In the rare moments when Democrats aren’t painting former President Donald Trump as the greatest threat to democracy and the future of our nation, they remember the other existential threat: climate change.
Take it from President Joe Biden, who managed to squeeze in two references to the so-called climate crisis while addressing the nation about all the other crises facing the nation. During his Monday call-in to Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign event in Delaware, Biden reminded his loyal listeners of the stakes of the election.
After warning the audience that “Trump is still a danger to the community, he’s a danger to the nation,” he upped the ante: “Climate still is the existential threat that we face, and we have — if we don’t — if we don’t win this thing, it’s all in jeopardy.”
Biden revisited the theme in his Wednesday night address to the nation, promising to “keep speaking out to protect our kids from gun violence, our planet from the climate crisis” during his remaining time in office. After all, “It is the existential threat.”
If Democrats don’t win in November, democracy will die — and so will the planet. But while this rhetoric may sit well with the Biden–Harris administration and rank-and-file Democrat voters, several individuals on Harris’s roster of vice presidential options have adopted a more moderate approach to the climate issue. And if Harris wants to win Pennsylvania and its coveted 19 electoral votes, she may need to do the same.
Harris’s record on climate issues is anything but moderate. As a senator, she was an original sponsor of the Green New Deal, working with far-left legislators Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders to push a radical climate agenda. As vice president, Harris cast the tie-breaking vote for Biden’s disastrous Inflation Reduction Act. On the international stage, Harris has been an outspoken proponent of extreme climate action. (RELATED: Climate Change Socialism on the Attack)
Just last year, she flew to Dubai to wax poetic on the existential threat of climate change. (Carbon emissions don’t count if you’re flying to save the planet.) “The urgency of this moment is clear,” Harris said. “The clock is no longer just ticking, it is banging. And we must make up for lost time.”
But it’s not clear that all her potential running mates are as attuned to the, um, banging clock.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has been floated as a frontrunner in the veepstakes — a more traditional Democrat with swing-state appeal capable of making Kamala’s California progressivism palatable to non-coastal voters. As the governor of Pennsylvania, which is the nation’s second-largest net supplier of energy after Texas and the second-largest producer of natural gas, Shapiro takes a more moderate approach to the Left’s climate fanaticism.
Where Harris supports a ban on fracking — a ban that even Biden opposed — Shapiro has green-lit the practice in Pennsylvania, albeit with additional hoops for oil and gas companies to jump through. Vehement opposition to domestic energy production might play well for California Democrats, but it’s political suicide in Pennsylvania.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, another member of the shortlist, takes a more pragmatic approach than Harris. As governor of one of the nation’s top coal-producing states, Beshear “doesn’t discuss the climate crisis while tangling with a legislature run by a Republican supermajority,” per the New York Times.
Other individuals currently undergoing the vetting process, like Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, have managed climate issues with less political tact, pushing ahead liberal climate legislation and putting ideology ahead of pragmatism.
The vast majority of power players in the Democrat party are comfortable trotting out boilerplate language about how climate change is an existential threat to the nation, though few can actually substantiate the claim. At this point, it’s a given: the Left fights against fossil fuels and domestic energy production as a matter of principle.
But a number of blue-collar Democrat voters — the dying breed of moderates like Sen. Joe Manchin — aren’t on board with radical policies designed to handicap American industry and energy security. And with Biden out of the presidential race, Kamala has little tie to her party’s traditional working-class roots.
Ultimately, her choice is a false binary. Though the VP field may seem divided between individuals who would either moderate her West Coast progressivism or double down on her Green New Deal-style radicalism, the eventual vice presidential candidate will be playing second-fiddle to a presidential candidate who has already made her position clear. Harris has no qualms about desiccating American energy production. Freed from their gubernatorial handcuffs, Shapiro and Beshear would quickly fall into line, even if they maintained a pragmatic posture on the campaign trail.
Voters should take note: half-measures don’t suffice when the stakes of an election are “existential.”
Mary Frances Myler is a contributing editor at The American Spectator. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022.
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