Second-term Washington Gov. Jay Inslee officially announced his presidential candidacy Friday, and he’s running on a platform that sounds like it was ripped from the since-deleted, much-maligned FAQ for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal.”
In a presidential announcement video released Friday, Inslee issues some rather familiar doom-and-gloom warnings as well as some pie-in-the-sky promises.
“We’re the first generation to feel the sting of climate change, and we’re the last that can do something about it,” the governor says ominously as apocalyptic images play in the background, which the viewer is clearly supposed to believe are the grim results of global warming.
“We went to the moon and created technologies that have changed the world,” he continues. “Our country’s next mission must be to rise up to the most urgent challenge of our time: defeating climate change. This crisis isn’t just a chart or graph anymore. The impacts are being felt everywhere.”
“We have an opportunity to transform our economy, run on 100 percent clean energy, that will bring millions of good paying jobs to every community across America, and create a more just future for everyone,” Insleee proclaims.
Inslee is a former congressman who was elected governor in 2012 and has another two years in office after winning his second election in 2016. Calling his bid a “longshot campaign,” The Seattle Times provides some highlights of Inslee’s progressive and largely “climate-focused” political career:
As governor, Inslee generally has pursued a liberal agenda, backing minimum-wage increases, higher taxes on the wealthy and businesses, raises for teachers and state government employees and declaring a moratorium on the death penalty. He also backed a record-setting, $8.7 billion tax-break deal to lure Boeing’s 777 plant and angered labor leaders by pressuring the Machinists union to approve a contract that ended workers’ defined-benefit pension plan.
He also has pushed an ambitious climate agenda, with mixed results, failing to persuade lawmakers and voters to adopt pollution fees on carbon emissions, but boosting electric-car infrastructure and creating a clean-energy fund that has poured millions into green projects. Despite Inslee’s agenda, greenhouse emissions in Washington have continued to rise, missing near-term reduction goals set in state law.
The Times reports that Democratic lawmakers in Washington are currently “making a big push” to try to ram through Inslee’s climate change agenda, many of the proposals of which have been stalled for “years.” Just a day before his announcement, the State Senate was debating his radical request to phase out the use of fossil fuels at Washington utlities, the paper notes.
Inslee, 68, has also proven that he’s willing to take on Trump on the national stage, opposing the president on rolling back business-stifling environmental regulations, arming teachers to better protect students, and the administration’s so-called “Muslim ban.”
The Democratic governor’s “green” candidacy shares much in common with AOC’s “Green New Deal,” which sets as its goals a massive overhaul of the economy, which will include 100% use of renewable energy in ten years, net-zero emissions, massive infrastructure projects — including high-speed rails all over the country and the “greening” of all buildings — Medicare-for-All, and living wage jobs for every American.
Related: Ocasio-Cortez Can’t Understand Ivanka’s Problem With ‘Green New Deal’