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(FISA) Progressive Blogosphere and Majority Interests (Energy)
I have a question that just hit me when I was reading this email update I get from the dark side of our economy
* A new CNN poll shows 73% of Americans support American-made energy exploration;
* A Fox news poll says 76% of Americans support immediately increasing oil drilling in the United States;
* A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll shows 68% of Americans would support increased exploration for oil and natural gas;
* Rasmussen Reports show 67% of Americans support oil drilling off the nation's coasts and 64% think it will lower gas prices;
* A Reuters/Zogby poll shows that 60% of Americans support more U.S. drilling and some 59.6% said they would favor government efforts to boost domestic drilling and refinery construction to lower energy costs; and
* Finally, a Gallup Poll says that 57% of Americans also support drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas now off limits.
How this pertains to FISA: Obama voted "against" the majority interest when he voted for a bill containing retro-active immunity. The argument oft bandied is that a majority of Americans did not support this immunity, so therefore he was out of the main stream and caved to the Bush Klan.
Now that polls show that a majority of Americans support renewed drilling efforts, what happens if Obama were to follow the "majority" argument outlined above? One can only assume that the same people so angry at him for the FISA vote will be equally unhappy for supporting new drilling in previously off-limits areas. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Also a keu illustration why we rearely elect Senators to the Presidency - such service opens you to too many compromises.
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Comments (4)
I wonder if any of those surveys asked respondents whether or not they knew that there are already sites,68 million acres, including on the OCS, that have been open for domestic drilling and exploration for years and the oil companies and the Bush administration has just been sitting on them.
Just to be clear, democrats aren't the ones holding up exploration or drilling in these areas.
July 15, 2008 4:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rec'd.
In celebration of your re-appearance.
July 15, 2008 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Welcome back but you've got the FISA argument a bit wrong. Or, you've oversimplified it. The FISA argument goes more like this:
1) A majority of Democrats opposed the FISA update bill and telecom immunity.
2) A majority of left wing Democrats who considered themselves Obama's base opposed the FISA update bill and telecom immunity.
3) Obama himself opposed the FISA update bill and telecom immunity.
Now, some said, "Obama better not take a stand on this or he'll look weak on terrorism. He needs to compromise here to satisfy the great middle or we risk the election over a single issue."
At this point those of us who opposed the FISA update and telecom immunity said, "Hey, it's not just left wing Democrats who oppose this and it's not just most Democrats, it's most of the country, so there is no risk of alienating the great middle and there is no point in caving to the right at the expense of the left."
That's a little different than what you're saying which is that we cited polls for FISA so now we should be pushing Obama to open up ANWR and the shoreline to oil drillers. We were simply saying that we didn't see Obama opposing FISA as a political risk and we used the poll numbers, rightly or wrongly, as evidence of that.
July 15, 2008 5:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
"68 million acres, including on the OCS, that have been open for domestic drilling and exploration for years and the oil companies and the Bush administration has just been sitting on them."
The Republican retort to this is that no-one knows if there's any oil there - that it costs too much to explore when there might not be - and why would you invest there when you've known areas to exploit, not just explore.
Can anyone refute that? ie do we KNOW there's oil in some of those 68 million acres?
July 15, 2008 7:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
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