Can Hillary Clinton Lead The Keystone Army?

[Purveyor]

By ELANA SCHOR 7/11/15 8:35 AM EDT

An army of liberal green activists has yet to coalesce around a Democratic presidential candidate, and Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley are fighting to win them over.

Hillary Clinton’s two challengers from the left are each targeting the grassroots greens who, often upstaging the mainstream environmental groups, rallied throngs of opponents against the Keystone XL pipeline — turning an obscure regulatory fight into a symbol of America’s addiction to fossil fuels.

Many of those activists are without a standard-bearer in the Democratic field, and are still suspicious of Clinton because of her refusal to rule out the Keystone project. And they’ve demonstrated the capacity to put supporters in the streets, including more than 1,100 anti-Keystone protesters who went to jail after White House sit-ins four years ago.

That’s offering an opening to the progressive Sanders, who has emerged as Clinton’s top rival in the polls, and O’Malley, whose once-promising campaign has yet to gain traction. Each has rolled out aggressive plans to fight climate change that are well to the left of anything Clinton has offered: Sanders is pushing a carbon tax, for example, while O’Malley pledges to wean the U.S. electricity system entirely off fossil fuels by 2050.

Sanders even launched his candidacy at an event with fellow Vermonter Bill McKibben, the activist who rose to prominence by leading the anti-Keystone crusade as part of the campaign to fight climate change.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/can-hillary-clinton-lead-the-keystone-army-119980.html#ixzz3fd4ObvNr

[delrem]

1. I'm sure the pro-Keystone army is right behind her! n/t

[JaneyVee]

2. Weren't labor unions for keystone?

[tech3149]

3. IIRC, the USW were for the supposed reason of jobs

Too few for too short a period to be of any value. It's really sort of sad but so much of today's union "leadership" is cowed into a position of defense and membership is too divorced from their responsibility to hold them accountable. I never had the advantage of union representation but I understand the struggles that were made for workers benefits.
I've also seen the self serving attitude of "leadership" that didn't understand the broader implications of their choices and recommendations.
A quick search showed that there were others but the explanations were the common cop out, more jobs/expanded membership, yadda, yadda, yadda.