Never let your enemy choose the battlefied

The crucial mistake Dems made in the energy fight 12

Following up on this -- I think the Democrats have made a specific and costly error. Consider the following Republican argument:

  1. Americans are hurting from high gasoline prices; politicians must act.
  2. Therefore, it's the responsibility of Congress to lower gasoline prices.
  3. Therefore, we must open up new areas to oil drilling.

Democrats have accepted No. 2, but they're trying to fight off No. 3. They're arguing that we can bring down gas prices by drilling on already leased land, or releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or cracking down on "price gouging."

It's an untenable position and it's not going to hold. If Congress has a responsibility to bring down gas prices by getting more oil to market, why stop with those things? Why not offshore drilling and oil shale too? This is where the Republican "all of the above" message gets its power. If you have a choice between a party that will do X for you, and a party that will do X+1 for you, what will you choose?

The crucial mistake is to accept No. 2.

Nobody will deny people are hurting; nobody will deny that for both political and substantive reasons politicians have to do something. But if Democrats accept that lowering gas prices is the only politically efficacious response, they are trapped on a battlefield on which they cannot win.

I talked to numerous Dem operatives about this last week, and I heard the same thing several times: Voters aren't sophisticated enough to understand anything but "we'll lower your gas prices." Anything else requires explanation, and voters don't sit still for explanation. So that's the field they have to fight on.

I think that misreads the situation and misreads voters. The drilling "movement" is a classically right-wing operation -- top-heavy, fueled by corporate money, reliant on aggressive PR, and meant to intimidate D.C. decisionmakers. It is astroturf, not grassroots. Dems need to regain the courage of their convictions and start coordinating with their own grassroots around a simple -- and substantively correct -- counter-attack. I'll sketch what I think it could be in my next post.

David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.

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  1. justlou Posted 3:54 am
    25 Jul 2008

    Dems are the rollover partyDems got rolled big time on the Iraq war resolution. They played the Republican's game for votes and lost, for them and for us.  
    And they have been just as reactionary and short sighted as the Republicans in telling us that our problem is our dependence on "foreign" oil.  
    But they have not done anything of any substance to change that dependence.  
    The message should be that we are dangerously dependent on all sources of oil, foreign and domestic.  And that the market needs high oil prices to allow alternative sources of energy and infrastructure to compete.  Cheap oil is a killer and only perpetuates our dependence on it.  
    The democratic policy should be one of greatly reducing the demand for all oil.  Democrats should not collude with Republicans in perpetuating the lie that we match supply with rising demand -- the Cheney/Bush energy policy.  

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  2. B Amer's avatar

    B Amer Posted 3:56 am
    25 Jul 2008

    Agree 100%The market is driving the behavior the country should want to see: driving less, carpooling & public transportation use up, bicycling up, sales of big SUVs down and small cars up, etc. The whole notion of CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) loses its necessity at $4+ gasoline. If we had leaders who could explain why this is a good thing overall, and could come up with other ways to offset the added cost of gas (see Gore's recent proposals), the country would be much better off. Unfortunately, I'm not optimistic.

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  3. JMG's avatar

    JMG Posted 4:05 am
    25 Jul 2008

    YesSpeaking of misreading voters, there is no place where you are likely to find gross contempt for voter intelligence than in the offices of a liberal Democratic politician, where the operative ideology is "Well, of course you and I are smart enough to understand X, but voters will never get it."

    The 5% Project

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  4. moehrlei Posted 4:14 am
    25 Jul 2008

    Simple argument against #2To argue against #2, just say "That's a big government solution.  Let the markets work."
    What's good for the goose...

    No individual raindrop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.

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  5. Jon Rynn's avatar

    Jon Rynn Posted 4:26 am
    25 Jul 2008

    Replace #2 with...2. It's the responsbility of Congress to lower your gas bill.  It's a slight but crucial shift from "lower gas prices", because now the way is open to say something like, "We will mandate that 50% of cars by 2015 are plug-ins", or "We will pay for most of the car companies' cost of plug-in R&D so they can roll them out real fast", or "We will expand rail and light rail service as fast as possible since you want to take more of it".  
    All of those things reduce the gas bill, because they reduce the amount of gas you need to buy.

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  6. cnbcsucks Posted 6:08 am
    25 Jul 2008

    Also agreed, but...You are correct that the Republicans outmaneuvered the Democrats on that one.  It never even occurred to the Democrats to question the very existence of oil in restricted US offshore waters, the cost of exploration and development in those areas, and who (American taxpayers) the Republicans have in mind as paying for all that drilling.  If you can stomach some sexist stuff and my rant, I cover much of this and try to fight Republican misinformation and propaganda at:  http://cnbcsucks.wordpress.com
    Thankfully, Obama is a superior candidate and better yet a superior politician to McCain, and low-information voters might not even get that Congress is Democratic.  When and if Obama gets elected - and better yet if also we get 60 Democrats in the Senate - all this "Drill! Drill! Drill!" nonsense will go away.
    Keep up the fight.

