By Jim Geraghty
Friday, October 23, 2020
This week felt like a month. On the menu today: After
President Trump asked, “Would you close down the oil industry?” Biden
responded, “I have a transition from the old industry, yes,” and now Biden’s
campaign insists the candidate didn’t mean it. Biden also insisted that he
“never said I oppose fracking,” which is contradicted by many of Biden’s past
statements. It was that kind of a debate, wrapping up that kind of a week.
Also, Operation Warp Speed’s chief adviser, Dr. Moncef Slaoui, offers a really
encouraging timeline for vaccine distribution.
Joe Biden: ‘I Have a Transition from the Old
[Oil] Industry, Yes’
After the catastrophic failure of the much-hyped
“Battleground Texas” project by Democrats in 2014, Lone Star State Republicans
could be forgiven for thinking their opposition would never get their act
together.
The first tiny rattle in the engine came in 2016, when
Donald Trump won the state by “only” nine percentage points. Because we’re
talking about such a huge state, that amounts to more than 800,000 votes. But
it was a somewhat smaller margin than preceding cycles. Mitt Romney had won the
state by 1.2 million votes, and John McCain won by about 950,000 votes.
And then in 2018, Beto O’Rourke came respectably close in
the Senate race against Ted Cruz, Republicans swept all the statewide offices
again, but incumbents who usually won by wide margins, like Lieutenant Governor
Dan Patrick and state attorney general Ken Paxton, won by just a handful of
percentage points. Democrats picked up two U.S. House seats, two state senate
seats, and a dozen state House seats. Suddenly the Democrats’ dreams of winning
the state were unlikely, but no longer laughable.
Heading into 2020, some Democrats started to believe that
this was the year. A few polls here and there put Joe Biden ahead in Texas, and
when Trump led, it was rarely by more than four or five points. Trump largely
alienates suburbanites, and Texas has a lot of suburbs. Those allegedly boring
college-educated minivan-driving soccer moms and white-collar dads used to be
the bread and butter of the Republican Party. Trump had started to enjoy better
polls, and the formula at FiveThirtyEight suggested Biden’s chances had
never been better than one in three.
And then during last night’s debate, Joe Biden said this:
TRUMP: Would you close down the oil
industry?
BIDEN: By the way, I have a
transition from the old industry, yes.
TRUMP: Oh, that’s a big statement.
BIDEN: I will transition. It is a
big statement.
TRUMP: That’s a big statement.
BIDEN: Because I would stop.
KRISTEN WELKER: Why would you do
that?
BIDEN: Because the oil industry
pollutes, significantly.
TRUMP: Oh, I see. Okay.
BIDEN: Here’s the deal-
TRUMP: That’s a big statement.
The Biden campaign is insisting Biden only meant he would
transition away from federal subsidies to the oil industry, not away from the
use of oil entirely. In their defense, after the above exchange, Biden did
focus on “subsidies,” but only after saying, “it has to be replaced by
renewable energy over time.”
BIDEN: Well, if you let me finish
the statement, because it has to be replaced by renewable energy over time,
over time, and I’d stopped giving to the oil industry, I’d stop giving them
federal subsidies. You won’t get federal subsidies to the gas, oh, excuse me to
solar and wind.
TRUMP: Yeah.
BIDEN: Why are we giving it to oil
industry?
When Biden says “subsidies,” you may be picturing the
U.S. government handing a check to oil companies. What he means are provisions
in the tax code that allow companies to deduct a majority of the costs incurred
from drilling new wells domestically, percentage depletion that works akin to
depreciation in assets, tax credits for reducing carbon emissions, and a 2004
reduction in the corporate tax rate. When Biden says he’s going to “stop giving
them federal subsidies,” what he means is that he wants to repeal previous
changes to the tax code that were designed to increase domestic energy
production.
Biden kept going, making comments that indicate he wants
the oil industry to disappear in the next 15 years: “He takes everything out of
context, but the point is, look, we have to move toward net zero emissions. The
first place to do that by the year 2035 is in energy production, by 2050
totally.”
It will be quite difficult for any Democrat to win the
state of Texas while calling for the entire U.S. oil industry to be phased out
within a decade and a half. The pandemic has generated record layoffs, but the
industry still employs 162,000 Texans in drilling and oil-field services, and
those jobs pay 40 percent more than the median job.
The desire to phase out the oil industry is also not
likely to be a winner in certain corners of Pennsylvania, where, as of 2019,
nearly 18,000 people are employed in oil and petroleum production.
The related topic of fracking returned, and Biden
insisted that not only does he not want to ban fracking, but that he never said
he opposed fracking, which is a lie:
BIDEN: I never said I oppose
fracking.
TRUMP: You said it on tape.
BIDEN: Show the tape, put it on
your website.
TRUMP: I’ll put it on.
BIDEN: Put it on the website. The
fact of the matter is he’s flat lying.
