Why is CNN trying to turn discussions of Global Warming and other issues at their "debate" into kayfabe? Fakety-fake pro wrestling sagas full of heroes (faces) and villains (heels) and their supposedly bitter rivalries. Charlie Pierce at Esquire nailed it.
Mayor Pete Beat Up CNN as Decisively as Warren Beat Up Delaney
These debates have all the competitive legitimacy of a low-rent wrestling show in a legion hall in upper Michigan. There wasn't a single moment that you couldn't see coming from Hamtramck. Presidential candidates were forced to become action figures in Jeff Zucker's toybox. Meanwhile, the climate crisis was barely given a drive-by…
Well, that's where this Diary comes in.
tl;dr Bring back the League of Women Voters. Call it Global Warming. The candidates are squabbling over some of the components of actual solutions, but pretending that only government can implement them. No, the markets have spoken, as readers of this series know well. Government mainly needs to get out of the way, for example by repealing fossil fuel subsidies.
What can and should a President do about Global Warming?
First, know what is actually going on. The candidates try to keep up with public opinion on this and other questions, but there are few "policy wonks" in politics who know much more than that about anything. CNN certainly doesn't. Their moderators were focused on gotcha questions and Republican talking points, not on policy.
Readers of this series who dig into the links provided are better informed on where we are and where we are going than any of the candidates on the debate stage, any of the moderators, any of the bloviarati. Fortunately, there are scientists and technologists and market analysts who know more than we do on at least part of the question each, so that we can mine their knowledge to improve ours.
Second, call it what it is—Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Climate change is a legitimate scientific topic, covering several billion years since the oceans rained down out of the primitive atmosphere. But the phrase has no legitimate place in discussions of the issues. It was put there by proud Republican Orwellian Frank Luntz, as a way of defanging the topic, making it sound less urgent. It was not identified once as AGW in this entire debate—not by the Bothsiderist moderators, and not by the candidates.
I'm not claiming that the Democratic candidates know nothing. They all know real facts about the dangers of Global Warming. They know that we need renewable energy and electric vehicles. Many don't understand agriculture. They don't know about decarbonizing cement, steel, ammonia, and so on. Many, including business people, do not know how economies work, especially internationally.
Now, I don't know anything like enough about everything to be President, either. But I have spent much of my life learning how to diagnose ignorance and delusion, and how to assist the willing to overcome them. And also how to dig out real information.
If you were paying attention earlier,
- You know what former candidate Eric Swalwell did not when I met him, that Cummins Engine in Columbus Indiana is planning for the end of diesel engines, starting with its first electric truck product.
- You know that banning gasoline-burning cars by 2040 is nonsense, when electric cars will be cheaper to buy in only three years. Other countries are talking about banning gas guzzlers before 2030. Norway is in the lead, with more than half of current car sales being electrics. They have some effective government policies.
- You know that electric pickup trucks will become available next year.
- You know that we cannot afford to punish China for being the leader in manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines and electric buses, and targeting electric cars next.
- You know that the American car, truck, bus, whatever vehicle industry has been refusing to adopt new technology for generations, and is far behind on electric vehicles of every kind. So you can't just blather about making America the technology leader, and about bringing all of those manufacturing jobs "back" to America.
- You know that the "moderate" idea that the US cannot afford anything is poppycock. Not as much as the Republican lies about the Green New Deal costing $93 trillion, of course.
- You know how important planting trees is.
Among other things.
I surveyed the announced plans of the candidates not too long ago.
Renewable Friday: Inslee's Got a Plan, and Beto's Got a Plan, and All God's Chillun Got Plans
More information has come out since then.
We can agree that what Trump is doing makes things worse on every point, but hardly anybody knows just how much he has tried to do on climate issues that is evil and stupid and pointless, especially the stuff that is flat-out illegal and has been turned back by the courts. Our friend smalch has done the data mining on this and many other Maladministration misdeeds.
Renewable Friday: The Trump Effect, with hundreds of examples. Feel free to get involved.
CNN: Your guide to where the 2020 Democrats stand on the issues: Climate crisis
The Staged Events that Were Not Debates
First thing, transcripts. Much better than watching. Also, searchable. That's how I know right off the bat that "climate" was mentioned 46 times in these two days, fossil fuels 15 times, and "warming" not at all. And best of all for me, I was able to copy and paste instead of laboriously transcribing this stuff myself.
