California - Progressive On Energy???

Joe Lieberman has always struck me as the most palatable of the Democratic candidates for President. He's the only one that seems to have half a brain most of the time. I'd probably never vote for him, but I can at least understand why someone would.

Or I could have understood. Until today.

Lieberman is accusing the President of being AWOL on energy and is calling California "progressive."

Now I can't really disagree too much with the President being AWOL on energy. Yeah, he supports drilling in ANWR and he put in a throwaway line about "alternative" energy sources in the last State of the Union. But so far his energy plan seems to be no more comprehensive than any other that's come out in the last 20 years or so.

But is California really progressive? The land where the energy crisis is king? The state that is suffering the full wrath of NIMBY? The state that is losing high tech jobs as the Governor whines about needing more price fixing stability in the energy market?

The same California where Gray Davis has really done nothing to fix the problem? That is the model of progressivity that we want for the rest of the country? I think not.

What's really sad is that Lieberman does have a realistic and viable solution: more public investment in the energy sector. Finding private capital to construct power facilities in California might be tough, given Davis' anti-capitalism stance for the sector and the state's red-tape for constructing new facilities. This might be an opportune time for the state to build the plants in a timely manner and then lease them to private operators to run. Or just sell them to the private sector after construction. Bottom line is that the state needs some serious rebuilding and increases in generating capacity.

But of course, the intelligent message gets lost in the anti-Bush rhetoric.

This is the biggest problem that I see with the Democratic candidates this year. They're trying so hard to differentiate themselves from Bush that they will do anything to smear him, even sacrifice a real policy position worthy of debate.