Pandering: Biden Unveils Climate Plan That Builds on the Green New Deal

Former Vice President Joe Biden is often described as the lone moderate Democrat running for the nomination in 2020, and in a lot of ways, that description is accurate. Not because Biden is truly some kind of conservative in disguise or a Democrat In Name Only, but because that’s how radical and insane his competition for the nomination is. In today’s Democratic Party, you earn the title of “moderate” simply by not wanting to rebrand the United States as the United Soviet States of America. Keep your policies and plans on this side of Marx, and you too can be labeled a Democratic moderate.

But in a sign that, even now, the radical side of the Democratic Party is infecting the mainstream side, Biden has released his climate change plan. Declaring that “we must take drastic action now to address the climate disaster facing the nation and our world,” Biden promised to deliver on policies that would go well beyond what the Obama administration did. Indeed, the plan uses Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal as a framework, proving that the former vice president is not above pandering to the left in an effort to nab the nomination.

The Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution & Environmental Justice, as it’s called, will come with a price tag of $1.7 trillion over the next decade. Granted, this is chump change compared to AOC’s $90 trillion Green New Deal, but it’s still a significant government investment. Which is to say, a taxpayer investment. Biden acknowledged this distinction, saying that he would pay for the plan by rolling back the Trump tax cuts that have benefited so many workers over the past year.

“More severe storms and droughts, rising sea levels, warming temperatures, shrinking snow cover and ice sheets — it’s already happening,” Biden claimed. “We must take drastic action now to address the climate disaster facing the nation and our world. Science tells us that how we act or fail to act in the next 12 years will determine the very livability of our planet.”

The far-left environmental whackos at the Sunrise Movement were quick to claim credit for Biden’s shift to the Radical Zone.

“Last month, we put the national spotlight on @JoeBiden’s advisers talking about a ‘middle ground’ climate plan that included more fossil fuel development. We forced them to backtrack and today, he put out a comprehensive climate plan that praises the #GreenNewDeal,” boasted the activists.

But then, they also made it clear that Biden’s plan was not quite enough.

“The plan calls for $1.7 trillion in public spending in 10 years to transform our economy and moving to 100% clean energy by 2050,” they wrote. “That’s a start…but unless candidates raise the bar, entire nations will go underwater and millions of people will die.”

That’s the thing about pandering to the crazies. You can never win.