Opening Statements, Both Nights
Not everybody mentioned Global Warming. Some who didn't at this stage are on our side, as we shall see further on. Some who did are on the wrong side. Note the "Moderate" Dog Whistles: wishlist economics, impossible promises, bogus non-partisanship, empty promises, plans that are written for press releases that will go nowhere else.
.
- Steve Bullock: Complains about "wishlist economics". (Medicare for All, Green New Deal)
- Marianne Williamson: Americans must rise up again against an amoral economic system that places short term profits above the health of the planet.
- John Delaney: Against impossible promises.
- Tim Ryan: This isn't about left or right.
- John Hickenlooper: We got 40 new members of the House, and not one of them shared the goals of [Bernie and Elizabeth]. (The most breathtaking lie of the night.) We attacked climate change head on.
- Amy Klobuchar: We have to beat Donald Trump. I have had it with the racist attacks.
- Beto O'Rourke: In the face of cruelty and fear, we will choose human rights for everyone. Health care, education. Confronting endless war and climate change.
- Pete Buttigieg: We are running out of time. An economy that does not work, endless war, and climate change. We have 12 years before we reach the horizon of catastrophe when it comes to our climate.
- Elizabeth Warren: I will work my heart out to elect a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress. We are not going to solve urgent problems with small ideas and spinelessness. I know what's broken, and I will fix it.
- Bernie Sanders: 87 million Americans uninsured or underinsured. Homelessness. Corporations not paying taxes. 49% of new income goes to the top 1%. Fossil fuel companies receive hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks while they destroy this planet. Trump's racism, sexism, and xenophobia.
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Bill de Blasio: We will tax the hell out of the wealthy to make this a fairer country and to make sure it’s a country that puts working people first.
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Michael Bennet: Let’s make this election about reclaiming our future for our kids and our democracy. Empty promises won’t beat Donald Trump, I can.
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Jay Inslee: We can defeat the climate crisis. It has to be our top priority.
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Kirsten Gillibrand: My grandmother taught me that nothing’s impossible. She spent two generations organizing women in upstate New York.
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Tulsi Gabbard: I’ll fight for our rights and freedoms of all Americans.
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Julian Castro: I don’t want to make America anything again. I don’t want us to go backwards. We’re not going back to the past.
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Andrew Yang: Give every American $1,000 a month.
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Cory Booker: Racism vs. unity.
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Kamala Harris: We are better than this.
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Joe Biden: I’m running for president to restore the soul of this country.
OK, that lets out Bullock, Delaney, Ryan, and Hickenlooper. Onward!
My Observations
- Jake Tapper is being a total idiot, demanding that everybody answer yes or no on whether to raise taxes to pay for Medicare for all, and fight with each other. They aren't going to fall into your Right-wing traps, Jake, so why are you bothering to try? Then there is the idea that Medicare for All would take insurance away from people. Yes. Garbage insurance. Insurance that you are stuck with, so you can't change jobs. Insurance that your employer can change at will. And Medicare Advantage?! Feh!
This set the tone for both nights. The moderators and the moderates got called out more than once for using Republican talking points.
Elizabeth Warren:
- We should stop using Republican talking points.
- We are not about trying to take away healthcare from anyone. That’s what the Republicans are trying to do and we should stop using Republican talking points in order to talk with each other about how to best provide that health care.
- What you want to do instead is find the Republican talking point of a made-up piece of some other part and say, “Oh, we don’t really have to do anything.”
Bernie Sanders:
- Jake, your question is a Republican talking point.
Kamala Harris:
- We cannot keep with the Republican talking points on this.
Joe Biden:
- This is not a Republican talking point. The Republicans are trying to kill Obamacare.
and on the Denialist side,
Michael Bennet:
- This has nothing to do with Republican talking points or the pharmaceutical industry.
We Interrept Your Regularly Scheduled Programming…
- Democratic Sens. Chris Coons and Dianne Feinstein would apply a carbon tax at $15 per ton of atmospheric carbon, and return the revenues raised directly to low income Americans.
- Democrat Daniel Lipinski and Republican Francis Rooney, is expected to set a rate of $40 per ton of carbon released
- Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker, along with coal-friendly Democrats such as Joe Manchin, and even coal-state Republicans such as Shelley Moore Capito. However, beyond establishing a “federal advisory board” that would look at ways to make industry less carbon-intensive, it’s not clear that this bill would include either a carbon tax or any other mechanism to directly enforce change.
