The climate is changing and that’s an enormous problem for everyone inhabiting the planet. This issue, while gargantuan in scope, is arguably the single-most important issue facing not only Americans but the world. All of the social and economic and healthcare decisions we all want pursued by the next set of elected officials will be directly affected by the pressures put upon humanity, business, governments, and communities by the extreme weather changes. It is this single issue that Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has made the focus of his campaign to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
His campaign got a big boost on Friday when it was reported he had secured a 65,000th individual donor to his campaign, almost insuring a place for Inslee in the upcoming Democratic Party primary debates. While the DNC has said that the two ways a candidate can get a place on the debate stage is by either reaching 65,000 individual donors or receiving 1 percent of the popular vote in at least three “qualifying” polls, Inslee is now only one of 13 candidates to achieve both. He joins, “Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julián Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O'Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang.”
In a field of 24 candidates—and whose to say it won’t be more by the time I finish this sentence—Inslee is hoping that by pressing his climate change message, he can cut through the clutter of candidates with broader platforms, and more detailed diverse policy promises. This is not to say that Gov. Inslee is ignoring other policy needs. You can even read his own answers to policy questions in an interview he did with Daily Kos, here. But, the strength of Inslee’s appeal is his unwavering stance that the first order of business in a new administration must be dealing directly with climate change.
At the very least, climate change must be something the Democratic Party is willing to discuss anywhere and everywhere, against other Democratic candidates and against Republican candidates. Having Inslee on the debate stage will hopefully be a plus for the total health of the Democratic Party.