On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks said that people are “underplaying” the political impact 2020 Democratic presidential nominee former Vice President Joe Biden’s statement about transitioning away from the oil industry during Thursday’s debate and that the statement “has the potential to reverberate a little in some communities in a way, frankly, that a lot of us in the media won’t quite anticipate how people are hearing that, hearing it as an insult.”
Brooks said, “The one moment I think people are underplaying, which would worry me if I were on the Biden team, was that moment of transitioning away from oil and gas. That — Hillary Clinton said something like that about transitioning away from coal last time, and it really hurt her, not only in coal countries. It’s a cultural statement. A lot of people say, hey, I work in manufacturing. I work in industry. What, do we just not exist for you people? And so I think that statement has the potential to reverberate a little in some communities in a way, frankly, that a lot of us in the media won’t quite anticipate how people are hearing that, hearing it as an insult.”
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