What Else did They Say?
CNN timings are within the segments of the debate that they put up on their Web site. You can click on them to see the segment concerned.
Steve Bullock: 48:37 I agree with Senator Klobuchar. It is the NRA. And it’s not just gun violence. It’s when we talk about climate, when we’re talking about prescription drug costs, Washington D.C. is captured by dark money, the Koch Brothers, and others.
Beto O’Rourke: 04:21 Bernie was talking about some of the battleground states in which we compete. There’s a new battleground state, Texas, and it has 38 electoral college votes and the way that we put it in play was by going to each one of those 254 counties. No matter how red or rural, we did not write you off. No matter how blue or urban, we did not take you for granted, and we didn’t trim our sales either. We had the courage of our convictions, talking about universal healthcare, comprehensive immigration reform, and confronting the challenge of climate before it is too late.
Dana Bash: 12:33 Thank you, Congressman O’Rourke. We’ve been asking voters to weigh in on what they’d most like to hear Democrats debate. Among the topics they told us they’re most interested in, the climate crisis.
Oh, yes? Then why are you asking about it so little, and cutting off the conversation in full swing?
Congressman Delaney, I’ll start with you. You say the Green New Deal is about as realistic as Trump saying Mexico was going to pay for the wall. But scientists say we need, essentially, to eliminate fossil fuel pollution by 2050 to avoid the most catastrophic consequences. Why isn’t this sweeping plan to fight the climate crisis realistic?
John Delaney: 13:04 Well first of all, because it ties its progress to other things that are completely unrelated to climate. Like universal healthcare, guaranteed government jobs and universal basic income. So that only makes it harder to do.
No, the entire economy is related to climate. In particular, the poor suffer most, at home and around the world.
My plan, which gets us to net zero by 2050, which we absolutely have to do for our kids and our grandkids, will get us there. I put a price on carbon, take all the money, give it back to the American people in a dividend. That was introduced by me on a bipartisan basis. It’s the only significant bipartisan climate bill in the Congress. I’m going to increase the Department of Energy research budget by five-fold because we fundamentally have to innovate our way out of this problem. I’m going to create a market for something called direct air capture, which are machines that actually take carbon out of the atmosphere
Science fiction. Actually, fantasy. We can't process a teraton of carbon by building more machines. We have to bring Nature in as our partner. A trillion trees would be a good start. Sequestering carbon in soils. Plankton? Maybe. Digging up minerals that react with CO2 to form stable carbonates? Could be.
because I don’t think we’ll get to net zero by 2050 unless we have those things. I’m going to increase investment in renewables, and I’m going to create something called the Climate Corp. That is a plan that’s realistic. It’s a bet on the US private innovation economy and creates the incentives to get us to net zero by 2050 for our kids.
The world is investing $300 billion annually in renewables, at a profit. We don't need your piddling spending program.
John Hickenlooper: We need every country working together if we’re going to really deal with climate change in a realistic way.
OK, one point for JH.
Elizabeth Warren: 15:49 Look, I put a real policy on the table. To create 1.2 million new jobs in green manufacturing. There’s going to be up $23 trillion worldwide market for this. This could revitalize huge cities across this country, and no one wants to talk about it. What you want to do instead is find the Republican talking point of a made-up piece of some other part and say, “Oh, we don’t really have to do anything.” That’s the problem we’ve got in Washington right now. It continues to be a Washington that works great for oil companies, just not for people worried about climate change.
Here is where a real conversation breaks out.
Dana Bash to Tim Ryan: 16:30 We are here in Michigan where there are about 180,000 workers in auto manufacturing. Your state of Ohio has around 96,000 workers in that industry. Senator Sanders is co-sponsoring a bill that would eliminate new gas power car sales by 2040. Given the number of auto manufacturing workers in your state, how concerned are you about Senator Sanders’ plan?
Really? US auto workers and others here won't get to build electric cars, pickup trucks, buses, 18-wheelers, whatever? In what Bizarro World?
Tim Ryan: 16:53 Well, if we get our act together, we won’t have to worry about it. My plan is to create a chief manufacturing officer so we could actually start making things in the United States again, that would pull the government, the Department of Energy, Department of Transportation, work with the private sector, work with investors, emerging tech companies to dominate the electric vehicle market.
