I don’t know who sold progressive Democrats on the idea that the way to beat Donald Trump is to abolish the private health insurance of 160 million Americans and offer instead “Medicare for All” (and Mexico will pay for it), but it’s a political loser and an easy target for Trump to feast on. A much better campaign theme is hiding in plain sight. I call it “the Earth Race.”
In the 1960s, John F. Kennedy energized the country behind a “space race”: to make America the first nation to put a man on the moon. Democrats need to run against Trump on the Earth Race: to make America the leader in all policies and technologies that help men and women everywhere live sustainably here on Earth.
Yes, I know, mitigating climate change and saving the environment never poll well. But times change, and it depends how you frame the issue. Mother Nature is forcing herself onto the ballot, and Trump’s efforts to roll back more than 80 rules and standards protecting clean air, water, climate, parks and wilderness make him uniquely vulnerable. He can’t pivot away from what he’s doing. He owns it, and it’s villainous. This time is different.
In this era when so much activism is online, when was the last time you saw a bottom-up, mass movement of young people in America and across the world – some 4 million in all – take to the streets on every continent as they did last week to demand action to stop the heating of our planet? These young people are telling us, and their voting parents, that this issue is a political winner – theirs is a movement in search of courageous political leaders.
I am not saying that the Earth Race is the only issue to run on. I’m all for strengthening Obamacare and even adding a public health insurance option. But if I were running for president against Trump, I’d be leading with the Earth Race as an economic opportunity, a national security necessity, a health emergency, an environmental urgency and a moral obligation. No other issue can combine those five.
I’d pound Trump every day with this message: “Trump says he cares about you. Well, that’s funny. He just revoked a rule that prohibited coal mining debris from being dumped into local streams – among other actions to weaken the Clean Water Act – so that pro-Trump coal companies can make more money while they make you sick. What kind of president does that?
“Trump says he cares about you. Well, that’s funny. He’s weakening clean air rules so that power and coal companies can emit more pollutants, methane and carbon dioxide into the air – so they can make more money and give your kids more childhood asthma today and disruptive climate change tomorrow. What kind of father does that?
“Trump says he cares about making America great again. Well, that’s funny, because he clearly doesn’t care about American automakers and their supply chains. He’s trying to force California and other states to weaken their gas mileage and pollution standards so our companies – which don’t even want this change – can make gas guzzlers and no longer produce cars that get mileage as good as those in Japan or emit as little pollution as China’s expanding electric car fleets. Who the hell does that?
The Earth Race candidate would tell people every day: “You can vote for a man who wants to bring back cars that get bad mileage, lights that use more energy and produce more heat, power plants that produce more asthma, chemical companies that pollute more rivers, coal companies that pollute more air, mining companies that strip more pristine landscapes, and an economy that lags China in the next great global industry.
“Or you can join the Earth Race and make Donald Trump’s presidency an extinct species while saving Mother Nature’s endangered species.”
If a candidate can’t make headway with that message, either America is doomed or he or she doesn’t belong in politics.
The New York Times