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In New York Leads America off an Energy Cliff (op-ed, May 12), Claudia Tenney shows the folly of the Democrats plans to move to wind and solar as soon as possible, no matter the risks. Supposedly, we all must use electric cars, even though our electric grid relies mostly on coal and other nonrenewable sources. We also must halt natural-gas pipelines, like President Biden did with Keystone XL, yet now the president also wants Middle Eastern countries to increase the supply of their fuels, even though those countries dont have the environmental protections that our oil and gas producers must maintain.

The mostly likely climate-change scenario for 2100, per the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is for temperatures to change by a few degreesvery manageable with human intervention and technology, as Bjorn Lomborg and others have written in this paper. But can we even predict what will happen in 80 years? Not reliably. Will we increase our energy dependence on the Middle East, China and Russia? Somehow, I think that might not end well.

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Democrats Tie Themselves In Knots on Energy Policy - The Wall Street Journal

But the new law sought to rein in their use, capping the number of drop boxes at one per 100,000 registered voters in a county which could cut the amount of drop boxes in urban areas by as much as two-thirds and limiting their availability to office hours. The law did, however, codify drop boxes as an option for voters into state election law.

Overall turnout for absentee voting has been difficult to parse so far.

During the 2020 election, when voters turned en masse to mail ballots because of the pandemic, more than 1.1 million Georgians voted by mail in the primary, and in 2018, fewer than 30,000 voted absentee. This year, more than 61,000 voted absentee in the primary, an increase over 2018 but less than 10 percent of the 2020 totals.

Voters in primaries also tend to be more motivated and engaged than general-election voters, and they are more likely to be aware of new rules and willing to work through them to cast ballots.

The people who are highly engaged are the people who are voting in primaries, and those highly engaged people are often most equipped to get around any sort of change to voting, said Michael McDonald, a voter turnout expert at the University of Florida.

Gov. Brian Kemp, campaigning in the final days of his Republican primary race for governor, condemned Democrats for their criticism of the law, suggesting that their claims that it was suppressive were hyperbolic and politically motivated.

Why are voting rights an issue now? In 2020, as a result of the pandemic, millions embraced voting early in person or by mail, especially among Democrats. Spurred on by Donald Trumps false claimsabout mail ballots in hopes of overturning the election, the G.O.P. has pursued a host of new voting restrictions.

Why are these legislative efforts important? The Republican push to tighten voting rules has fueled doubts about the integrity of the democratic process in the U.S. Many of the restrictions are likely to affect voters of color disproportionately.

Which states have changed their voting laws? Nineteen states passed 34 lawsrestricting voting in 2021. Some of the most significant legislation was enacted in battleground states like Texas, Georgiaand Florida.Republican lawmakers are planning a new wave of election laws in 2022.

Will these new laws swing elections? Maybe. Maybe not. Some laws will make voting more difficult for certain groups, cause confusion or create longer wait times at polling places. But the new restrictions could backfire on Republicans, especially in rural areas that once preferred to vote by mail.

They dont want to know what the truth is, he told supporters on Saturday in Watkinsville, Ga. They dont care what the truth is. They want to talk about the narrative that drives their base and helps their political polling.

Mr. Kemp and other Georgia Republicans have often brushed aside Democratic criticisms of the new law, noting that some provisions in fact allow greater voting access than in some blue states. Georgias new law requires a minimum of 17 days of early voting, with a county-level option for two more days through Sunday voting. New York and New Jersey, by contrast, offer nine days of early voting.

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Early Voting Surges as Georgia Watches for Impact of Election Law - The New York Times

First, will Democrats allow people to practice their faith even if some tenets of that faith conflict with progressive principles? For example, two bills in Congress demonstrate that clash. They both would amend federal civil rights law to require fair treatment of L.G.B.T.Q. people in housing, employment and other realms of life. One, the Fairness for All Act, would allow for substantial exceptions for religious institutions. A Catholic hospital, say, wouldnt be compelled to offer gender transition surgeries. The other, the Equality Act, would override existing law that prevents the federal government from substantially burdening individuals exercise of religion without a compelling government interest.

