Yesterday, I dug deep into my wallet because I wanted to fall in political love with a candidate.
The house in the moneyed Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles was full. Mostly older white people wore peace signs as jewelry and jostled for selfies. I shook hands with both the candidate and his wife. The candidate spoke forcefully on the need for climate change action: acknowledge the science, solarize roofs, weatherize homes, build mass transit, expand clean energy.
Then he briefly mentioned his solution to horrendous racism: campaign finance reform.
The crowd clapped loudly as the candidate expanded on the rigged system, for billionaires and against ordinary voters. The longest section of his speech, on the need for single payer healthcare, could have been given in 2007, or 2009, or at any time prior to President Obama signing the Affordable Care Act - it never once acknowledged Obama's signature law.
On my drive home, I thought about what I didn’t hear.
I really wanted to feel the Bern. He’s been blunt on my single issue, climate action. He’s introduced strong bills. He earned the top score among Senate Democrats on the Climate Hawks Vote scorecard - “Bernie Sanders, Climate Hawk” has been covered in Huffington Post, Mother Jones, The New Republic, and elsewhere. He’s been endorsed by Bill McKibben, who I'm honored to say is on the Climate Hawks Vote advisory board.
And yet.
Since last Wednesday night, I’ve been transfixed by a domestic terrorist motivated by racial hatred. Whatever claim anyone ever made that the election of President Obama has achieved a post-racial society has been ripped to shreds. The country needs to do so much - from taking down that damn flag to stricter controls on guns to acknowledging institutionalized racism and the simple fact that #BlackLivesMatter.
Campaign finance reform is needed badly. But listing it, and nothing else, as a remedy to horrendous racism struck a false note to me. It’s bizarre, irrelevant, and frankly unachievable.
Meanwhile, 400 miles north, Hillary Clinton was telling the US Conference of Mayors that America needs to face hard truths on race and weaving it into economic policy, in a way far less sexy than bashing billionaires.
I’m searching for meaningful leadership on climate change. Solarizing rooftops and weatherizing windows is a start, but we need so much more. Martin O’Malley has released a bold climate platform calling for complete decarbonization of the American economy by 2050. O’Malley wants to run the United States on 100% renewable energy by 2050. He explicitly rejects “all of the above” energy, Keystone XL, Arctic drilling, and export of fracked natural gas. I haven't yet heard any policy ideas from either Sanders or Clinton going beyond Obama's legacy.
I expect that this piece will not be popular. Many here will tell me that the candidate’s virtues - and they are legion - outweigh his lack of bold ideas on climate change to date and his apparent skittishness on the issues of race and guns, and that Hillary will approve Keystone XL and continue Obama's “all of the above” energy policy and generally be a tool of Wall Street.
I’ll keep listening to all of the candidates with an open mind.
