The most radical of the Democrat Presidential candidates are driving their more moderate fellow candidates to the farthest extremes of the Left. More important for conservative candidates who’ll be running for the House, in the 2020 general election, those radicalized candidates – if one of them doesn’t secure the Democrat nomination – will nonetheless influence the ultimate Democrat nominee. Those extreme Socialists will do this regardless of who the Democrat candidate will ultimately be. Worse for them – but better for the country – those same radicals will use their influence to create the Democrat platform for 2020. Their stance on issues ranging from banning all air travel to forcing America to go vegan – all to be done in the name of climate change – are sure drive more moderate and centrist voters into the waiting, welcoming arms of the Right.
Examples of these Socialist-Democrat extremist candidates abound, but few of them are more consistently, radically socialist than Andrew Yang. At the recent CNN climate change “town hall,” Yang said “I propose a Constitutional amendment that makes it a responsibility of the United States government to safeguard and protect our environment for future generations.” All that can be said about this is that – unlike his fellow radical candidates – he isn’t ignoring the Constitution. At least, that’s what he claims.
However, Yang – like most Democrat Presidential candidates – endorsed Socialist Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (AOC’s) budget-destroying $93 trillion dollar Green New Deal. That bill, if enacted, would shred the Constitution by usurping to the Federal government powers never dreamed of by the Founders, starting with the nationalizing of all electric energy production.
For instance, former “moderate” or “centrist” Presidential candidate Joe Biden told CNN that AOC’s $93 trillion dollar Green New Deal doesn’t go too far. In articulating his support for the Green New Deal, Biden said he would shut-down every coal-fired electrical generating plant in America. “No one is going to build another coal burning plant. We’ve got to shut the ones down we have,” Biden told Anderson Cooper.
Then embracing those who call for the elimination of internal combustion engines in cars, Biden said, “We’d like to reach the point where everyone drives electric cars. That’s my plan. Electric cars, electric cars … We have to take combustion engine vehicles off the road.” That’s a idea that no less than the National Geographic said, back in 2014, “it’s unworkable.”
“Electric cars can help limit reliance on imported oil and take a bite out of air pollution from urban traffic jams,” the Nat-Geo’s study found. “But as sure-fire ammunition against climate change, they come up short… The (Nat-Geo) team modeled 108 scenarios… The team reported that even in scenarios that yield the highest levels of EV deployment (high oil prices, low battery costs), plug-ins and hybrids would make up no more than 42 percent of all U.S. passenger vehicles in 2050 and would reduce overall emissions by a slim margin.”
Biden’s radical embrace of technology was marred at the CNN town hall event when he was forced to admit that he’d committed to attending a fund-raiser hosted by Andrew Goldman, a co-founder of Western LNG– a liquefied natural gas production company – claiming “he’s not a fossil fuel executive.” When that became untenable, Biden then claimed that he didn’t realize that this fat-cat supporter, who’d made his mega-millions in the petroleum industry, was in fact just the kind of person he’d pledged to not accept money from. Oops.
However, Joe Biden’s born-again radical energy policy – one that hasn’t caught up with his fund-raising campaign staff – a policy based on “green” energy production technology that doesn’t even exist, represents a swift change from one-time moderate Joe Biden. This is especially obvious looking at Biden’s view on the steps needed to address man-caused climate change. To help the millions of Americans who’d be caught out working for industries Biden has pledged to make disappear to ease through this radical change, the former Vice President said – without a lick of proof – that “We could create a significant number of jobs and opportunities for people.”
How, or even why his draconian energy policy would actually create jobs remains unstated and unproven. Biden routinely ignores the dramatic job losses tied to the elimination of carbon-based fuels and the industries that produce or depend upon them. Imagine:
No more diesel trucks or diesel railroad locomotives.
No massive cargo ships connecting our globe into a single universal market.
No air travel.
No cheeseburgers.
And, if you think about it, no military.
