Michael Grunwald is a senior staff writer for Politico Magazine.

Hillary Clinton held a rally yesterday, and Donald Trump’s grab-the-genitalia tape didn’t come up once. Trump’s tax returns, retweets of white supremacists, slurs against Mexicans, and fat-shaming of a Miss Universe weren’t mentioned, either. Neither were his bankruptcies, kind words for Vladimir Putin, brewing war with Republican leaders, nor any of the other Trump-being-Trump stuff that has set him apart from previous GOP nominees, and has become a staple of Clinton’s speeches.

No, yesterday’s Clinton event in a Miami suburb with former vice president and almost-president Al Gore, billed as a rally about climate change, was actually almost entirely about climate change. The big made-for-TV soundbite was Gore’s plaintive warning that he’s Exhibit A for the notion that in Florida, “your vote really, really, really counts—a lot.” But otherwise, the event was a substantive wonkathon about the policy cause of Gore’s post-political career, the threat global warming poses to the earth and its inhabitants, as well as the stark differences between Clinton’s ambitious plans to fight it and Trump’s refusal to recognize it.


Climate change may be the defining issue of the 21st century. It’s also an increasingly visceral issue for many Democrats, especially the millennials Clinton is so desperate to bring on board during the last month of the race. But the oddest thing about her single-issue event was how odd it felt. It was an alternate-reality sneak peek at the kind of policy-focused campaign she might have run if her opponent had been a conventional Republican who hadn’t questioned President Obama’s citizenship, mocked a disabled reporter, or bragged on tape about his furniture-shopping strategies for extramarital dating. For once, her attacks on Trump—as a denier who wants to scrap Obama’s rules limiting carbon pollution, kill the fledgling clean-energy revolution, and accelerate a climate catastrophe—could have been leveled at most of the other 16 Republicans he trounced in his primary.

In fact, Clinton did level a similar attack on one of those Republicans, Marco Rubio, who is now running to keep his Florida Senate seat, and has said he doesn’t know whether manmade climate change is a real danger because he isn’t a scientist.

“Well, why doesn’t he ask a scientist?” Clinton asked.

Clinton’s events usually mash together a potpourri of policy-related and Trump-related themes, but starting with introductions from local mayors besieged by rising seas and a teen-aged climate activist, yesterday’s gathering at a community college in Kendall was almost all-climate-all-the-time. Clinton and Gore both gave mini-lectures on climate impacts, especially Florida-centric dangers like the spread of diseases like Zika, the intensification of hurricanes like Matthew, and the rising seas that are already flooding cities like Miami Beach. They both talked about the spectacular increases in wind and solar power (along with sharp decreases in wind and solar costs) during the Obama era. And they both framed 2016 as a climate election, with the fate of the planet riding on the outcome.

Clinton and Gore were rivals inside her husband’s fractious White House, and Gore was one of the last prominent Democrats to endorse her; he didn’t even show up to her convention. Yesterday, though, they both talked up her multi-pronged climate plans, especially her push for half a billion solar panels to be installed in her first term. Gore didn’t say anything nice about her personal or professional qualities, but he seemed genuinely enthusiastic as he vouched for her policies, which was not the case when he visited Miami last year to teach activists from around the world how to deliver his climate slide show.

“I went through that plan with a fine-tooth comb, and I will tell you it is right at the limit of what we can do,” Gore told yesterday's crowd of about 1600 Clinton supporters. “That is exactly the kind of ambitious goal that we need from the next president of the United States.”

Clinton often looks uncomfortable trying to fire up her crowds with applause lines, and her scripted attacks on Trump’s provocations can sound forced. But she really likes talking policy, and yesterday she was in her wonky element, regaling her audience with minutiae about retrofitting buildings and modernizing the grid, about a landfill that’s being converted into a solar farm in Spartanburg, S.C., and porous pavements that absorb stormwater in Philadelphia. “Here’s something we don’t talk about enough,” she said. “Let’s make sure our hospitals can stay open and operational during natural disasters.” That’s certainly something that isn’t talked about much at political rallies, even if “enough” is in the eye of the beholder.

Clinton’s teacher’s-pet focus on “resilient infrastructure” and “longer pollen seasons” doesn’t have the emotional resonance of Trump’s blustery promises to build a wall and kick terrorist ass. Her crowds are a lot smaller and quieter than his, and they tend to respond with more passion to reminders of Trump’s incendiary remarks about women, minorities, and the parents of a fallen Muslim-American soldier than explanations of the national-security threats posed by melting icecaps.

But talking about climate policy is a pretty effective way for Clinton to draw a contrast with Trump, who once claimed that global warming is a hoax manufactured in China—“The tweet is still up for everyone to see!” Clinton marveled—and has rarely mentioned it on the trail except to accuse Obama of paying excessive attention to it. Clinton's website is stuffed with amusingly detailed proposals to cut emissions, like her less-than-newsworthy pledge to “work with national building code organizations like ICC, ASHRAE and IAPMO,” while Trump’s website doesn’t even mention climate. His campaign has been about a lot of things, but policy detail hasn’t been one of them. He’s running on attitude and id, not ideas.

In fact, yesterday’s event was an unsubtle reminder that even though the race has focused far more on Trump’s rhetoric and Clinton’s emails than the nuts and bolts of policy, the policy implications will be huge. The Democratic candidate, like her party, has embraced the scientific consensus on greenhouse gases, while the Republican, like his party, has not. Clinton wants to continue Obama’s efforts to boost renewables while slashing emissions from coal and other fossil fuels, nationally and globally; Trump sees those efforts as economic foolishness that is destroying coal country and dragging down national growth. And Republican congressional leaders agree with him, so he would presumably be able to reverse the Obama approach to energy and climate if he wins the White House.

“The stakes in this election simply could not be higher,” Gore said. “We’re on the cusp of either building on this progress and solving the climate crisis, or stepping back, washing our hands of America’s traditional role as the world leader, and letting the big polluters call the shots.”

Climate may represent an outsized threat to humanity—Gore mused that the nightly news has become a nature hike through the Book of Revelations—but it’s far from the only issue where profound differences between the candidates have gotten overshadowed. Trump also wants to undo Obama’s health reforms, Wall Street reforms, and nuclear deal with Iran; Clinton does not. In addition to his plans to build a wall and keep out refugees, which get plenty of attention, Trump also wants to slash taxes for high earners, appoint Supreme Court justices reminiscent of Antonin Scalia, and slap a 35 percent tax on foreign imports, while Clinton does not.

Those are all important issues, even if they don’t play as well on cable news as Trump’s vows to throw Clinton in jail or Clinton’s ads featuring women and kids horrified by Trump’s bombast. Clinton could stage a similar event devoted to any of those issues—and for that matter, so could Trump. But whether the candidates devote time to those issues or not, and whether the voters focus on those issues or not, the winner will have enormous influence over what happens to them. As Gore knows, America’s foreign policy, tax policy, and climate policy would have unfolded quite differently if a few hundred additional Floridians had supported him in 2000.

“Elections have consequences,” he said yesterday with just a slight wince. “Your vote counts.”