Are Democrats Splitting Over the State of Keystone?

Morning Jolt . . . with Jim Geraghty November 13, 2014 Morning Jolters, Patrick Brennan pinch-hitting here for Jim and Jack. Enjoy. Are Democrats Splitting Over the State of Keystone? Desperate to win reelection in December’s Senate runoff in Louisiana, Democratic senator Mary Landrieu is pushing to get the Senate to take up a bill approving the Keystone XL pipeline. So is her opponent, Representative Bill Cassidy: The GOP-controlled House plans to take up Mr. Cassidy’s bill [on the pipeline] Thursday, and the Democratic Senate is expected to follow suit as early as Tuesday. . . . “I’m going to do everything in my power here and on the campaign trail, where I am still in a runoff, as you know, to get this project moving forward,” Ms. Landrieu said on the Senate floor. For energy-rich Louisiana, the pipeline has been a top issue in the race. Ms. Landrieu expressed confidence that there are 60 “yes” votes needed to pass the legislation, though independent political analysts have said the number likely falls just short of that because of a lack of support among Democratic senators. Sponsor Senate Democratic leaders “have not been strong Keystone supporters, but the fact of the matter is that we’ve got 15 members of our caucus who are,” Ms. Landrieu said in a press conference later Wednesday. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a Democrat who opposes Keystone XL, signaled earlier Wednesday that he wouldn’t object to bringing the bill up for a vote. Many Democrats oppose the pipeline because they say it promotes the use of fossil fuels and contributes to climate change. “Sen. Landrieu’s bill would set a dangerous precedent by undermining the administration’s authority to ensure the project is in our national interest,” Mr. Whitehouse said in a statement. “That’s why I strongly oppose the Keystone pipeline and will vote against Sen. Landrieu’s legislation. But I also believe that we can have this debate on the merits and will not object to bringing the bill up for a vote. I look forward to a vigorous debate.” Even if the Senate does get to 60 votes, the White House has said the president will veto it, preferring to stick to the endless State Department permitting process that he’s used to slowwalk the pipeline for years. But there’s something going on here: Some Democrats see an opportunity to boost Landrieu’s chances significantly and hold onto a Senate seat for another six years (she’s down in the polls but not out). Meanwhile, they all know that Keystone is substantively insignificant -- the environmental damage done by oil-train crashes in the absence of new pipelines may be greater than any damage done by new drilling the pipeline would encourage. The Times once more or less admitted that the fight is a sham and a fundraising tool. Getting it approved would also fit with Landrieu’s narrative, however inaccurate it is, of someone who has “clout” to defend Louisiana’s oil-and-gas interests. (It would also create union construction jobs, another fissure on the left that’s only going to deepen as Obama’s climate-change ambitions grow: how trades unions feel about environmental regulation.) Harry Reid, however indebted he is to Tom Steyer, has to be tempted by the idea of giving in on it to stay a seat closer to taking back the majority in 2016. And the idea is infuriating the Left: ThinkProgress isn’t even covering the story, while Talking Points Memo is calling Landrieu “Dead Woman Walking.” Here’s Democracy contributor, labor intellectual, and part-time Twitter troll Richard Yeselson: This isn’t the only intra-liberal fight right now: The Left wants Obama’s attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch confirmed during the lame-duck session, which Reid has suggested he doesn’t have time to do. (Watch Rachel Maddow get into a real Berkshire tizzy about it.) Wherever these fights end up, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re just the beginning: Harry Reid is thinking about installing Elizabeth Warren as a member of Senate leadership as a kind of peace offering to the Left. With the battle to succeed Obama and the frustrations of being deep in the minority in Congress approaching over the horizon, this could get fun. Your Thursday Morning Syria-Strategy Scramble CNN: President Barack Obama has asked his national security team for another review of the U.S. policy toward Syria after realizing that ISIS may not be defeated without a political transition in Syria and the removal of President Bashar al-Assad, senior U.S. officials and diplomats tell CNN. The review is a tacit admission that the initial strategy of trying to confront ISIS first in Iraq and then take the group's fighters on in Syria, without also focusing on the removal of al-Assad, was a miscalculation. In just the past week, the White House has convened four meetings of the President's national