Who In The Democratic Party Is Going To Care About The Environment When The Last White Guy Is Shunted Aside?
08/17/2018
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In the New York Review of Books, white environmentalist Bill McKibben realizes that the Democratic Party is not interested in conserving guys like him, and thinks that — environment be damned — is sort of great:

… the Democrats—though compromised at the top, chummy with corporations, frustratingly split on crucial issues, and notoriously unwilling to stand their ground—are, in certain ways, sort of great. …

The first day of our work, the fifteen of us gathered in some miserable hotel ballroom and spent a solid eight hours listening to nonstop earnest testimony from different groups that wanted their viewpoints represented in the platform. I was sitting next to Representative Barbara Lee of Oakland, California, who was quick, sharp, and quite delightful. After the first forty witnesses, I leaned over to whisper: “You know what’s interesting: we haven’t heard from a white guy yet.” She took a minute to look up and down her agenda to make sure I was right, and then she flashed me a wide grin. “Now you know how it feels,” she said.

My sense, after many days of such hearings, was that the Democratic Party at its best operated as a kind of support network for the decent people who get pushed around in America—people of color, working people, disabled people, gay people, people who have to breathe the fumes from refineries.

The people who most have to breathe the fumes from refineries are the people who work there and they like getting paid. But leave that aside for the minute. Who does McKibben think is going to care about the environment in the Democratic Party when the last white guy Democrat is shunted aside? The energy companies have plenty of money to buy off the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses.


[Comment at Unz.com]

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