Anti-fracking imperils Democrats
As sure as anything, Democrats are courting disaster. The latest example was Wednesday night’s free-for-all in Las Vegas. An independent or a dissatisfied Republican (there must be such an animal) tuning in would be forgiven if they had mistaken the ninth Democratic debate for a food fight, or worse: a switch blade blood-letting at two feet.
Days earlier, still another example of Democratic disarray emerged in the form of a letter from congressman Conor Lamb to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Dated February 14, Lamb, who represents a district north of Pittsburgh – generally, suburban Allegheny, Beaver and Butler counties — asked the Speaker to come to the defense of good-paying union jobs by opposing legislation that would end fracking for natural gas by 2024.
The legislation is the handiwork of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, a self-labelled Democratic socialist, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, his shining political soulmate who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens in the House.
Lamb, a moderate Democrat who, for a brief season in the spring of 2018, was the darling of the national media (before the unexpected emergence of AOC in June of that year), has a pretty big dog in the fight over fracking: the jobs-aplenty, fracking-dependent petrochemical cracker plant going up in the heart of his district.
In addition, Lamb has a bill, passed by the Science and Technology subcommittee he chairs and ratified by the full committee, that would lay out $4.6 billion over five years for research on such arcane subjects as carbon capture, methane leak detection, and advanced energy systems.
In his letter, he asked Pelosi to bring the bill to a vote in the House. It cleared Lamb’s panel on a bipartisan vote last summer.
He also took the opportunity in the letter to direct a blow at Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez. The congresswoman, in introducing her anti-fracking legislation, said, “Fracking is destroying our land and our water. It is wrecking havoc on our communities’ health. We must do our job to protect our future from the harms caused by the fracking industry.”
Lamb not only begged to disagree — he insisted.
If passed, the congressman said, the Sanders/Ocasio-Cortez bill would “eliminate thousands of jobs in my state and likely millions across the country. It would also remove from our energy grid the source of power that has been responsible for reducing carbon emissions in our country.”
Then he got personal. “In Western Pennsylvania,” Lamb wrote, “people feel betrayed when they hear there any Democrats who support the elimination of jobs in our communities — good, middle-class, union jobs…. Where I come from, jobs come first.”
Lamb pointed with pride to our region’s “long history of union organizing that formed the backbone of our past” in building America.
Western Pennsylvania coal fueled Pittsburgh steel making, he said.
And just as coal powered the past, natural gas might very well power the future.
“A fracking ban would foreclose” that prospect, Lamb concluded.
In the race for his party’s nomination for president, Lamb, in January, announced his support for former vice president Joe Biden from the large field of candidates.
Asked to handicap the fall contest against Donald Trump, who’s all in for fracking, Lamb fairly trembled at the idea of Bernie Sanders at the head of the Democratic ticket.
Particularly when it comes to winning Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes — votes that were crucial in 2016, when Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the state, on the strength of a strong rural, Western Pennsylvania vote — Bernie might prove unelectable.
“I am definitely concerned that someone’s who’s more on the fringe would have a hard time winning our state,” Lamb told Politico. “I want a Democratic candidate to win Pennsylvania and win the presidency.”
At the debate on Wednesday, NBC’s Chuck Todd, addressing Sanders, said, “You want a total ban on… fracking in the next five years. The industry, obviously, supports a lot of jobs around the country, including thousands in the battleground state of Pennsylvania…. What do you tell workers?”
The senator from Vermont was unmoved. “I tell these workers … we’re fighting for the future of this planet.”
Lamb, no doubt, winced at this airy dismissal of political reality: besides putting his own reelection in jeopardy, Sanders’ position on fracking could make it “really hard” to defeat Trump in Pennsylvania this November, which will likely depend on cutting down the size of the Trump vote in Western Pennsylvania.
With his anti-fracking mantra on full display as the Democratic nominee for president, Sanders just might end up costing his party the White House in 2020.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.