Democratic litmus test

No Political Contributions from fossil fuel companies!

My suggestion: the "Slaughterhouse Rule."

The Slaughterhouse Rule is simple. If one disapproves of slaughterhouses, and thinks them disgusting or cruel, then don't eat meat. 

And if one eats meat, one needs morally to own the reality of slaughterhouses.

No funding from fossil fuel companies.

Democrats are getting accustomed to two related ideas. One is a litmus test for candidates: do not accept contributions from fossil fuel companies. The other is that organizations that consider themselves "good," e.g. university endowments, should divest from fossil fuel companies.

This is hypocritical, and it will backfire on Democrats. It already is.

We recognize hypocrisy in others, as when Republicans demand a balanced budget from Obama and then pass the 2017 tax act that creates a trillion dollar deficit. Democrats can be hypocrites, too, and people notice.

Democrats drive cars. They heat their homes. They use electricity. Almost everyone uses petroleum in multiple ways, and the 19th century alternative was worse: whale oil. The reality in America is that cars (and buses and subways) are mostly powered with fossil fuels. All-electric cars, too, even in the Pacific Northwest, because even electric utilities with a big hydro plants have fossil fuels within the mix.  

Social media attack on Beto

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a media star. She shines brilliantly and says interesting, provocative things, and says them with sass. She infuriates Republicans, which thrills Democrats. She also sets standards for Democrats, and if one is crossways with AOC one may be eliminated from consideration as the Democratic nominee. Bernie Sanders supporters are flooding social media with criticism of Beto O'Rourke. He is from Texas. He got money from fossil fuel producers. Shame!

OAC represents part of the Bronx and Queens. It is cheap virtue for an officeholder representing her urban district to speak about the sins of fossil fuel drilling-fracking-mining-refining. That takes place far away, yet there are cars and buses and streetlights in New York. How can that be? Someone drilled and fracked and mined to service the urban market. She needs to own that. 

Democrats generally need to own that.

Students and alumni from universities with big endowments have been organizing to pressure the university to divest. I have witnessed this at Harvard. Harvard is frigid in its five month winter. It heats with oil. The utility servicing Harvard gets 80% of its energy from coal--they call it "scrubbed coal"--and the utility hopes to reduce it to 70% by 2025. Democrats use the energy, but signal that we disapprove of the people who provide it to us.

Harvard Students 

Neither Democrats nor universities are in any position to cast the first stone, but the litmus test talk shows how clueless Democrats can be about the urban-rural divide in American politics, and why so much of heartland America votes red. Urban Democratic politicians think like consumers, not producers. They feel comfortable casting shame on producers, shame which inevitably spill over to the people who work for those companies, people in those congressional districts that vote red. 

It is too easy to scold farmers for using pesticides, oil companies for drilling, coal companies for mining, wood producers for cutting trees--and then go out and eat food, drive cars, illuminate their homes, and use toilet paper. 

We all can have consistency and integrity as consumers. If we don’t like fossil fuels, don’t use them.

Otherwise it is just hollow virtue signaling. Shame on my drug dealer!  No one like a hypocritical scold.