn’t have to endorse the Green New Deal, but they better have had a viable alternative.
Daily Kos is supposed to be about electing Democrats and electing better ones. How can we do so without a focus on electing politicians with a clear path to them supporting critical legislation? The final section of the list of key questions provided in the Daily Kos election process article has the following:
Is there anything in this candidate's record (whether statements, votes, or actions), or anything that the candidate is currently running on, that might raise red flags with a progressive community like Daily Kos?
So some readers may feel this is sufficient to address the Climate Crisis. However, the Daily Kos election team felt it necessary to explicitly include in their document a focus on diversity. Diversity could have been left out of the article leaving only an implicit assumption that diversity was important and covered under broader statements such as the one above regarding “progressive community” above. However, doing so would have been wrong. An emphasis on diversity is critically important and justifies an explicit inclusion in the document. If Daily Kos can highlight a core value such as diversity, it is capable of ALSO highlighting a core issue of Climate Crisis.
The climate crisis is not just any issue. As important as Ukraine is to me personally, I don’t believe that it warrants a specific mention in this document. Climate change, however, is an existential threat to our entire world. Without dealing with the climate crisis we will be at risk of losing our civilization as we know it. Issues of appropriate taxation will fall away into nothingness as starvation and sea level rise (amongst others) send us into an apocalyptic future.
But that doesn’t have to be our future if we get our elected leaders to do something NOW. But that also requires that organizations like Daily Kos make it a priority to apply the appropriate pressure on those elected leaders. And that includes documents like this relating to political endorsements. Steps to mitigate the climate crisis can happen at all levels of personal life and all levels of governance. So it’s not just a priority for national office.
Daily Kos, I’ve seen an uptick in the professional coverage of the climate crisis and appreciate it. But you have a long way to go before it is sufficient. To the Daily Kos Community, please join me in asking and pressing the Daily Kos website into making mitigating the Climate Crisis a higher priority. Getting them to change the endorsement process is one such step.