Nonpartisan environmental groups seem unanimous in their glee at the US midterm rebuke to Donald Trump and his party. Including Alexander C. Kaufman writing in Heatmap AM that “one thing is certain: Democrats’ big victory Tuesday night halts what my colleague Robinson Meyer called ‘Trump’s energy revolution,’ meant to defy the economics of renewables.” This facile turn of phrase raises the crucial question of why if “the economics of renewables” are anything like what Kaufman believes, namely unstoppable forces that can’t be defied, do they require the government to go back to throwing vast sums at them lest they wither and die.

Often what is most revealing about someone’s ideas, or those prevailing in a given culture at a given time, isn’t what they say explicitly, it’s what they take for granted. What goes without saying or what is repeatedly implied as background. And in this case all the activists celebrating the bluenami or whatever it was take for granted the central role of the state in making economics work.

When Robinson Meyer writes, also in Heatmap, that “Democrats finally trounced Trumpism at the ballot box” you get the feeling that he believes it is natural for the left to be in power and so the 2026 election is basically permanent:

“This is a new kind of Democratic mega-majority. It will usher in a new kind of energy and climate politics.”

Perhaps. Or perhaps not, because a critical part of the Democrats’ campaign was in favour of affordability, more specifically lower gasoline and diesel prices, and if the left is wrong about the affordability (and reliability) of alternatives, if they are in fact muddled on “the economics of renewables”, they won’t deliver and voters who have proven their independence in this election by shifting dramatically one way might well do it again next time. (In fact he cites several “wave elections” for “millennials like me” including “2010, when the Tea Party caroused against Barack Obama” without mentioning that two years later that same Barack Obama was reelected, and within eight years his party recaptured the House.

Actually Robinson admits that many Democrats ran to the center on energy and even on climate. Meaning the new kind of energy and climate politics that will result, if any, is one that admits that Trump was right on a lot of it. As Robinson concedes, this focus on affordability and friendly statements about oil and gas constitute “one reason why Tuesday’s victory might feel a smidge bittersweet for some climate defenders.”

The New York Times “Climate Forward” does an awkward two-step between radical climate policies and ditching all that nonsense for reliable affordable energy:

“The ‘blue tsunami’ on Tuesday that will give Democrats control of Congress also helped to push through ballot measures around the country to strengthen environmental protections. Voters approved referendums to ensure supplies of clean water and clean power, to support nature conservation and to armor communities against the threats of climate change-fueled wildfires. And they voted, over and over, to block data centers, too.”

Characteristically it does not appear to occur to them that it doesn’t matter what a politician, or a referendum, says will happen if certain steps are taken; it only matters whether the incentives created by taking those steps are rationally calculated to produce the desired result. For instance during the 2015 election that gave his Liberals a majority and hence made Justin Trudeau Prime Minister, a post he held for a decade, one of their key promises was, the CBC noted approvingly at the time, “to end boil-water advisories on First Nations reserves within five years”. Eleven years later his successor Mark Carney made a virtue of still not doing it, with his “Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty prating “The deadline goal is not part of my narrative.” And tried to pitch it as sensitive, sensible and dynamic:

“I’m not going to place the pressure on communities and say you have to complete X, Y, Z by this day. The conversation is now: What do you need? What does that timeline look like for you? The narrative of we’re going to reach X by this day, that’s the previous government. I’m here with a new commitment, I’m a new minister, new government, new Prime Minister, new decisions, new pathway forward.”

Still undrinkable water with the misery and disease it brings, though, because good intentions don’t get the dogs fed. Nor do narratives about conversations. And the result being sought by American voters in 2026 looks a lot like what they sought in 2024 by swinging hard to the other party, namely lower prices.

This time around, that “Climate Forward” piece acknowledged:

“In many contests, there was little explicit emphasis on climate change or the environment by the candidates, who focused more on affordability, said Jordan Haedtler, the climate finance policy lead at Climate Cabinet, a nonprofit group focused on state and local environmental issues. But a number of states gave people the chance to protect the environment and make communities more resilient to climate change, he said.”

But if the Democrats start getting wacky on climate change and push up prices, or simply don’t deliver on affordability because they pursue policies that do the opposite of what they wanted or because they overpromised on results without actually having methods in mind or within their grasp, the same public that hated Trump and the Republicans for making life unaffordable will get grumpy fast. Which is where it gets worse. A lot worse.