Only one major American political party still primarily operates on the premise that there is some sort of observable reality that we all inhabit. Only one still acknowledges that you cannot bend the contours of that reality to fit your needs and desires in the moment. The oceans will still rise, even if you say they aren't. While Republicans have finally begun, after decades, to admit climate change is real, this represents near-zero progress towards coming to grips with the scale of the problem and developing a course of action for our society that will meet the challenge.

Also, they are led by a president whose brain is stuck in 1986, and who consequently spent this week in the United Kingdom responding to questions on climate by ranting about how the U.S. has "the best water, the cleanest water, crystal clean, crystal..." In one interview on British TV, he did at one point acknowledge that extreme weather is a problem because tornadoes. This is considered progress on his previous position which was that climate change is a hoax created by the Chinese.

Tom Perez is chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Joe Raedle Getty Images

Anyway, all this is to say that if we want to grapple with the existential threat to the future of our species posed by the climate crisis, it's probably going to be the Democratic Party that does the grappling. This is a tough break because the Democrats are terrified of wielding power or attempting to shape public opinion. While Republicans do not hesitate to try to bulldoze their way to any victory for The Donors or The Base, Democrats anxiously examine the polls to see whether support for something has ticked up to 51 percent. Just look at impeachment: the President of the United States has repeatedly broken the law in office and violated his oath to defend the Constitution. Yet we're subjected to dithering about how a majority of the public does not yet support it. As Elizabeth Warren aptly put it at a town hall Wednesday night, leadership is bringing issues and how you'd address them to the public and making your case.

But she and the other Democratic presidential candidates will not be making a case to voters that climate change will affect their lives, directly and in the near term, or that the Democrats have the solutions to the crisis—at least not in as decisive a manner as they could have. Because the Democratic National Committee has rejected the proposition that one of the party's 2.4 million primary debates be devoted exclusively to climate change.

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BREAKING: Today the @DNC told the @JayInslee campaign that they will not host a climate debate. — Jamal Raad🌲 (@jamalraad) June 5, 2019

Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington and himself a candidate, has made climate the single animating issue of his campaign. He has an incredibly detailed climate plan, but in the short term seems more concerned with elevating the issue to a major concern in the Democratic primary. The party has not just rejected the chance to do so, but is going the extra mile to maintain a stranglehold on things.

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.@JayInslee says in a statement that the DNC turned down his request for a climate debate and "if we participated in anyone else's climate debate, we will not be invited to future debates." pic.twitter.com/uT628MnoS0 — Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) June 5, 2019

The Washington Post's Dave Weigel clarified that it's standard procedure for both parties to hold a certain number of official "debates"—and hold a monopoly on that term—while any other candidate event must be a "forum." But this is still moral and political malfeasance on the part of the Democratic Party.

Climate change is not a theoretical issue. It's no longer merely the purview of scientists and futurists. Everyday American citizens are feeling the effects right now: the expanding and more severe wildfire seasons in California and Canada; the spikes in flooding in low-lying coastal areas like Miami or Louisiana, or the rolling farmlands of the Midwest; the increasingly cataclysmic storms that now slam into the States with ferocious winds and biblical levels of rainfall; the droughts that decimate farmers' livelihoods and the food supply; the dust storms that now go rolling through the American Southwest twice as often every year. It increasingly appears all of these phenomena are changing or worsening because of changes to our climate, and it is impacting people's lives. But Democrats must make that case to voters—and the case that only they have offered anything resembling a plan to deal with it.

That is the point Democrats could have made by devoting one of their debates solely to what is perhaps the defining civilizational struggle of our time: It will affect you, it is affecting you, and we're the only ones talking about it. Climate change will lead to water disputes, as it already has around the Colorado River, and probably the Water Wars. It will lead to mass migration, as areas which used to be habitable no longer are, and those who live there are forced to move. We will spend a fortune, in taxpayer dollars, cleaning up the ravages of a planetary system driven out of balance. The crisis is here and now, and it would've been more than just good politics for the Democrats to seize on the issue and present the truth that they are the only ones willing to deal with it. It is a moral imperative for whatever portion of the American republic has retained its grip on reason to lead human civilization towards its own survival. Unless it's polling badly.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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