Clinton’s Keystone Move Says More About Her Primary Problems Than Anything Else

For a candidate competing in the Democratic nomination process, opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline is a relatively simple decision. That Hillary Clinton finally announced hers on Tuesday -- apparently taking strategic advantage of the attention being lavished on the arrival of Pope Francis to bury the news after long punting on this issue -- says something significant about how she sees her position for 2016.

The long-stalled pipeline became a focal point of fierce environmental opposition several years ago, thanks to the amount of tar sands oil it would transport. Tar sands oil requires more processing than other forms of oil and therefore, studies have found, produces more of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Since the pipeline would cross the U.S.-Canada border, it requires approval from the executive branch. The first permit approval fell to then-Secretary of State Clinton's State Department, where it languished. President Obama rejected the permit in early 2012, prompting the company behind the pipeline to revamp its plans and try again.

In a March 2015 poll, Fox News found that the majority of Americans who had an opinion about the pipeline objected to Obama's opposition. But there was a strong partisan split: 69 percent of Republicans favored approving the permit, and 56 percent of Democrats favored the veto. That mirrors Pew findings from last year, showing that liberals opposed the pipeline most strongly.


In this Aug. 6, 2015, photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton listens to a home care worker during a roundtable discussion on home care in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Addressing environmental challenges, as it turns out, is one of the most partisan issues before government. Eighty-nine percent of liberal Democrats believe the effects of warming are happening or will happen in their lifetimes, and 81 percent accept that human activity is the primary cause. Only two-thirds of moderate Democrats, by contrast, agree that human activity is to blame for climate change.

There's something else that moderate and liberal Democrats disagree on: Who should be the Democratic nominee for president. In CNN/ORC's most recent poll, released earlier this week, Clinton's standing improved over that of Bernie Sanders, but she still faces stronger opposition among liberals than among more moderate members of her party.

MORE...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/22/hillary-clintons-keystone-statement-says-more-about-the-primaries-than-the-environment/?tid=pm_politics_pop_b