On February 13, 2019, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) announced that he would try to force the Senate to come to a vote on NY-14 Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D) proposed Green New Deal. Senator McConnell said, “We’ll give everybody an opportunity to go on record and see how they feel about the Green New Deal.” It appears that our good friend Senator McConnell is trying to rip apart the Senate Democrats by using a Green New Deal vote to force them to break along ideological lines. However, I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.
Let’s cover some background information first. The Green New Deal is a guideline of policies introduced by Ocasio-Cortez in the House of Representatives and Edward Markey in the Senate on February 7, 2019. It’s basically everything your everyday progressive would want. An FDR-style New Deal? That promises 100% renewable energy by 2030? That promises to overhaul America’s public transit system? That would support family farming and dump the incredibly disgusting and toxic factory farming industry? That guarantees a living wage and economic security? That offers high-quality healthcare and housing to all Americans? Am I dreaming? At the time of this writing, 11 Democratic Senators and 67 Representatives agree with me, as they have all co-sponsored the proposal. A few names to watch on that list are Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris. All of these senators are currently in the race for the 2020 Democratic Party Presidential nomination. There’s clearly a lot of support for the Green New Deal from the people who are trying to be the most electable in 2020.
This brings us back to Senator McConnell. The Senate Majority Leader may believe that he is hurting progressives by forcing a vote on their “loony” Green New Deal, but he’s actually helping them. While speaking to Politico, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi said, “It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive. The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it right?” The majority of Democrats are honestly against such substantial economic restructuring when it comes to the Green New Deal. The Democrats who have come out in support of the deal are absolutely a minority of Democrats in Congress. The Ocasio-Cortez and Markey coalition need to know who their allies are. At the current moment, the Green New Deal is just a promise of substantial legislation in the future. If the majority of the party will vote against this promise, then progressives need to vote them out of office in exchange for elected officials who will support it. When it comes to the future of our planet, the Green New Deal coalition should absolutely not be playing around.
Unfortunately, our “green dream” will most likely never come to pass. Even if every Democrat in the House and Senate comes out swinging for the Green New Deal, Republicans still hold a majority in the Senate, and if by some strange coincidence of astronomical fate, four Republicans decide to support the cause, then both houses of Congress would have to come together again to pass actual legislation! Regardless of all of that hard work, President Trump would undoubtedly veto any legislation that manages to make it to his desk. But while some may see this as an embarrassing defeat, I think there’s an opportunity in failure. Ever since the Sanders campaign in 2016, people have been talking about progressivism. Progressive economic ideas like Medicare For All have actually managed to become a publicly-discussed issue. The Green New Deal shifts the national discussion, even if a lot of it is conservative mockery, to a place it has not been in almost 75 years. Honestly, support for the Green New Deal could be more widespread than you would think. Even in the midst of a “far-left” fervor to abolish ICE in the lead up to the 2018 Midterm Elections, the Democratic blue wave still came through. The average American may seem ambivalent about climate change, but I imagine that we all wouldn’t like to be around for the man-made destruction of our planet’s ecosystem. While we still have a decade to create solutions, the Green New Deal is a big step forwards towards saving our planet and closing the wealth gap in America. While that may sound like a nightmare to Mitch McConnell, I’ll be sleeping like a baby with my “green dream.”
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