Delusional.
China dominates it now 50 to 60%. I want us to dominate the battery market and make those here in the United States and cut the workers in on the deal. The charging stations, solar panels, same thing. China dominates 60% of the solar panel market. So this person will work in the White House, report directly to me, and we’re going to start making things again. But you cannot get there on climate unless we talk about agriculture. We need to convert our industrial agriculture system, over to a sustainable and regenerative agriculture system that actually sequesters carbon into the soil.
This.^^^^ So Ryan also gets a point.
And you can go ask Gabe Brown and Allen Williams who actually make money off of regenerative agriculture, so we can move away from all the subsidies that we’re giving to farmers.
Bernie Sanders: 18:14 I get a little bit tired of Democrats afraid of big ideas. Republicans are not afraid of big ideas. They could give $1 trillion in tax breaks to billionaires and profitable corporations. They could bail out the crooks on Wall Street. So please don’t tell me that we cannot take on the fossil fuel industry, and nothing happens unless we do that. Here is the bottom line. We got to ask ourselves a simple question. What do you do with an industry that knowingly, for billions of dollars in short-term profits, is destroying b planet? I say that it’s criminal activity that cannot be allowed to continue.
Tim Ryan: 19:01 I didn’t say we couldn’t get there until 2040, Bernie. You don’t have to yell. I mean, all I’m saying is we have to invent our way out of this thing, and if we’re waiting for 2040 for a ban to come in on gasoline vehicles, we’re screwed. So we better get busy now, and that’s why I’m saying get a chief manufacturing officer, align the environmental incentives with the financial incentives and make sure that people can actually make money off of the new technologies that are moving forward. And then here’s what I’ll do as President. Cut the worker in on the deal. Make sure these are union jobs, and I will double union membership to make sure that these new jobs pay what the old fossil fuel jobs pay.
Bernie Sanders: 19:47 Look, on this issue, my friends, there is no choice. We have got to be super aggressive, if we love our children and if we want to leave them a planet that is healthy and is habitable. So I don’t disagree with Tim. What that means is we got to A, take on the fossil fuel industry. B, it means we have to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy and a hell of a lot of good union jobs as we do that. We’ve got to transform our transportation system and we have to lead the world because this is not just an American issue.
Steve Bullock: 20:33 All of us agree that we have to address climate change. No one on this stage is talking about though, the Republicans won’t even acknowledge that climate change is real, Dana. And that’s because of the corrupting influence of money. That has been the fight of my career.
Steve Bullock: 20:50 And second of which, as we transition to this clean energy economy, you’ve got to recognize there are folks that have spent their whole life powering our country, and far too often, Democrats sound like they’re part of the problem. We got to make sure to aid in those transitions as we get to a carbon neutral world, which I think we can do by 2040.
He is talking about people who refuse retraining. We can help their children, but not them.
Dana Bash: 21:12 Thank you, Governor. Just to clarify, who is part of the problem?
Steve Bullock: 21:16 Who? Oh no. I think Democrats, often when they’re saying, “Oh, these fossil fuel industries, these workers, those coal miner workers.” Look, the world’s changing. We got to make it change. But I think Democrats often sound like the people that, as Congressman Ryan would say, shower at the end of the day, that they’re part of the problem. And far too many communities are being left behind as we make this transition.
Bernie Sanders: 21:47 Look, Steve, ain’t nobody in the Congress who’s more strongly pro-worker than I am. So when I talk about taking on the fossil fuel industry, what I am also talking about is a just transition. All right? We can create, and what the Green New Deal is about, it’s a bold idea. We can create millions of good paying jobs. We can rebuild communities in rural America that have been devastated. So we are not anti-worker. We are going to provide, make sure that those workers have a transition. New jobs, healthcare and education.
Steve Bullock: 22:23 And look, Bernie. I was a union-side labor lawyer. I fought day after day, and I know, but we set this up as a false choice far too often. Are we going to actually address climate change? Fire seasons are 80 days longer in the west now. Or are we going to give people a better shot at a better life? You can do both.
Bernie Sanders: 22:45 Yes.
Steve Bullock: 22:45 But let’s actually have the scientists drive this. Let’s not just talk about plans that are written for press releases that will go nowhere else, if we can’t even get a Republican to acknowledge that the climate’s changing.