Right now, Democrats generally support the latter bill and oppose the former. But supporting the Fairness for All Act, which seeks to fight discrimination while leaving space for religious freedom, would send a strong signal to millions of wavering believers, and it would be good for America.

Second, will Democrats stand up to the more radical cultural elements in their own coalition? Jonathan Rauch was an early champion of gay and lesbian rights. In an article in American Purpose, he notes that one wing of the movement saw gay rights as not a left-wing issue but a matter of human dignity. A more radical wing celebrated cultural transgression and disdained bourgeois morality. Ultimately, the gay rights movement triumphed in the court of public opinion when the nonradicals won and it became attached to the two essential bourgeois institutions marriage and the military.

Rauch argues that, similarly, the transgender rights movement has become entangled with ideas that are extraneous to the cause of transgender rights. Ideas like: Both gender and sex are chosen identities and denying or disputing that belief amounts is violence. Democrats would make great strides if they could champion transgender rights while not insisting upon these extraneous moral assertions that many people reject.

The third question is, will Democrats realize that both moral traditions need each other? As usual, politics is a competition between partial truths. The moral freedom ethos, like liberalism generally, is wonderful in many respects, but liberal societies need nonliberal institutions if they are to thrive.

America needs institutions built on the you are not your own ethos to create social bonds that are more permanent than individual choice. It needs that ethos to counter the me-centric, narcissistic tendencies in our culture. It needs that ethos to preserve a sense of the sacred, the idea that there are some truths so transcendentally right that they are absolutely true in all circumstances. It needs that ethos in order to pass along the sort of moral sensibilities that one finds in, say, Abraham Lincolns Second Inaugural Address that people and nations have to pay for the wages of sin, that charity toward all is the right posture, that firmness in keeping with the right always has to be accompanied by humility about how much we can ever see of the right.

Finally, we need this ethos, because morality is not only an individual thing; its something between people that binds us together. Even individualistic progressives say it takes a village to raise a child, but the village needs to have a shared moral sense of how to raise it.

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Opinion | How Democrats Can Win the Morality Wars - The New York Times

The Democratic Party has a lot of problems right now. Many of these problems lie outside its control: A global wave of inflation and continuing waves of coronavirus infection have prevented the recovery Joe Biden imagined when he took office last year, and the partys slender majority gives it very narrow room to maneuver legislation through Congress.

That said, Democrats still have some room to improve their situation. They retain their congressional majority until January, and Joe Manchin has expressed his willingness to negotiate a bill to raise taxes on the rich and fund at least some new programs, including support for green energy. And yet their main response to a looming political and policy catastrophe appears to be fatalistic acceptance.

The Manchin situation is exceptionally strange. Manchin has outlined in public the contours of a deal he would accept, while privately conveying to fellow Democrats that he expects them to write a bill that meets his terms. This is an extremely counterproductive and maddening way to operate. At the same time, Democrats need to accept the world as it is and try to make the deal.

Instead, they seem to be shrugging their shoulders. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is trying to negotiate with Manchin, which is good, but everybody else seems indifferent or resigned to failure. Politico reports that Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin laughed incredulously when asked about a last-gasp party-line bill and said:

I put so much time into immigration on reconciliation. It took a year of my legislative life. I have nothing to show for it. I wish Chuck well on reconciliation. Im going to focus my legislative efforts in the 60-vote world.

Homer Simpson once told Bart, Son, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try. The point of that line was supposed to be that it was terrible advice, but Durbin appears to be following that idea in earnest. He worked really hard on some provisions in Build Back Better that any clear analysis would have shown from the outset never stood a serious chance of enactment. And now hes tired of working and just wants to give up.

Ive seen progressives express a similar exasperation. When confronted with the idea of making a deal with Manchin, they reflexively insist he cant be bargained with. And maybe not! But the chances of a deal are not zero. There is very little to lose by trying. Even a failed effort would at least demonstrate they exhausted every possible avenue.

A similar passivity comes through in some reporting via Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell. Trying to figure out why the administration has failed to reverse the Trump tariffs, a step that would at least partially bring down prices and alleviate the worst economic threat they face, she finds:

From my own conversations with senior officials, the answer seems to involve perceived short-term political liabilities. Politicos worried about how Republicans might portray measures such as tariff repeal (soft on China!). Democrats also feared alienating important constituencies, such as organized labor.

