American Consequences - April 2019

matter, exist. Buzzfeed News, for example, reports that Marianne Williamson, the ’90s new-age guru who’s making an improbable run for the Democratic presidential nomination, was berated at a campaign stop in Iowa recently when she insisted that as president she would implement “a green new deal.” One questioner insisted she explain her promiscuous use of the indefinite article. A green new deal? Just any green new deal? Not good enough! No, she was asked, why wouldn’t she endorse The Green New Deal?

In 2007, he wrote a column and gave it the catchy title. The idea was that a massive mobilization of a reinvented energy industry was the most efficient and comprehensive way to revive the U.S. economy, then teetering on the edge of recession. Now, more than 10 years later, with the economy humming along nicely, the phrase has reemerged and threatens to take over U.S. politics, at least on its leftward flank. Thanks, Tom! The phrase today is most closely associated with the recently minted congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Even before her swearing in, AOC joined protestors occupying the outer office of soon-to-be-speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as a way of advancing the new Green New Deal. Pelosi responded – without, it should be said, an overabundance of enthusiasm – by allowing AOC and her friends to form a “Select Committee for a Green New Deal.” In Democratic Party politics today, AOC is Patient Zero: When she catches a cold, every loyal Democrat sneezes. She hadn’t been in Congress more than a few weeks before a large majority of her fellow party members were rushing to endorse her grand idea. Some polls place support for a Green New Deal among Democrats at more than 90%. This includes the roughly 374 Democrats who are seeking the party’s presidential nomination in 2020. The competition among them has already provoked some bizarre behavior (Did you enjoy Beto O’Rourke’s livestreamed trip to his dentist?). So it stands to reason that it is suddenly mandatory for each presidential candidate to pledge loyalty to a program that doesn’t, as a technical

By Andrew Ferguson

It stands to reason that it is suddenly mandatory for each presidential candidate to pledge loyalty to a program that doesn’t, as a technical matter, exist.

Her answer was plausible enough – that the Green New Deal comes in many different versions. But that’s no longer quite true. For the first time since Friedman coined the term, we can say we have a good idea of what the GND entails. In early February, AOC and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts introduced a congressional resolution outlining the GND. AOC’s office issued a Green New Deal “explainer,” a set of Q&As and talking points meant to flesh out the vague phrase. It is an amazing document, exquisite for its combination of opposites: It is at once supremely confident and supremely ignorant, highly moralistic in condemnation of other people’s moralizing, and insouciantly unconcerned about the ease with which the most difficult changes – in society and

American Consequences

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