A catastrophe may be about to happen in Virginia. Lt. Governor Ralph Northam won a hotly contested primary for Virginia Governor over former congressman Tom Perriello, who has endorsed Northam in the general election. The race is absolutely the most high visibility in the country this year as a Democrat is strongly favored to win the Governor’s race in New Jersey and Bill De Blasio looks like an easy re-elect in New York City. Trump folks will pull out all stops to elect Ed Gillespie in Virginia and it could happen. Although Clinton carried Virginia by 5% in 2016, Gillespie had come within 0.8% of defeating Mark Warner in 2014; with the events of this last week I do not need to tell anyone what the consequences would have been. Furthermore, turnout plummets in off year elections in Virginia; Terry McAuliffe received nine hundred thousand fewer votes in getting elected Governor in 2013 than Barack Obama had in winning the state. Virginia was a rare state where Clinton in 2016 got more votes than Obama in 2012 but this race cannot be taken for granted.
And the nutty far left is going all out to destroy Northam over an issue that isn't even a state issue: Gas pipeline construction. The Washington Post has a story on this:
www.washingtonpost.com/…
Basically, Dominion Energy, which owns Virginia’s largest electric and gas utility, wants to build a pipeline to better serve its customers and potentially to allow more gas rather than coal to be used to generate electricity and to export natural gas to markets overseas. There are no negatives in this! Replacing coal with gas as an electric power generation fuel is all good, and pipelines are the only safe and economic way to transport the fuel. The alternative in this part of the US is coal and we should be way beyond needing to discuss why coal is 100% bad.
Furthermore, exporting natural gas does the same for other countries. India in particular could use sources of natural gas as if nothing is done its use of coal could alone wipe out every other country’s efforts to combat climate change — and India desperately needs electric generation in order to air condition the country. If the exports go to Europe instead it could help give those countries a way to finally say “no” to Vladimir Putin, who controls the natural gas supply for most of Europe.
But as the Post article points out, a small number of die hard purists are trying to sabotage Northam’s campaign because he isn’t sufficiently hostile to natural gas. And they are not just sabotaging campaign appearances, they are out in force in social media, denigrating Northam on his on social media pages!
Not only does this hurt Ralph Northam, a good liberal Democrat who will be a great Governor, but it reinforces the idea that the Left is anti-progress, hostile to jobs, hostile to energy, and hostile to poor Americans whose economic well being is highly sensitive to energy prices. We wonder why Trump did so well in rural areas and energy producing areas? We should not wonder.
Yes, regulate pipelines and other forms of energy transmission for safety. Yes, take steps to combat climate change — and natural gas is part of that effort, being far better than coal. But above all, stop sabotaging good Democrats unless we want to be a permanent minority.