The Biden administration has done an enormous amount for organized labor. Biden has steered the National Labor Relations Board in a staunchly pro-organizing direction while giving a historic public endorsement to new organizing drives at Amazon and Starbucks. These are morally and strategically correct decisions. But tariffs are an area in which the narrow interests of labor diverge from the national interest. Allowing the fear that a couple unions will complain despite Bidens overall record of support for labor to prevent concrete steps to alleviate a crisis is utterly self-defeating.

The Biden administration and Democrats in Congress have been highly solicitous of the demands of their constituent interest groups. But now they are headed into a disaster. They are going to lose control of Congress without having even passed any significant social reforms. They may well be headed into a recession. An increasingly dangerous Republican Party may win control of the government without even needing to subvert the election.

None of the options are great, but simply coasting into November as if the plan might still work out is foolhardy. Democrats should instead be acting as if their party is on a course for disaster, because it is.

Irregular musings from the center left.

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Is the Democratic Party Giving Up Already? - New York Magazine

Elon Musk moved to Texas and now appears to embrace the politics of the Republic Party and Texas Governor Greg Abbott

In the weeks since Tesla CEO Elon Musk began his gambit to acquire Twitter, hes grown comfortable voicing partisan political viewsusually on the social media platform he covetsincluding insults aimed at California, President Joe Biden and the libs. Musk now plans to vote Republican, he saysjoining a party that derided him in the past as a crony capitalist who benefited from Democratic policies but now sees him as an ally.

California used to be the land of opportunity, and its a beautiful state, Musk said during a video appearance at this weeks All In Summit in Miami. He then listed factors he says would make it impossible now to build a plant in the Golden State such as Teslas massive new Austin-based Giga Texas factory. California's gone from a land of opportunity to the land of taxes, over-regulation and litigation, the Tesla CEO added. This is not a good situation, and really, there's got to be like a serious cleaning out of the pipes in California.

For years, as he built Tesla from a moonshot startup into the worlds dominant electric-vehicle company, Musk courted Democrats in California, where most of Teslas customers live, and nationally. He and his company benefited from the partys policy and environmental prioritiesespecially electric-vehicle subsidieswhich helped Teslas customer base grow. In recent months, both before and since he began his pursuit of Twitter, Musk appeared to veer to the rightfor example, crossing swords with Democratic Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren over their proposals to raise taxes on billionaires and lobbing insults at Biden for failing to include him at White House EV events.

Last year, Musk moved Teslas headquarters to Texas from Silicon Valley (and his residence to Austin from Los Angeles) to take advantage of lower taxes, lower cost of living and a more relaxed regulatory environment. Since then, his rhetoric has skewed ever more definitively toward the conservative side, culminating in a tweet yesterday in which he announced his intention to vote for Republican politicians going forward.

In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party, he tweeted Wednesday after Tesla was dropped from S&Ps ESG Index. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican.

GOP via Twitter

California-bashing from naturalized American Musk, the worlds wealthiest person based on his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX, is notable partly because his former home state remains by far the best market for Teslas electric vehicles in North America. Its also debatable whether the company could have survived its rocky early years without Californias Zero-Emission Vehicle program, which created an opportunity for Tesla to sell emissions credits to other automakers that resulted in billions of dollars in free revenue over the years. (Teslas Fremont, California, plant, essentially a gift from Toyota in 2010, was also massively helpful.)

Nobody ever accused Elon Musk of gratitudeor even a sense of proportion, says Mary Nichols, former chair of Californias powerful Air Resources Board, which crafted the ZEV program and championed Tesla as it evolved from a startup to high-volume manufacturer. He certainly would not be where he is without the ZEV mandate and the cash he got from selling his credits to the other OEMs.

