Don't
believe the polls; it'll
be a race, by hook or by crook.
By Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune |
Witness
the final years of Ronald Reagan's presidency. A shadowy conspiracy, run out of
the White House basement by a rogue Marine Lieutenant Colonel, secretly sold
missiles to our enemies in Iran and then funneled the proceeds into arming
brutal right-wing rebels in Nicaragua.
The Dems botched the congressional inquiry, and just about everyone involved walked. Today it's barely mentioned as a part of Reagan's legacy.
In
July of 1988, Democrat Michael Dukakis opened up a 17-point lead in the polls
over Vice President George H.W. Bush, only to be crushed by Bush in the
November election.
Bush
actually used his alleged environmental virtue to trounce Democrat Dukakis.
Bush vowed to be the "environmental president," and in late August on
the campaign trail said,
"those who think we are powerless to do anything about the 'greenhouse
effect' are forgetting about the 'White House effect,'" he
said. And he slammed Dukakis for the sorry state of the polluted Boston Harbor.
When
Bill Clinton and his uber-green running mate, Al Gore, denied Bush his
re-election in 1992, environmentalists looked forward to years of promises
fulfilled. And Clinton was indeed quick out of the gate, taking aim at a
failing environmental law in his first State of the Union address: "I'd like to use that
Superfund to clean up pollution for a change and not just pay
lawyers."
More
than a quarter century and three presidencies later, Superfund sites still languish,
with a backlog of more than a thousand unfinished cleanups.
Even
with Gore as his wingman, Clinton's environmental accomplishments came slowly
in his first term. Then, when the Kyoto Accord on climate came along in 1997,
Clinton saw overwhelming opposition in the Senate and never submitted the
treaty for ratification.
In
2000, the Democrats won the popular vote by a million, but lost the presidency
in the Electoral College in large part due to the contentious loss in Florida.
What followed was eight years of unprecedented regulatory rollbacks and climate
change denial.
Barack
Obama's 2008 victory promised a reversal of fortune, but the 2009 Copenhagen
Climate Summit ended in failure. So did a sweeping congressional climate change
bill the following year.
Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, reportedly funneled subsequent White House efforts toward the Affordable Care Act. Not until the gains of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord did Obama once again emphasize climate.
Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, reportedly funneled subsequent White House efforts toward the Affordable Care Act. Not until the gains of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord did Obama once again emphasize climate.
And
of course in 2016, overconfident Dems let Donald Trump overcome a three million
popular vote deficit with narrow state-by-state victories and an Electoral
College win, giving America a climate-denying administration and an
anti-regulatory purge that will take years to undo.
Here's something else to
consider: The anti-regulatory, mask-hating subculture, like Trump's regulatory
rollbacks and Judgeship appointments, will have impact for decades even if
Trump loses on November 3.
Eight-term Texas
Congressman Louie Gohmert has gained a reputation among many as Washington's
most reliable cartoon character. For example, in 2012 he extolled the virtue of oil pipelines as
aphrodisiacs for Arctic caribou, who, he said, like to get it on when hanging
out around the warm, flowing, viscous North Slope crude.
On Wednesday, the
defiantly mask-less Gohmert assembled his Capitol staff and exhaled unto them
the announcement that he tested positive for COVID-19. In a subsequent
interview, he blamed his COVID-19 case on his own mask and
the few occasions where he deigned to put it on.
For nearly half of the
20th Century, Gohmert's East Texas district was represented by one Democrat,
Wright Patman. Through the Great Depression, World War II, the red scare, the
Civil Rights movement, Vietnam and Watergate, voters returned Patman to the
House until his 1976 death.
Fast forward two decades
from the end of the Patman era to Gohmert's 2005 election, and voters don't
just reliably return the man Charles Pierce calls "The Emperor of the Crazy People"
to office, they do so with 75 percent to 90 percent of the vote.
So, however compelling
the poll numbers may seem right now, please remember three things for November
3:
- Democrats are historically capable of blowing just about any situation they're handed;
- Republicans, whether it's via the Electoral College, via Fox News, or via other circumstances, can just as easily turn it around; and
- One way or another, prepare to be surprised.
Peter Dykstra is our
weekend editor and columnist. His views do not necessarily represent those
of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate or publisher, Environmental
Health Sciences. Contact him at pdykstra@ehn.org or
on Twitter at @Pdykstra.