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  7. GreyFlcn Posted 10:58 am
    25 Jul 2008

    George Lakoff rolls over (in his sleep....)If this were an abortion debate;
    We would have the "Pro-life" Republicans, versus the "Anti-life" Democrats.
    By accepting Republican talking points, values and mental models as the basis of our discussion, we automatically lose.
    ____
    The debate should be more like this:
    We have two options:


    Deeper into dependence on Oil, with High Carbon Fuels, that will Acidify our oceans, Turn our rivers into vast lakes of sulfur and mercury sludge, And cause havoc with our climate. All of which will ultimately cripple our economy, and destroy our standing in the world.
    Progressively and Aggressively Move Away from Fossil Fuels, starting with stimulus checks, higher fuel economy, public transportation that works, and ultimately moving our transportation sector to run on inexpensive and plentiful renewable electricity.  Ushering in a new era of stability in the world and utter respect for America.


    OR
    Republicans have dug us into a hole, Republicans think answer is to dig deeper.

    The real answer is that we need to get out, and we need to do it soon while we still can, because it's only going to get worse the longer we wait. Because we can't drill our way out of this.
    OR
    You have a choice:


    Turn our oceans to acid, destroy our climate, and ultimately cripple our economy, with high carbon fuels.

    Or Save our planet and economy, by progressively moving away from oil, towards plentiful and inexpensive renewable electricity.


    OR
    There really isn't anything we can do about short term oil costs.
    If we subsidize oil, then demand will go up, and the price will resume to it's previous level.
    And even if we had all that oil Republicans are after, Today, that would only shift things by a couple pennies a gallon.
    We can't Drill Our way Out of This.
    _    ______
    We need to learn it's not just what we say.

    It's how we go about saying it.
    The truth will never set you free; If you have to run it through the logic of how Republicans view things.
    We need to stop using Republican talking points, values and mental models as the basis of our communication!

    -David Ahlport

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  8. GreyFlcn Posted 11:42 am
    25 Jul 2008

    Or ya know whatCut that down ever further.
    Republicans are against Our Kids Future.

    Democrats are Our Kids Future.
    Which cuts well for oil depeletion, global warming, and geopolitical tensions.
    Pretty much everything.

    -David Ahlport

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  9. GreyFlcn Posted 11:56 am
    25 Jul 2008

    oohAnother good perspective on things.
    The Real Question: Should Oil Be Cheap?

    http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/08_31/ ...
    Well written article thats surprisingly lacking of fluff.

    -David Ahlport

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  10. PermieWriter's avatar

    PermieWriter Posted 3:21 am
    28 Jul 2008

    Frame gaffeThe Democrats obviously aren't in the market for intelligent framing: They let Lakoff's Rockridge Institute go under for lack of business.

    Eat what you grow, grow what you eat

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  11. SustainableEnergyFuture Posted 6:02 am
    28 Jul 2008

    Why Drill in the OCS When You Can Do Better?In particular, the Department of the Interior just released a report discussing proposed rules and a draft environmental assessment of alternative energy uses for the Outer Continental Shelf, the area which the R's are desperately trying to tie up for Oil and Gas exploitation before the end of the Bush Administration.  These uses include off-shore wind as well as tidal, ocean, and off-shore solar power.  These possibilities all provide energy which would actually go directly to domestic energy markets - not international markets - where they actually have the potential to provide real, sustainable energy for Americans for the long term.  
    Why not emphasize these alternative uses, which could be precluded by leases for off-shore drilling?  Why not advocate for substantially accelerating these activities, particularly environmental impact assessments of any alternative technologies, rather than for rushing headlong again into a band-aid fix which the EIA tells us will do nothing to reduce gas prices?  This way, by 2030 we may actually add substantial clean power for American consumers to the grid rather than bringing down the price of gas by a couple of cents...
    The US Minerals Management Service just announced plans to move forward on the process of leasing portions of the Outer Contintental Shelf for alternative energy data collection and technology testing activities, something that was mandated in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.  The D's should focus on getting them to make this a priority...

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  12. cnbcsucks Posted 11:23 pm
    01 Aug 2008

    Problem solvedBarack Obama is not only the superior candidate but the superior politician.  Did you get the move last night?

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