Energy is on the agenda in November, and the chickens are coming to roost for Democratic policymakers who have supported President Biden’s hostility toward our fossil fuel industry.
With prices for utilities, consumer goods and groceries 30% higher under Biden, due in part to higher gas prices, Democratic senators like Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio – both of which represent Republican-majority states – are rightly nervous.
But none more so than Bob Casey, a three-term Democratic senator from Pennsylvania.
After 18 years in the Senate, Casey had a remarkably unimpressive legislative career.
When pressed, few were able to cite a text of law or a speech in which he stood out.
And he is now overshadowed by his fellow Democrat, the junior senator John Fetterman.
The hoodie-wearing freshman won unlikely admirers on the right for his willingness to stand up to his party’s anti-Semites, and he won a populist appeal that Casey never could.
Consider their home state of Pennsylvania, a leading producer of natural gas through fracking.
During his 2022 campaign, Fetterman’s shifting views on fracking were criticized. In the end, he supported him. Credit where credit is due.
Fetterman may have supported Bernie Sanders in 2016, but his Keystone State is home to Titusville, which – as the site of the first commercial oil well drilled by John D. Rockefeller in 1895 – played a key role in our country’s development as a country. global superpower.
Today, the state’s oil and gas industry employs nearly half a million Fetterman voters and contributed $75 billion to the economy in 2021.
In February, Fetterman split with the White House over its ban on allowing liquefied natural gas exports.
In fact, even Casey felt compelled to join him on this.
Yet Casey’s opposition was more the exception than the rule. And that highlights the dilemma.
Since taking office, Biden has leveraged every tool in his regulatory toolbox to deliver on his 2020 campaign promise to “end fossil fuels.”
He canceled the Keystone XL pipeline on day one.
It banned new oil and gas leases on public lands and waters.
Last week, Biden ordered oil and gas companies to pay more to drill on existing federal lands.
Yet along the way, the silence from Senate Democrats — including Casey, as well as Brown and Tester, who also represent fossil fuel-rich states and energy workers — has been deafening.
Not only did they all support the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, touted by the White House as the “largest climate investment in history”; they stood idly by while Biden’s regulatory assault attempted to crush the industry.
Casey once even called the Green New Deal, the brainchild of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “worthy of consideration.”
Facing an average approval rating of 39 percent and a stiff challenge from George W. Bush staffer David McCormick, Casey is now eager to wrap himself in some of Fetterman’s hooded magic .
Yet his voting record remains a stumbling block: 98% of the time he sided with another (alleged) Pennsylvanian, Joe Biden.
Biden will likely spend a lot of time in his former home state.
This week he began a three-day tour of Scranton, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
Biden’s presence in the state puts Casey in a bind: The senator can’t campaign with Biden outside Democratic strongholds, where the president may be unpopular because of his record on fossil fuels (and where the public gathered might ask: Who is this with the president?).
Yet Casey must campaign where McCormick enjoys growing support from a frustrated electorate.
Ironically, Sen.’s successful 2006 victory over then-Sen. Rick Santorum (full disclosure: I worked on Santorum’s campaign) involved linking the incumbent president to another unpopular president, then-President George W. Bush.
Casey liked to say: “When two politicians agree 98% of the time, one of them is not needed.” »
This strategy could come back to haunt him, given his near-total support for Biden.
Yes, energy is on the ballot, and energy workers in Pennsylvania, Montana and Ohio could become the new coveted demographic, like “soccer moms.”
If candidates focused on the issues of these voters, not only would they win the election, but the entire nation, and frankly the world, would be better off.
Daniel Turner is the founder and executive director of Powering the futurea national nonprofit organization that advocates for energy jobs in the United States.
daniel@powerthefuture.com
New York Post
