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Westneat: A blindsided Inslee comes off a bit butt-hurt
By Danny Westneat
Published: May 5, 2019, 6:01am
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I’m a fan, in theory, of the idea of Jay Inslee running for president. Not because I expect the actual Jay Inslee to ever be president. But I like that he’s taken up the cause of a perennially ignored issue, climate change.
Awkward, then, that he was just beaten out of the gate on his sole reason for political being by one of the airier candidates in the field. Beto O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman whose longshot candidacy has felt more like therapy for a midlife crisis, blindsided the field Monday by releasing a serious, 2,500-word policy plan for tackling global warming in the coming decades.
It’s “the most wide-ranging climate plan debuted by any Democratic presidential candidate in the 2020 race,” exclaimed The Atlantic Monthly magazine.
OK, you may be saying, so what? It’s just a plan. But what happened next was telling. Instead of saying “great, just as I’d hoped, now we’re talking climate,” Inslee instead attacked. And hit himself.
“We will not defeat climate change with empty rhetoric, borrowed rhetoric or by taking fossil-fuel money,” the Inslee campaign huffed.
Inslee’s people were upset that O’Rourke had cribbed one of Inslee’s best climate lines. But as Seattle Times reporter Jim Brunner found out, Inslee himself stole that line years ago — from none other than former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn.
Can’t all you climate-change activists just get along?
Seriously, the Inslee campaign, which officially got going two months ago, already feels on its heels. He has yet to put forward a climate-change plan of his own, perhaps because of his struggles as Washington governor in passing either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade emission scheme. And now he’s allowed O’Rourke to bigfoot him on his signature issue.
Off to slow start
Inslee’s early campaign is also pretty unorthodox, almost like he has no intention of ever trying to get votes. He’s got next to no staff or presence yet in any of the early primary states.
A poll released Tuesday out of New Hampshire, which votes second after Iowa, suggests his climate-only message hasn’t yet excited any voters. I mean that “any” literally. The Boston Globe surveyed 800 voters, naming 24 potential Democratic candidates, and Inslee was one of only two to get zero takers — not a single vote.
True, it’s early. The governor did just have a great legislative session, so he could bounce back (or rather, bounce at all). But in politics it can get late in a hurry. The Inslee camp is supposed to roll out more concrete climate ideas soon. It better be better than Beto, is all I have to say. Or what’s the point?
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