Did cap-and-trade really cost the Democrats votes?
I blogged last week about two high profile Congress races where voters seemed to have been turned off by the fact that the Democratic incumbent had voted for the cap-and-trade bill. Both Rick Boucher and Tom Perriello seemed to have been directly hurt by their vote for Waxman-Markey.
Sure enough, both were voted out on Tuesday night. And here is a full list, courtesy of Politico, of the other defeated Dems who voted for cap-and-trade:
US energy policy after the Republican victories: compromise or conflict?
When President Obama spoke about his new-found spirit of compromise after the Democratic party’s “shellacking” in the midterm elections, energy policy was one of the areas where he suggested Democrats and Republicans might be able to work together. The deep partisan divide over climate policy might make that seem a ridiculously hopeful aspiration, but in fact there are some areas of energy policy where the two parties ought to be able to find common ground.
Translating that into effective legislation, however, will be something else again.
Cap-and-trade’s impact on the midterms
With just a week to go until the US midterms, the narrative seems to have been set: the Republicans are going to do well because of anger at the Obama administration towards two things in particular: a lack of jobs and the healthcare bill.
But there may be another element at play which is feeding into this heady mix: the cap-and-trade bill.
Yesterday, the Journal published an interesting article about the way in which Democratic Congressman Rick Boucher’s support for the bill is losing him votes in his native Virginia. Apparently locals are angry that Boucher voted for a bill that they regard as anti-coal.
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