Downton Abbey

At The Daily Beast, Lloyd Green notes that Democratic elites oppose the Keystone pipeline even though most ordinary Americans support it.

[T]he current iteration of liberalism sounds more like reactionary 19th century Toryism, which, in the words of Siegel, attacked further industrial and commercial expansion as “impossibly vulgar.” Indeed, the Tories of that day, many of them big landowners, found an intellectual champion in one Thomas Malthus.

Think aesthetics as politics, and academic credentials as peerage. Think of a latter-day Americanized version of Downton Abbey—where everyone knows his or her place, and our betters look best.
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It’s not that the public is anti-environment. Far from it. Rather, it’s that most Americans are pro-jobs, and the Obamans’ promise of green jobs galore failed to materialize. Back in 2008, Obama pledged to “create 5 million ‘green’ jobs . . . invest $150 billion over 10 years to deploy clean technologies, protect our existing manufacturing base and create millions of new jobs.” To put it mildly, Obama has come up short on each of these metrics. The President is better remembered for the debacle of Solyndra, the solar cell manufacturer that went bankrupt and left the taxpayer holding the bag; a sluggish recovery; declining workforce participation rates; widening inequality, and stock market records that only the one percent can afford to love.

The administration is aware of its shortcomings on green jobs creation. A year ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that it was pulling the plug on its publication “of new data on employment by industry for businesses that produce green goods and services.” While all this may have weighed on Podesta’s mind, it has apparently escaped the notice of die-hard gentry liberals. And make no mistake: They will definitely be kept awake at nights if the GOP controls the Senate come next January, with only themselves to blame.