security team, one of which was chaired by Obama and others that were attended by principals like the secretary of state. These meetings, in the words of one senior official, were "driven to a large degree how our Syria strategy fits into our ISIS strategy." . . . Meanwhile, other sources denied to CNN that Obama has ordered a review, but admit there is concern about some core aspects of the strategy. A senior administration official, responding to a CNN report, says there is an ongoing discussion and "constant process of recalibration." How could we have seen this coming? Well, maybe if we’d recognized that while a lot of the Syrian rebels dislike ISIS and fear the group, they really dislike Assad and really fear him and his allies. Helping them in the fight against only the former was not much of a way to build a competent opposition we liked. It’s even worse than just a sin of omission: The Syrian rebels knew, long before this was basically admitted in Washington, that the most effective fighting forces in Syria are ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, the local al-Qaeda affiliate. (The next most effective fighting forces, excluding the Kurds, are just non-al-Qaeda Islamists who cooperate with al-Qaeda.) So we’re bombing their best chance at unseating Assad, while not bombing Assad. The situation is a mess, but this kind of problem is exactly why assailing Obama for not having a strategy is much more than just a cable-news canard. Incoherence won’t cut it. Another problem: The Obama administration’s coziness with Iran against ISIS (and on other issues . . .) would be undone by taking a harder line against Iranian ally Assad, maybe in dramatic fashion, as two sharp Iraq researchers worry: Shipped to Shore We’ve gotten a few dispatches from the NR crew at sea. John Yoo took issue with Senator Rand Paul’s recent suggestion that the war on ISIS is now illegal and that Republicans like Yoo believe there are no legal limits to the president’s war powers. Yoo thinks it’s a great example of why Paul should continue working in the Senate and is unsuited to the presidency: If Senator Paul wants to be a leader in his party, he can begin by getting his arguments and facts straight. He is wrong to say that there are those in the Republican party, such as myself, who believe the president’s power is unlimited. That is as much a caricature as saying that Senator Paul thinks that Congress’s power is unlimited. The important difference is how, not whether, the Constitution limits presidential power. And Andy McCarthy gives you a taste of what he’s been telling NR cruisers about how Republicans can stop President Obama’s threatened executive amnesty: The National Review cruise has been a joy, but I’ve already had several variations of the following conversation with our wonderful readers: “Andy, how do we stop Obama from doing amnesty?” “You’d have to impeach him.” “Hah! [and some eye-rolling.] No, I mean how do we really stop him?” People desperately want to believe there is a way to stop the president without stopping him from being the president. I wish I could give them better news. As I’ve contended for six years, Obama is guided only by his political calculations, not the law or his oath of office. . . . I am not unrealistic about our political possibilities, but I insist on being clear-eyed about our options. So I will repeat the point that I wrote Faithless Execution to make. Our constitutional system assumes impeachment is a serious, viable check on executive maladministration — in some egregious instances, it is the only check.  And lastly, NR’s editors reject, again, Republican leadership’s plan to pass a long-term budget during the lame-duck session, which would fund the government for the rest of the year on terms Harry Reid agrees to and strip Republicans of all power-of-the-purse leverage. Piketty’s Pettiness You may not miss discussion of Thomas Piketty’s liberal economics bible, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, from earlier this year, but it’s just been named the Financial Times’ Business Book of the Year, a big honor especially considering that same paper took issue with a lot of Piketty’s methodology. Yet economist and NR contributor Tino Sanandaji has discovered more problems with Piketty’s empirical work: His portrayal of the U.S. megarich as all salaried CEOs and privileged heirs is massively incorrect. Tino’s writing is detailed but engaging and highly accessible. It’s hard to find an excuse for this mistake other than a (typically French) ideological bias against entrepreneurs and innovators, who make up a great deal of America’s top 0.1 percent, Tino argues. ADDENDA: Slate has a massive map showing what immigrant populations looked like in each state in 1903. Pennsylvania had more Magyars than you’d think . . .   From Our Sponsor: Is Faith Still Important? 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