Beto O’Rourke: 23:00 I’ve listened to scientists on this, and they’re very clear. We don’t have more than 10 years to get this right, and we won’t meet that challenge with half steps or half measures or only half the country.
Sorry, Beto, that's exactly what we have to do.
We’ve got to bring everyone in. The people of Detroit and those that I listened to in Flint last week, they want the challenge, they want those jobs, they want to create the future for this country and the world. Those community college students that I met in Tucumcari, New Mexico understand that wind and solar jobs are the fastest growing jobs in the country, and those farmers in Iowa say,“Pay me for the environmental services, the planting cover crops and keeping more land in conservation easements.” That’s how we meet the challenge. We do it with everyone in this country. We bring everyone into the solution.
Pete Buttigieg: 23:44 We have all put out highly similar visions on climate.It is all theoretical. We will deal with climate if and only if we win the presidency, if and only if we beat Donald Trump. Nominate me and you get to see the President of the United States stand next to an American war veteran and explain why he chose to pretend to be disabled when it was his chance to serve. Nominate me and we will have a different conversation with American voters about why the President of the United States thinks you’re a sucker.
Dana Bash then interrupts to change the subject. Nevertheless,
Amy Klobuchar: 25:56 And I truly believe that if we’re going to move on infrastructure and climate change, you need a voice from the heartland.
John Hickenlooper: 13:54 We are able now to, I call it constant engagement, but we should have an international diplomatic approach where we’re talking to everybody. Because if we’re going to deal with climate change and cybersecurity and nuclear proliferation, we’ve got to be talking to everybody, and tariff wars don’t work.
Amy Klobuchar: 15:56 What I don’t like is how this president has handled it. You’ve heard of the Truman doctrine, the Monroe doctrine. He’s done the go it alone doctrine with the rest of the world. He’s taken us out of the climate change agreement, out of the Iran nuclear agreement, out of the Russian nuclear agreement, and I don’t agree with that.
John Delaney: 03:54 We can fight climate change and reimagine our education system, but we have to do it with real solutions not impossible promises.
John Hickenlooper: 06:03 I’ve actually got a track record as a small business owner, as a mayor and as a governor. We expanded healthcare in Colorado and got near universal coverage. We fought climate change directly. We beat the NRA. For the last three years, we’ve been the number one economy in the country. We can ramp all that out.
No, John, you have not beaten out California.
Pete Buttigieg: 09:25 There’s good news and bad news. I’m going to start with the bad news. Our country’s in trouble. GPD [GDP?] is going up, and life expectancy is going down. Think about what that means. It’s only getting tougher. By 2030, we will have passed the point of no return on climate. There could be 130 million more guns on our streets. I’ll be in my 40s then. If you have kids,think about how old they will be then.
See Dying of Whiteness, by Jonathan Metzl. It isn't everybody whose life span is going down.
Pete Buttigieg: 09:49 Here’s the good news. It’s not too late. We can tell our kids that before we ran out of time, just before we ran out of time in 2020, we did what it took to deliver a climate that we didn’t have to wonder if it could support us, to deliver a society where race has no bearing on your health or your wealth or your relationship with law enforcement, that we did what it took to deliver an economy where a rising tide actually does lift all boats.
Pete Buttigieg: 10:15 We can do this if and only if we are ready to walk away from what hasn’t worked with bold action and win, not only defeat this President but defeat his congressional allies with a defeat so big that it reunites the Republican Party with its conscience as well as bringing Democrats to office. Join me and let’s make it happen.
Night 2
Another conversation broke out, once the moderators actually asked the question.
Kamala Harris: 17:13 Adopt a Green New Deal on day one as president. I would reenter us in the Paris Agreement. And put in place so we would be carbon neutral by 2030.
Kristen Gillibrand: 17:34 So the first thing that I’m going to do when I’m president is I’m going to Clorox the Oval Office. The second thing I’m going to do, is I will reengage on global climate change, and I will not only sign the Paris global climate accords, but I will lead a worldwide conversation about the urgency of this crisis. The greatest threat to humanity is global climate change. I visited a family in Iowa who water spewed into her home, Fran Par, it tossed her refrigerator upend, all the furniture was broken, all the dishes were broken and mud was everywhere. That is the impact of severe weather right now on families lives. And so the truth is we need a robust solution. When John F. Kennedy said, “I want to put a man on the moon in the next 10 years, not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard.” He knew it was going to be a measure of our innovation, our success, our ability to galvanize worldwide competition. He wanted to have a space race with Russia. Why not have a green energy race with China? Why not have clean air and clean water for all Americans? Why not rebuild our infrastructure? Why not actually invest in the green jobs? That’s what the Green New Deal is about. Not only will I pass it, but I will put a price on carbon to make market forces help us.
