During the day yesterday, leading up to day 2 of the Lamest Show on Earth (The 2020 Democratic National Convention) and after I had completed 90% of Upending the Election Part I: The Climate Difference, a bomb dropped:
This news does not change the conclusions in my article at all, for three reasons:
The Democratic National Committee and the Biden campaign are different entities
The DNC platform and the Biden platform are different platforms
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris do not have the same relationship with the fossil fuel industries as does the DNC
What this means is that the DNC flip-flopping on fossil fuel subsidies does not mean that the Joe Biden campaign has done the same thing. They are independent, and their platform is independent.
The DNC is the central committee of the Party itself, run by Obama-appointed Tom Perez. The DNC platform is formally adopted by the Democratic National Committee. The DNC, as Sludge details in its article, is heavily populated with fossil fuel industry lobbyists appointed by Perez (who might just be one of the evilest fucks in the American political firmament). It is not, at all, a democratic process. It was the DNC Environment and Climate Crisis Council that crafted the draft platform with the fossil fuel subsidy ban. That draft was subject to approval by the DNC Platform Committee. It was the DNC itself that removed the ban.
The DNC action does not directly impact the Biden campaign platform at all. The Biden campaign will make its own decision. It is not accurate to say that Joe Biden will not campaign on a ban of fossil fuel subsidies because the DNC has removed that from its platform. I will be keeping an eye on this to see what Biden does. But both Biden and Harris campaigned on such a ban in the primary season.
As detailed in The Climate Difference, Biden has never been a major recipient of fossil fuel industry money. The industry has far less financial pull with the Biden campaign than does the environmental movement, which has donated to his campaign in the millions and is one of the top 15 sectors in donations. While Tom Perez packed the DNC with fossil fuel lobbyists, the industry is far less represented in the Biden campaign.
It is not yet Joe Biden’s Democratic Party. It is still the Obama/Clinton Democratic Party. It will not become Biden’s Party until after he wins the Presidency (if he wins the Presidency). It is common for presidential campaigns to ignore the party platform and simply run on their own. The platforms get harmonized after the election when the party falls into line with a victorious candidate. While the DNC action is a negative indicator of what we can expect to see from a Biden Administration with regard to fossil fuels, it is not at all determinative, and it does not impact the analysis put forward in The Climate Difference.