Following last week's GOPin' 2: Electric Shellackaloo, depressed Democrats everywhere were forced to come to grips with Republican control of Congress. A Million Ways to Die in the West director Seth MacFarlane expressed annoyance that the Keystone Pipeline was getting so much play:
Depressing to hear the Republican Congress immediately start in about the Keystone XL Pipeline. Is it ALWAYS just about oil with you guys?
— Seth MacFarlane (@SethMacFarlane) November 7, 2014
Of course, it's not just Republicans who are in favor of getting the Keystone Pipeline underway. Poll after poll has shown that the Keystone Pipeline is broadly popular with a wide, bipartisan swath of the country. A Washington Post/ABC News poll in March, for instance, showed that Republicans, Democrats, and independents all approve of the Pipeline:
Support for Keystone is highest among Republicans, with 82 percent backing it. But majorities of independents and Democrats also want it approved, at 65 and 51 percent, respectively. Only self-identified liberal Democrats lean against, 47 percent to 36 percent.
A post-election poll showed that support for Keystone among Democrats has dipped, but self-identified conservative Democrats—those needed to carry Democrats to victory in states such as Arkansas and Louisiana and Iowa and Colorado—still support the pipeline 51-37. As a result of this support for Keystone, red state Democrats have long favored its construction. As an op-ed in Roll Call noted,
Senators currently representing 25 of the 35 seats up for grabs in 2014 have voted to build Keystone XL.
Keystone XL supporters currently hold 11 of the 20 seats that Democrats are defending.
Eight of the 11 Democrats that have voted in support of Keystone XL are seeking re-election.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the last Democrat with a chance of holding on to her seat in this Republican wave is mounting a vigorous effort to pass legislation that would get the Keystone XL underway. Contra Seth MacFarlane, it's not Republicans who are obsessed with getting the Keystone XL built following their big win last week. Nope. It's Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu, who faces a runoff against Republican Bill Cassidy next month to determine who will hold that state's seat. Here's Reuters:
Landrieu, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is fighting for her political life as she faces a runoff race early next month that will determine whether she can serve another six-year Senate term beginning in January.
Indeed, there's so much Democratic support for the pipeline in the Senate that it can not only overcome a filibuster, it might be able to override a presidential veto once Republicans are seated in January. At a time when the media and the public are clamoring for greater bipartisanship and demand that more work be done to solve our nation's problems, there is literally nothing on the docket that engenders greater agreement on both sides of the aisle than the Keystone XL Pipeline.
All of which is to say that Seth MacFarlane radically misunderstands the politics of this issue. He is totally out of touch with the electorate. This is not a Republican vs. Democrat issue. It's not even really a conservative vs. liberal issue. It's an issue in which a small minority of very far left activists have stymied movement on a project that will create thousands of jobs (at least temporarily) and have effectively no impact on the environment.
Now, it's not terribly surprising that MacFarlane has made this mistake. He is ensconced in Hollywood, after all, and his peer group skews pretty hard to the left; I'm sure the fact that the country disagrees with him on this issue is quite surprising and feels like some weird GOP obsession rather than a bipartisan reflection of the will of the people. Additionally, the Family Guy creator has tried to rebrand himself as a champion of Science in recent years, producing a remake of the Carl Sagan series Cosmos, and nothing proves one's commitment to Science more than randomly asserting the evils of carbon pollution and Republicans (not necessarily in that order). But it's a mistake nonetheless, a mistake that has greatly damaged the Democratic brand and may have cost them winnable seats in this election.
Updated above with more poll numbers.