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Email: The green part of the coalition

seanmalstrom
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Sean,

You talked about how the New Deal was about buying off client groups. Well, I was wondering…do you think adopting the environmentalists as a client group could be the old coalition’s undoing? A lot of blue-collar labor is not happy with the Democrats. I know some traditionally Democratic coal miners in West Virginia, and, well, they’re not happy to say the least. And they say pretty much everyone else feels the same way. In fact, if you look at a map of those primaries where Obama mysteriously lost some counties, it looks like a map of coal mines. I also know that members of the union that would have built the Keystone XL pipeline is angry.
Being in a university, I run into radical greens a lot. The thing is what these people want is for the lights to go out. Literally. They want the EPA to pretty much shut down as much of the USA’s energy-generating and transportation capacity as they can. And the EPA’s got a raft of new regulations designed to begin choking off power generation that will take effect in November. The problem is that all the other Democrat client groups want the opposite of what the greens want—they want a comfortable life, preferably one with cars and electric lights.
The basic problem is that every time the greens advance part of their agenda, it tramples on the interests of some other Democratic client group (example: Lawyers like fancy cars. Greens want to ban fancy cars.). I’m wondering if you think the Democrats will be able to hold it all together, if you think the greens will cause a crack-up of the coalition, or if you think that it’s just one of many different-but-equal ways the coalition is falling apart.Apparently, the EPA did not read Nate Silver says Obama has a 85% (or whatever) chance of re-election. They are preparing to go metal to the pedal right after the election.

You’re right that different factions of the coalition don’t co-exist well. The southern segregationists didn’t like african americans suddenly getting into the coalition. Blue collar workers aren’t going to mix well with the environmentalists.

There is a new oil boom going on in south Texas. The story is that it is due to new technology. However, Texas wasn’t the first offer. I think it was New York where the state rejected an oil boom.

If you’re sitting in your living room, watching TV, and all of a sudden a geyser of oil bursts endless in front of you, what would you do? Would you call your county about the problem? Call the EPA to clean it up? Or would you call an oil company, sell your house, and take your fortunes and buy a mansion? I’d do the latter. I don’t understand why anyone would reject an oil boom. Not to sound mean or anything, but some of the people in the Middle East are of questionable character. Yet, oil boom alone gives them fantastical wealth. Why would anyone reject it? It’s better than gold.

The energy producers may not be welcome in the coalition due to cultural influences they make. During the oil boom and the business boom that followed in Texas in the early twentieth century,  the state became culturally obtuse to the D coalition and Texas didn’t like the New Deal to the extent of becoming a swing state. As western Pennsylvania’s economy becomes more and more energy producing, the state will become more and more R. Due to the energy production in West Virginia, that Democratic state is culturally more Republican now.

The cultural change made by energy production is also shown in Obama’s life story. When Obama’s mother married another man, Lolo Soetero, at first he was not that different culturally from Obama senior. But then Lolo met some Texas oilmen who gave him a job. Lolo moved the family to a much nicer neighborhood and couldn’t understand why his wife refused to go to the company dinner gatherings. Lolo began to like his job and liked making money. His wife apparently didn’t like his change of heart. She left him and had Obama live with his grandparents.

I don’t understand how energy production could have cultural ramifications. Oil is just a commodity like copper or iron. Apparently, it does.

You’re very savvy to notice how the coalition doesn’t always get along. Another conflict is that the African American faction currently doesn’t like the Hispanic faction inside the coalition.

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