Democratic Party "groups" — the environmental, civil rights, and clean energy organizations that have taken over the party in the last five years — make endorsements for Congress and the Senate every two years. To make the best choice, they send out candidate questionnaires to ascertain who is worthy of their imprimatur.
Matthew Yglesias got hold of one of those questionnaires, and it surprised and depressed him. In his Slow Boring substack space, Yglesias notes that "looking at the L.C.V. questionnaire, it’s clear that for this particular group, at least, nothing has changed since the fall election."
He was looking at the questionnaire from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), a group that has been radicalized over the last decade in both its policy and politics.
Indeed, these groups supply most of the energy, money, and volunteers who work to get Democrats elected to Congress and the Senate. If you're not on board with their radical agenda, or at least give lip service to it, you are sailor out of luck (SOL).
Yglesias couldn't believe that after the 2024 debacle for Democrats, these party-controlling groups haven't changed their radical tune at all. If anything, they've doubled down.
The LCV used to be a healthy, bipartisan organization after it was founded in 1970. "Two decades ago, approximately 20% of their endorsements were for Republicans; in recent years (including 2024 and 2025-2026 cycles), the vast majority of their endorsed candidates have been Democrats," reports the New York Times.
It's not only that the LCV has abandoned any semblance of a balanced approach to the energy question. The Trump approach of "all of the above" (with a reduced emphasis on some renewables) will eventually bring the cost of gasoline and electricity down or slow the increases.
The problem is that LCV is actually trying to force Democratic candidates to adopt a "kill the oil industry" posture. The questionnaire is pretty clear on that.
They want members of Congress to “support a transition to 100 percent clean electricity by 2035,” with clean defined as wind, solar, and advanced geothermal (no nuclear) as an interim step toward net zero emissions. Net zero to them means that “carbon sequestration using natural climate solutions” is allowed, but presumably ideas like direct air capture or rock weathering would not be.
So are they encouraging a focus on speeding up renewables deployment? Not really. They want politicians to “oppose any legislative and administrative efforts to undermine or sidestep NEPA” — the National Environmental Policy Act — and, in fact, to support an environmental justice bill that would create “new environmental review requirements.”
After all the dozens and dozens of articles and books about how solar panels and batteries are cheaper than ever, and getting cheaper all the time, and how the important thing now is to facilitate the deployment of this amazing, new clean technology, there’s basically nothing in L.C.V.’s list of asks that would actually facilitate the deployment of clean energy.
Yes, please. Run on a platform that transitions the United States to "100% clean electricity by 2035." Not only would it destroy the economy, but people would freeze to death, farmers couldn't run their tractors, autos would be abandoned on highways, and there would be no buses, no rail, no nothing.
It's crazy-stupid. And if the Democrats run on a platform that includes that, as well as other radical ideas on gender, education, Israel hate, and other hot-button issues, Republicans are going to win a lot of seats they have no business winning.
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The LCV wants to "phase out" the production of gasoline cars, presumably before 2035. The issue polls terribly (34-65), and organized labor would have a fit of apoplexy.
So why is the LCV still asking for the ban?
But instead of deciding that they’re going to stop asking for this, they bury the ask in jargon about how “the Biden administration’s EPA set strong cleaner-cars-and-trucks standards, and granted Clean Air Act waivers for states to implement the Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II), Heavy-Duty Vehicle Omnibus (HDO), and Advanced Clean Truck (ACT) rules” and we should go back to that. But what they’re saying here is that they want to pull regulatory levers to make it illegal to produce conventional cars and trucks, because “without both federal incentives and rules, we will not reach our goal of eliminating emissions from all new cars and trucks by 2035.”
Of course, L.C.V. also wants to show that they care about racial justice. Their way of doing that is to tout “the Justice40 initiative, which directed 40 percent of the benefits of infrastructure and climate investments to environmental justice communities.”
American Spectator founder and editor R. Emmet Tyrell once called liberalism a "riot of conceits." In truth, these radical left groups can't see the contradictions and incoherence in their positions.
The American voter can.
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