....is the message in Matt Yglesias' most recent column. Yglesias has long been a proponent of progressive "popularism." Basically, the argument that progressives should get back into the habit of setting priorities and pushing the portion of their agenda that is most popular, while putting the least popular parts of their agenda either on the back burner or taking measures to tone down the salience of those issues.

Anyhow, today's column points out that recent production cuts by Saudi and Russia are going to drive up global and domestic energy prices again, and no one believes (correctly) that this is good news politically for Biden, even though it makes it easier for the U.S. to hit its climate goals. That's because reducing emissions by driving up energy prices so people use less energy is intensely unpopular, and most progressives know this. Which is why both the Obama and Biden administrations didn't do much to throttle domestic production, despite their green rhetoric. The real energy policy of the U.S. is to have a robust and very large domestic oil extraction industry.

Yglesias argues that Biden should make this "secret energy moderation" much more explicit. U.S. domestic oil production under Biden is nearly at all-time record highs (with oil production on federal lands exceeding the highs of the Trump years). The reason an OPEC+Russia production cut can't badly derail the U.S. economy is because we have moved from an oil importer to become a massive net exporter. It's because we're a massive energy power now. Biden hasn't done anything to really impede that, and he would secure political benefits if he went out and promoted that fact, rather than try to minimize it.

slowboring.com - Taking bidens oil strategy to the