Nobody ever accused Elon Musk of gratitudeor even a sense of proportion

Musk hasnt elaborated on why he now sees Republicans as kinder than the rival party that helped Tesla get its start, although the GOP welcomed his newfound loyalty by immediately using it for fundraising. Musk has echoed conservative talking points about woke progressive extremists and owning the libs on Twitter in recent weeksalong with crude jokes about transgender people and his opposition to plastic straw bans intended to help the environment.

The billionaires confirmation that he would invite former President Donald Trump back to Twitter after his ban for comments supporting the Jan. 6 insurrection and lies about the 2020 election was cheered by some conservatives. Likewise, Musks intention to make the platform welcoming for controversial views in pursuit of an absolutist view of free speech has boosted his popularity among outspoken politicians and commentators, including Representatives Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gaetz and Fox Newss Tucker Carlson.

Prepare for blue check mark full scale meltdown after @elonmusk seals the deal and I should get my personal Twitter account restored, Green tweeted on April 25.

Twitter

Shares of Tesla were little changed on Thursday, closing at $709.42 in Nasdaq trading, the lowest since August 2021. Theyre down 41% this year.

Texas is the capital of Americas oil and gas industry and not synonymous with the clean-tech endeavors Musk is associated with, but he praised its greater flexibility, relative to California, this week. The Lone Star States further shift to the political rightincluding strict new policies on abortion, treatment of transgender youth and voting rights, while relaxing rules on gun ownershipalso dont trouble Musk, according to Governor Greg Abbott.

Elon had to get out of California because in part of the social policies in California, Abbott told CNBC last year, noting that he speaks with Musk frequently. Elon consistently tells me that he liked the social policies in the state of Texas.

Elon Musk at the opening of Tesla's Giga Texas plant on April 7 in Austin, Texas.

When asked about whether his more polarizing views could hurt Teslas image with some consumers, Musk was unfazed. Im confident that we will be able to sell all the cars we can make, he said this month at a Financial Times conference. Currently, the lead time for ordering a Tesla is ridiculously long, so our issue is not demand, it is production.

His newfound conservative orientation carries both risks and a potential upside for Tesla, says auto-industry analyst Ed Kim.

Conventional wisdom says that its generally good business sense for CEOs to stay away from regularly expressing their politics, but Tesla has always bucked conventional wisdom in just about every way, says Kim, president of AutoPacific, an industry consultant in Santa Ana, California. As electric vehicles continue to be more mainstream and become more common away from the traditionally EV-friendly and liberal coasts, Musks continuing proclamations of his politics could potentially strengthen his popularity as well as Teslas in more traditionally conservative parts of the country.

Musks frustration with Biden stems from the presidents failure to reference Tesla when praising efforts by U.S. manufacturers such as General Motors and Ford in accelerating the production and sales of electric vehicles. The White House also excluded Musk from meetings with U.S. CEOs to discuss battery and EV technology, though Biden acknowledged Tesla as an EV leader at a February briefing on charging infrastructure.

Conventional wisdom says that its generally good business sense for CEOs to stay away from regularly expressing their politics, but Tesla has always bucked conventional wisdom in just about every way

But it was the Obama-Biden Administration that, like California, helped get Tesla off the ground. The Energy Department awarded Tesla a low-interest loan for $465 million in January 2010 that allowed the company to set up its Fremont plant to begin production by 2012. Though it proved a good investment by the U.S.Tesla repaid the loan with interest many years ahead of schedule in 2013the support from a Democratic administration was derided as crony capitalism by 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

When government rather than the market routinely selects the winners and losers, enterprises cannot predict their prospects, and free enterprise is replaced with crony capitalism, Romney said in a March 2012 speech in Santa Barbara, California. Solyndra, Ener1, Fisker and Tesla are examples.

Three of the four companies Romney referenced ended in bankruptcy (though Fisker is back with a new EV startup), but Tesla become the worlds most valuable automaker and top EV seller.

Nichols, currently a visiting fellow at Columbia Universitys Center on Global Energy Policy, said regardless of Musks comments, shes glad of Californias impact on Tesla.

I own a Tesla Model 3 and will always be proud that our regulations made him the worlds richest man (maybe) while prodding all the others to move much more aggressively into the age of electric transportation.

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Elon Musk Bites The Hand That Fed Him By Bashing California And Democrats - Forbes