Moderator: 18:51 Congresswoman Gabbard, you are not a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal. Please respond.
Tulsi Gabbard: 18:57 Oh, first of all, this is personal. You can imagine, I grew up in Hawaii, which is the most remote island chain in the world. So for us growing up there, protecting our environment was not a political issue, it’s a way of life. It’s part of our culture. It’s part of who we are. This is why as a member of congress long before there was ever a Green New Deal, I introduced the most ambitious climate change legislation ever in Congress called the Off Fossil Fuels Act. That actually laid out an actionable plan to take us from where we are today, to transition off of fossil fuels and invest in green renewable energy. Invest in workforce training, invest in the kinds of infrastructure that we need to deal with the problems and the challenges that climate is posing to us today.
Speaker 1: 19:41 Thank you, Congresswoman. Senator Booker, what’s your response? Is the job guarantee in the Green New Deal realistic?
Cory Booker: 19:48 I just want to take, first of all, a step back and say that I agree wholeheartedly with Governor Inslee, and it’s one of the reason why Greenpeace ranks me and him at the top of this entire field. I want to say very clearly, thank you man, thank you. I’ll try harder. Look, the reason why is because first of all, this problem didn’t start yesterday. Science didn’t become a reality yesterday. This has been going on for years. There was another president that would not join an international accord. The nit was the Kyoto accord. I was mayor then and I stood up in national leadership, joining with other mayors to say climate change is not a separate issue.
Cory Booker: 20:29 It must be the issue and the lens with which you view every issue. Nobody should get applause for rejoining the Paris climate accords, that is kindergarten. We have to go to far advance and makes sure that everything from our trade deals, everything from the billions of dollars we spend to foreign aid, everything must be sublimated to the challenge and the crisis that is existential, which is dealing with the climate threat. And yes, the majority of this problem is outside the United States, but the only way we’re going to deal with this Is that the United States leads.
Michael Bennet: 26:01 I believe we have a moral obligation to beat Donald Trump. He has to be a single-term president and we can’t do anything that plays into his hands. We were talking earlier about climate up here, it’s so important. Donald Trump should be the last climate denier that’s ever in the White House.
Closing Statements
Senator Bennet: 01:28 Thank you. Thank you very much. What I want to say to all of you tonight is we have been here before as a country. We have faced challenges that we’ve actually even forget some of us tonight how hard the people fought, how hard they work, how hard they organized the votes, they had to take the people they had to get to the polls to make this country more democratic, more fair and more free. And now we have a person in the White House who has no appreciation of that history, who doesn’t believe in the rule of law, who doesn’t believe in the independence of the judiciary, who doesn’t believe that climate change is real.
Jay Inslee: 02:56 For decades we have kicked the can down the road on climate change. And now under Donald Trump we faced a looming catastrophe,but it is not too late. We have one last chance. And when you have one chance in life, you take it. Think about this, literally the survival of humanity on this planet in civilization as we know it is in the hands of the next president. And we have to have a leader who will do what is necessary to save us. And that includes making this the top priority of the next Presidency. And I alone on this panel am making a commitment that this will be the organizing principle of my administration, not the first day, but every day. And if you share my view of the urgency of this matter, I hope you’ll join me because we are up against powerful special fossil fuel interests. And it is time to stand up on our legs and confront the fossil fuels special interests because that is our salvation, what it depends upon. So I hope you will consider going to jayinslee.com and joining this effort. And I will close with this. I am confident and optimistic tonight even in the face of this difficulty because I know we can build a clean energy economy. I know we can save our children and our grandchildren. I know that we can defeat climate change. And we will defeat Donald Trump. This is our moral responsibility and we will fulfill it. Thank you very much.
And then the networks all went off to the Spin Room. Oh, well.
I know whom I will vote for in the primaries. But I will vote for, and campaign for, and GOTV for, any Democratic candidate over Him Who Should Be Named Only in an Indictment.