'Third Rail': Here's Why Team Kamala is Not Peddling Their Typical Climate Panic This Election
Vice President Kamala Harris has been tight-lipped about her record on climate change while major green groups continue to support her anyways — a dynamic that political pundits and energy experts said is no accident.
Harris — who called climate change an “existential threat” in 2019 — previously probed major oil corporations as California’s attorney general and co-sponsored the Green New Deal as a senator, but she has mostly avoided climate change and green energy on the campaign trail, framing the issues in terms of economics, jobs and investment when she does bring up the subject. Many major eco-activist groups are still supporting her which indicates that Harris is trying to broaden her appeal to more moderate voters in order to win the election and subsequently govern as a climate hardliner once in office, energy experts and political strategists said.
“The Democrats have figured out that the apocalyptic vibe isn’t really likely to bring people along for this particular ride,” Mike McKenna, a GOP strategist with extensive energy sector experience, said. “So, they have obviously made a command decision to focus only on the carrots and ignore anything that looks like a stick.”
Harris and her running mate, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have campaigned on climate issues in passing, but eco-activist leaders are generally unconcerned about the lack of focus on the issue. Walz did not address climate change during his Wednesday night speech at the Democratic National Convention, sticking primarily to his background as a rural American.
Even after the Harris campaign walked back her previous support for a fracking ban, a slew of environmental organizations opposed to fracking endorsed her candidacy.
“They know what she’s going to do. There’s no upside to talking about climate,” Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow at the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute, said. “Keep in mind, I believe it was in July of 2022, The New York Times ran a poll reporting that only 1 percent of voters prioritize climate. So it’s a loser issue … And they can’t afford to lose Pennsylvania. So, they don’t want to talk about climate, because when you talk about climate, then you have to talk about fracking, and then they’re going to have to talk about how she wants to stop fracking, regardless of what she says.”
Moreover, the political wings of three green groups — the League of Conservation Voters, Climate Power and the Environmental Defense Fund — are spending $55 million on swing state advertisements to boost Harris, but the first three ads released do not actually address climate change. The ads back into the subject of green energy and pitch Harris’ record on the issue as centered on protecting ordinary Americans from greedy corporations and promoting “advanced manufacturing and clean energy” as a means of helping the middle class.
This approach is different than the one Harris used during her first run for the presidency in the 2020 cycle, in which Harris attempted to outflank many of her Democratic opponents from the left by endorsing policies like carbon taxes, changes to dietary guidelines to decrease red meat consumption and a ban on plastic straws to complement a fracking ban.
Eco-activists and climate-focused voters “definitely believe she will go left, left, left on climate and energy,” Scott Jennings, a political strategist and on-air pundit for CNN, said. “Of course they do. Her 2020 campaign agenda is what they are banking on. And I assume she will deliver for them if she wins.”
Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to secure the 2022 passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature climate bill. While its price tag has ballooned from initial estimates and some contend that the bill has actually worsened inflation, the IRA unleashed hundreds of billions of dollars of private and public spending on green energy and manufacturing projects.
The Biden-Harris administration touts that investment as evidence that its domestic agenda is working.
“The climate activists in the Democrat Party have finally realized that no one is buying their ‘climate emergency’ claptrap anymore or their claims of 5, 10, or 20 years left to ‘save the planet.’ Instead, they are pedaling a barrage of silly economic claims that somehow pouring hundreds of billions and now trillions of dollars into government centrally planned projects,” Marc Morano, the publisher of Climate Depot, said. “This new Democrat climate messaging, where they don’t mention climate, is part of the legacy of the Inflation Reduction Act, where local communities and certain states get unlimited federal funds poured into them via taxpayers to create a ‘green economy.’”
Len Foxwell, a Democratic strategist based in Maryland, said that the Harris campaign’s lack of attention to climate change and green energy issues is deliberate given her need to secure the support of a broad coalition if she is to win in November.
As the Democratic candidate for the presidency, Harris “has to communicate her vision and values in a way that attracts the broadest possible coalition,” though it remains to be seen how she would actually govern if elected given uncertainty about the future balance of power in Congress, according to Foxwell. Harris and her team must take care to not propose policies that would increase the cost of living for middle class Americans, which would be “third rail” politics given how concerned people are about the economy, he added.
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