Except for a relatively few nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers, all U.S. military aircraft and combat ships, as well as all main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, run on petroleum fuels. There is no way that these vital combat vehicles – essential to our national defense – can run on wind or solar power, or on hydroelectric or geothermal energy.
Taking even that radical proposal a step further, Yang also called – as part of the broader Green New Deal – the banning of commercial air travel. “I would do away with commercial air travel and a lot of other things,” he told CNN’s audience. As noted in one of our previous blogs on energy topics and the Far Left, Americans will take nearly a billion flights in 2019. Just imagine the impact of that ban the economy. America is a vast country. It is only affordable air travel that keeps us bound together. Without air travel, without diesel-powered trains or over-the-road semi-trailer trucks, our economy will crash, and not rise again.
Later in his softball “town hall” interview with Wolf Blitzer, Yang said he wants the government to discourage people from eating meat. “The U.N. just released a study that said we’re going to be OK if the vast majority of the world goes vegetarian immediately,” he said, without explaining how or why vegetarianism would prevent global warming.
If you didn’t like Michelle Obama’s “woke” school lunch program meals, you’ll hate Yang’s main course for all of us.
Compared to AOC’s Green New Deal plan – which every one of the Democrat candidates endorsed – Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) proved to be a bargain-basement Green New Dealer. While saying that he strongly advocates AOC’s plan, his own version of a Green New Deal would cost the U.S. only $16 trillion dollars to implement. What a relief!
However, Sanders also wants to export his plan across the globe, saying “we have no choice but to do everything we can, with countries all over the world, to save this planet for our children and future generations.” Assuming that he wants to achieve the same zero level of carbon emissions all over the planet, and taking into account that America only produces 15% of the earth’s greenhouse gases, this could mean the real cost of his plan will come to roughly $1 trillion dollars for every one percent of greenhouse gases we eliminate.
While others offer radical, unrealistic policy prescriptions, Senator Corey Booker (D-NJ) sees climate change as far more than merely an item on his list of policies and initiatives. To Climate change “is the lens through which we must do everything,” he told CNN.
So …
Cancel NASA.
Eliminate the Department of Defense.
Get rid of Medicare.
Abandon national parks and museums.
Everything that doesn’t combat climate change, Senator Booker seems to be saying, is no business of the Federal government. Only climate change counts. After all, it’s “the lens through which we must do everything.”
Fading media darling Beto O’Rourke plans to punitively tax all Americans into compliance and a zero-emission status by the year 2050. Oddly, for a program that levies brutal taxes on every-day Americans, the program will still cost $5 trillion dollars.Where else but Washington can you propose a massive taxing bill that actually costs money, instead of raising money. New math indeed!
Senator Elizabeth Warren wants to blame it all on the building industry, the electrical power industry and the oil industry. She suggested to CNN and America that the Federal government should seize all electrical power generation plants, nationwide. Just imagine what would happen to our country if we shut down the building industry and turned all of our electrical generation over to the people who gave us Obamacare.
I can hear the promise now: “If you like your electricity, you can keep your electricity.”
Bottom line: The top ten Democrat Presidential candidates are all onboard one version or another of AOC’s Green New Deal, a policy even her own Chief of Staff explained is nothing more than an economic power grab intent on socializing America. This radical extremism, if explained carefully and objectively, is sure to frighten middle Americans. Shutting down the building trades, nationalizing all electricity production, eliminating internal combustion engines – or, in a worst-case scenario, even eliminating all air travel and cheeseburgers– would vastly damage our country in ways that Americans will find are hard to imagine. What’s not hard to imagine, though, is the economic devastation a $93 trillion dollar plan – or even Sanders’ stripped-down $16 trillion dollar plan – will cause. Such a heavy tax-and-debt burden will drive America forever out of competition with the rest of the industrialized world.
Should AOC’s dream actually be embraced to the point of implementation, countries with too much sense to adopt these policies – China and India, South Asia and even many emerging African countries – will begin to replace America as the 21st Century’s dominant economic superpowers.
Making this clear to Americans will prove to be a winning strategy in November, 2020.