CMV: The Green New Deal distracts from climate change, by tying climate change to
left-leaning policy/rhetoric. The bill seems designed to raise republican opposition,
and is a disappointment/insulting for people who believe that climate change is the
#1 issue of our lifetime.
First off, I sort of reject a lot of your premises involving bipartisanship. I don't
think there are enough republicans serious about trying to be bipartisan to actually
pass any meaningful climate change bills with 60+ votes. If dems try to be bipartisan, it's primarily a stalling tactic
by the GOP to ensure that nothing gets done for long enough that they can run on the
"look how ineffective the democrats are".
Related to this, bipartisanship is *not* the only way to get things done. They can
also try to get rid of the filibuster. You can debate whether that's actually a good idea, just like we can debate whether
bipartisanship is actually a good idea, but it is a path forward.
That said, even to get 50 votes, you still need moderate Democrats like Manchin who
are almost certainly unlikely to be interested in the green new deal. So in a sort of roundabout way, I agree with you that it's not realistic right now, although I disagree with your exact reasoning.
But I do disagree that that necessarily makes it a "distraction". On this point, I
think you have to disentangle two things. There's the green new deal itself, which
is notably not an actual bill that's currently under consideration to become law,
and is more a set of goals. What can actually pass should be a practical consideration
when actually legislating, but it's silly to try and argue that people shouldn't even
clearly state *what they actually want*. Anything that actually passes will surely
be a compromise, bit you don't help your cause in a negotiation by dumbing down your
opening offer to try and avoid having to negotiate entirely. You start with what you
want and work from there.
Now, you could make a strong case that there are democratic figures that treat the
green new deal as an all-or-nothing no compromise purity test and use it to attack
other Democrats in ways that are pretty unproductive. But that's a critique of those
Democrats, not the green new deal itself, which is a pretty accurate platform of what
a lot of people on the left genuinely want.
Debate.org
Debatepedia
Pro vs. con view
Topic space view