Josh Hawley says Biden wants to ‘wipe out’ blue-collar life. Let’s talk reality, Senator | Opinion

Sen. Josh Hawley established early in his political career that he prioritizes culture war theatrics over thoughtful, fact-based discussion of public policy. We get that. But it’s still occasionally astonishing to see the battle play out in real time.

So it goes with the Missouri Republican’s latest Fox News-fueled provocation. Appearing on Laura Ingraham’s show Tuesday evening, Hawley charged that President Joe Biden and the Democrats are trying to destroy blue-collar work in America.

“Joe Biden wants to remake our economy such that we don’t have any more blue-collar work in this country,” he told the Ingraham Angle audience. “We don’t have jobs for working people. All of those folks have to depend on the government.

“And all we have instead is this climate green economy, where you have to have a fancy degree, where you have to get a white-collar job in a big city. And if you want to live in the middle of the country, there are no jobs for you. That’s what they want. They don’t like blue-collar workers. They don’t like blue-collar culture. And so they’re trying to wipe it out by changing our economy. And Laura, they are succeeding. We have got to stop them.”

Just in case the culture war subtext wasn’t clear, the senator added in a tweet that the Biden administration is trying to “replace the blue-collar culture of family and church by destroying the jobs that support it.”

Hawley’s overheated warnings are false, both in the details and in the big picture.

Let’s talk about the jobs first. It’s true that the president wants to nudge the American economy away from fossil fuels and toward so-called “green” jobs. There is a reason for that: Climate change is not-so-slowly battering the country — and not just in out-of-the-way places, but close to home. Missouri has been ravaged by a harsh cycle of flooding and drought that are taking a toll on the state’s farmers, just to name one example.

But the green jobs created by the president’s recent Inflation Reduction Act aren’t just white-collar jobs, and they’re not just in liberal enclaves.

As Politico pointed out last month, two-thirds of the major projects created by the $740 billion measure are located in congressional districts — often rural and suburban— represented by Republicans who opposed the law. And those aren’t projects just for deskbound college grads: They’re blue-collar jobs making batteries, solar panels and electric vehicles, much like the Panasonic plant that is going up across the state line in Kansas. The White House estimates that more than 54,000 Missouri workers are already employed in “clean energy” jobs. And the administration expects the new law to produce more than $6 billion in additional investments between now and 2030.

There is simply no truthful way to define that massive effort — which Hawley opposed — as an attempt to crush blue-collar work.

Another problem isn’t just that Hawley is wrong about the Biden administration’s efforts to create climate-friendly jobs — but the way he nefariously attributes the president’s agenda to a vicious Democratic desire to destroy working-class jobs, culture and faith.

It is possible to disagree with the Inflation Reduction Act, and with the president himself, without ascribing evil motives to the opposing party. We agree: Joe Biden is sometimes wrong about things, and this environmental and health care legislation surely has its weaknesses. But simple disagreement on the merits doesn’t get you on Fox News, or your words quoted favorably on right-wing websites like Breitbart.

It wasn’t enough for Hawley to say that Biden is wrong, or mistaken. He had to paint him as a villain, a mustache-twirling baddy who wants to crush American workers and lose their votes in the process because — why exactly? Hawley doesn’t say. We’re just supposed to take his word for it, even though the senator’s assertions don’t make much sense.

The blue-collar workers of America and Missouri surely deserve somebody looking out for them. But they deserve squarer shooting than the mendacious and mean-spirited scare tactics Josh Hawley is offering them.