Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The Fierce Urgency of Ethanol
It looks like Obama might have former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack as Ag. Sec., and it's almost certain that he's going to waste a good part of whatever stimulus package there is on rescuing Detroit. The progressive left is somewhat disappointed, but this is just the natural consequence of putting a Midwestern politician in the White House. It seems that voters sensed this -- across the Upper Midwest, from Michigan to Iowa and Nebraska, he did on average 10-20 points better than Kerry or Gore. This is a massive political advantage for him -- there are lots of swing states in the area; if he delivers the pork, he can probably count on their relatively favoring him, and essentially take Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa off the table in 2012 as he did this year.
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Yeah, I read an early NY'r profile that followed him in Iowa, and he was clearly telegraphing this stuff. (Well, not so much the automakers, but that's not so surprising.) Pity though.
One of my least favorite things about politics is how entrenched economic interests are treated as primary goods. We must have automakers in Detroit, because we must.
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