Political Quotes

“Thank you, Mr. President, and happy new year. The new 116th Congress brings new hope for the Senate to face up to the clear and present danger of climate change. The House of Representatives being in Democratic hands augments that hope. The Senate Republican majority has failed to address climate change. This is no accident. This is the Senate in the Citizens United era. I was here before Citizens United, and for years we saw Senate climate bipartisanship, before Citizens United. After Citizens United, what we see is immensely powerful climate-denying, dark-money front groups for the fossil fuel industry, all likely funded by fossil fuel interests, and we see no Republican Senator willing to cross them. The spending they do in politics--and the more silent threat of spending--is a blockade. It reeks. Here is a case study on how dark and unlimited money play in Senate elections. In 2016, in Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin, three Democratic Senate candidates stood a good early chance of winning Republican-held seats in 2016. All were solid, experienced candidates who had been Senators before. All were ahead in early polling. Then the big influencers came in hard, launching attack ads, in some cases, well more than 1 year before the election. It is a little like strafing the other side's planes while they are still on the airfield. The pile-on of so-called outside group spending against these three candidates came to almost $70 million.…”