Well, here’s a shocker, pun unintended: Cars can’t run on mandates.
Earlier this year, President Joe Biden’s administration rolled out a plan for CO2 emissions reduction that basically amounted to a de facto phase-out of internal combustion engines in consumer cars by 2032.
They insisted it wasn’t an EV mandate, but pretty much anyone who was paying attention realized that by stating that gas-powered autos could only make up 30 percent of new auto sales in just eight years’ time, this was basically forcing the industry to shift dramatically to battery power, considering over 92 percent of vehicles sold in 2023 weren’t EVs.
Now, we’ve all known that Vice President Kamala Harris has, in the space of five years, virtually abandoned every far-left position she claimed to hold in her first presidential run to appear like a moderate in her second, rather unplanned, try at the Oval Office. That’s because — to succeed her semi-sentient boss in that position, Joe Biden — she’ll have to win a number of close states, including Michigan.
So, Kamala Harris is setting a new record. No longer is she flipping on positions she held five years ago. This time, she’s flipping on positions she — or her administration, at least — held just six months ago.
“When Vice President Kamala Harris first sought the presidency in 2019, she called for tough emissions standards for automakers that would have required all new vehicles to emit zero emissions by 2035,” The Wall Street Journal noted on Friday, in an article with the telling headline “Harris Tiptoes Away From Electric Vehicle Stance as Trump Seizes an Opening in Michigan.”
“In recent weeks, she has quietly walked back that stance as consumer demand for electric cars cools and pressure on the issue from Donald Trump heats up.
“Harris’s history of promoting electric-vehicle mandates and the Biden administration’s push to bring more EVs into the nation’s fleet despite sluggish sales has put Democrats on the defensive. Trump has bashed so-called ‘EV mandates,’ casting the zero-emission cars as vehicles of the elite and warned of the prospects of China overtaking the U.S. industry.”
Trump’s pitch sounds far more realistic than the mass phaseout of new gas-powered cars, saying that EVs “might be 7 or 8 percent of the market. And then you also want hybrids and you want to have pure gasoline-driven powered cars. We’re going to have everything.”
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Meanwhile, the Journal reported, Harris’ campaign has emphasized that “she doesn’t support an EV mandate” while asserting that in Michigan, the inaptly named 2022 Inflation Reduction Act — mostly a green-energy giveaway which we’ve yet to see any significant returns from — “provided subsidies and tax credits for EVs and created clean energy jobs in the state,” the outlet reported.
Her surrogates, while vague about what exactly a Harris administration would mean in terms of trying to push electric vehicles upon America, echoed the lines about how EV-ification of our roads would — you guessed it — create jobs.
“Folks in Lansing know that EVs are going to be tremendous for our economy and if he tries to kill it, he’s trying to kill our economy,” said Lansing, Michigan Democratic Mayor Andy Schor.
Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan said Harris should “push back on this narrative that this is a mandate. Nobody is going to be forced to buy a car they don’t want to buy.”
Jobs good. Environment good. Economy good. Mandates bad. Other guy’s policies bad. This is simplistic, vague caveman-grunting political stump-speech claptrap which every candidate echoes and which has no policy attached to it. So, what exactly has Harris and the administration she’s a part of said about EVs — before her presidential run, during it, and during her time as vice president?
First, representing California in the upper chamber of Congress: “In the Senate, Harris co-sponsored legislation in May 2019 that would have created a federal standard demanding 50% of new vehicle sales be zero-emission in 2030 with the requirements ramping up to 100% by 2040,” the Journal reported.
Then she jumped into the presidential race and, in September of 2019, said this in a 24-page climate position paper from her campaign: “We will ensure that 50 percent of all new passenger vehicles sold are zero-emission by 2030, and 100 percent are zero-emission by 2035.”
How to go about it? Another “cash-for-clunkers” program, of course, the program that so deftly reduced carbon emissions under the Obama administration after the 2008 financial crisis. Or not. The effect of the program, NBC News reported in August of 2009, was basically like shutting down the entire U.S. grid — electricity, cars, planes, etc. — for one hour a year. That doesn’t even sound impressive until you actually do the math and figure out there are 8,760 hours in a year.
Then there was a CNN town hall event, again in September of 2019, in which she said she was “prepared to get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal.”
As for her time in the Biden administration, let’s fast forward to the new Environmental Protection Agency rules in March — which the Biden administration swore weren’t an EV mandate, except for the part which mandated that only 30 percent of new vehicles be gas-powered. Which is a mandate. That isn’t. Officially.
“EPA claims the rule preserves ‘consumer choice; because hybrids and plug-in hybrids can help meet the standards in the early years. But auto makers will have no choice but to limit gas-powered, and increase EV, production to meet the mandates. The only ‘choice’ Americans will have in the future is electric,” the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board noted earlier this year when the non-mandate mandate was unveiled.
And no, there aren’t new jobs to be created in the bargain, either, just in case you were wondering.
“The White House claim that the standards will boost jobs, reduce pollution and save consumers tens of billions of dollars in fuel costs is false advertising. EVs require many fewer parts and workers to produce. Major auto makers have cut thousands of jobs in the past couple of years to finance their EV ‘transitions,’” the editorial board noted.
“Lower auto profits will also hurt Detroit’s workers who receive profit-sharing bonuses. Companies hope to make EVs profitable through increased manufacturing efficiencies, but this will also likely mean fewer jobs. Technological disruption sometimes causes job losses, but the culprit here will be government mandates, not consumer preference.”
So, what is Kamala Harris’ position on EVs? Are you in a swing state? What’ll get you to check the ballot box for her? That’s what her position is, at least for right now, and she’ll tiptoe away from her former positions in as vague a direction as possible to get you to do that. Watch how fast she runs back to her old, far more concrete rhetoric on the EV matter the second she (heaven forfend) gets 270 electoral votes, however.
At least she knows that Michigan knows that cars can’t run on mandates, however. If only someone would inform the rest of the Democratic Party while this unpleasant truth bomb is busy detonating inside her fragile little head.
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