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You're not wrong, but the oil and gas industry, and generations of families have made livings on it, and our resulting current world status and wealth is largely founded upon it.
It's a problem; you can hate the problem, but ignoring it isn't a solution, and it's cost Democrats elections. This isn't a handful of Klansmen; it's an entire industry. The supply chain employs nearly 10M people in the US. Telling then you fuck off, relocate, and find different jobs doesn't win any votes.
Democrats could minimize these issues if they communicated better. If they just said "fracking destroys our communities and hurts americans. We are going to invest in green energy and training fracking workers to transition to different industries".
It's like how they aren't pointing out that undocumented migrants are regular tax paying people, and deporting them would be horrible. Instead of doing that they've moved further to the right and now are campaigning about how Trump blocked their awful border bill.
Democrats only have themselves to blame. They have absolutely no idea what they are doing.
You'd be amazed at how resistant most people are to anything that feels unfamiliar, even if it's good for them. Coal and oil jobs are familiar, green jobs are not.
It should be as simple as you're suggesting, but sadly it isn't.
I don't buy it. It feels like these vague arguments are used against any progressive policy. "We can't tax the rich cause then they'll leave the country!"
If fossil fuel workers are so stubborn that they will refuse to vote for a party that wants to transition them into green energy jobs then their votes aren't worth it. If the democratic party allows the workers of a single industry to determine their climate policy then they are revealing themselves to be spineless and useless politicians.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. The reality is that dismantling an industry so enmeshed in our economy, both nationally and locally, is HARD. People WILL be negatively impacted and it would be stupid to ignore that. Democrats have to walk a very thin tightrope to not alienate people, which is what will happen if we go as hard as we should
That's what they said about coal and the messaging didn't help. People associated with the coal industry still saw it as an attack against them and their way of life.
Fuck those people then. The democrats should not allow a small portion of the population to dictate something as important as climate policy.
The only way this argument makes any sense is if we assume the democrats are spineless and useless. Which they are, but still.
Democrats need votes if they're going to accomplish anything, so they have to compromise. I agree that it's not great and I wish that we had a progressive party with any power to it.