WELKER: Would you rule out about
banning fracking?
BIDEN: I do rule out banning
fracking because the answer we need, we need other industries to transition, to
get to ultimately a complete zero emissions by 2025. What I will do with
fracking over time is make sure that we can capture the emissions from the
fracking, capture the emissions from gas. We can do that and we can do that by
investing money in doing it, but it’s a transition to that.
In the July 2019 debate, Biden was asked about fracking
by CNN’s Dana Bash:
BASH: Thank you, Mr. Vice
President. Just to clarify, would there be any place for fossil fuels,
including coal and fracking, in a Biden administration?
BIDEN: No, we would — we would work
it out. [Biden makes a hand gesture, suggesting pushing something out or
away.] We would make sure it’s eliminated and no more subsidies for either one
of those, either — any fossil fuel.
In Biden’s final debate with Bernie Sanders in March, the
former vice president said:
SANDERS: I’m talking about stopping
fracking, as soon as we possibly can. I’m talking about telling the fossil fuel
industry that they are going to stop destroying this planet. No ifs, buts and
maybes about it. I’m talking about speaking-
BIDEN: So am I.
And then later in that debate:
SANDERS: You cannot continue, as I
understand Joe believes, to continue fracking, correct me if I’m wrong. What we
need to do right now is bringing the world together, tell the fossil fuel
industry that we are going to move aggressively to win solar, sustainable
energies and energy efficiency.
TAPPER: Thank you, senator.
BIDEN: No more, no new fracking.
Between this and the various times Biden has told
environmentalist protesters or supporters that he wants to “end fossil fuels,”
“get rid of fossil fuels,” “phase out fossil fuel production,” and “ban fossil
fuel exports,” there is a pattern that whenever Biden is challenged on being
insufficiently committed to the green agenda, he insists he agrees with his
critic. And then when called out for those comments, Biden insists he never
said what he said.
Joe Biden’s true energy policy is that he agrees with
whomever is in front of him, whether it’s a hardcore green activist or an
oil-field worker who wants to keep making good wages to support his family. Biden
wants it both ways because he wants both votes, and he is adamant that no
decision he reaches will ever disappoint either side. If he is elected, energy
policy in the Biden administration would be a jump ball, depending upon who
gets appointed to those key positions of Secretary of Energy, administrator of
the Environmental Protection Agency, the commissioners on the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission, etc.
Also note that Kamala Harris, who would take over if
Biden could not complete his term, completely supports banning fracking,
propose the “cooperative managed decline of fossil fuel production,” and backs
the Green New Deal.
Apocalyptic Joe
I do worry that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic will get
worse as the winter months arrive. People will spend more time indoors,
increasing their close contact, and if infected, spread it to others in their
household. People are going to have a tough time resisting getting together
with relatives for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The good news is that your odds of surviving an infection
are better than ever: “Two new peer-reviewed studies are showing a sharp drop
in mortality among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The drop is seen in all
groups, including older patients and those with underlying conditions,
suggesting that physicians are getting better at helping patients survive their
illness.”
Meanwhile, Operation Warp Speed’s chief adviser, Dr.
Moncef Slaoui, told ABC News this week that “It’s not a certainty, but the plan
— and I feel pretty confident — should make it such that by June, everybody
could have been immunized in the U.S.” What’s more, “Moderna and Pfizer are
likely to be the first to apply for emergency use authorization by the Food and
Drug Administration, possibly as soon as November or December. If a vaccine is
authorized before the end of the year, Slaoui said approximately 20 to 40
million doses of it will be stockpiled and ready for distribution for a limited
population.”
First doses for the most vulnerable by the end of the
year, and everybody’s safe by June. The end is in sight, people. Between the
improved treatments and the pace of vaccine development, we’re almost through
with this thing; we just need to be smart and careful for the next few months.
But last night, Biden went well beyond any measure of
reasonable wariness and declared, “The expectation is we’ll have another
200,000 Americans dead between now and the end of the year.” As of last night,
there were 70 days left in this year. That comes out to 2,857 deaths per day,
every day, from now until January 1. Our daily rate of deaths has been around
1,000 — generally below it — since late August. If we lost 900 souls a day for
the rest of the year, that would add up to 63,000 additional deaths.
The truth is bad enough, there’s no need for Biden to
veer into the dire scaremongering. (Right now in the comments section, some
regular readers are stunned that I, of all writers, could find someone else’s
assessment to be fearmongering.)
ADDENDUM: My colleagues David Harsanyi and Kyle Smith
have more on some really glaring lies by Biden — “not one person with private
insurance would lose their health insurance under my plan, or did they under
Obamacare,” “there is no evidence that when you raise the minimum wage,
businesses go out of business” — and it overall reinforces what Democrats would
prefer to not notice. Biden just blurts out the first thing that comes to mind,
regardless of its accuracy, as much as Trump does, and either can’t remember or
doesn’t care what the actual truth is.
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