Went out for a long ski in the woods this morning, and thought about why the @nytimes editorial rankled me so much. It had nothing to do with their picks, and everything to do with the depiction of @klobuchar as 'realist' and @SenWarren as 'radical.' (i.e., 'unrealistic')
In the field I know best, climate change, the 'adversary' is physics. Because we have waited (thanks to the fossil fuel industry) so long to get started, physics leaves us no choice but to move very swiftly. Say, at the speed envisioned by people like @warren or @SenSanders
That doesn't make her radical--it makes her far more realistic, in any meaningful sense of the word, than those who think we still have room for politically easier, less robust approaches. That's not 'realism,' that's the opposite: a kind of pleasant fantasy
This is why Klobuchar calls natural gas a 'transitional fuel' and @SenWarren opposes fracking. It's politically much easier to just go along--but the science now makes clear that fracked gas contributes to climate chaos pretty much like coal.
Of course I'd vote and volunteer for @klobuchar were she the nominee--I've been running the #demunitytwitterproject, and she was the first candidate I talked about. But making her the 'realist' here is incorrect and divisive--it shades the truth about where we stand.
