Many people are still scratching their heads at the person the Democratic Party chose to make the rebuttal to President Trump’s congressional address Tuesday night. Picking ex-Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear—an old white guy who hasn’t been in office since 2015—instead of fresher face of the party, like New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro or Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, looked desperate and awkward.
But what’s makes Beshear an even odder fit —beyond his advanced age and lack of pigmentation—is that he was a vociferous critic of former President Barack Obama, the party’s new standard bearer.
In 2016, Beshear complained about Obama making “back room deals” with his Republican successor Matt Bevin over Kentucky’s Medicaid-expansion replacement. Beshear demanded that Obama and Bevin “pull back the curtain, stop the back room deals, and allow for full disclosure and transparency” during their negotiations. He warned that the outcome would have an impact on the health care of hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians.
A year earlier, Beshear was upset with Obama about something else. He tweeted out, “I’m extremely disappointed & frustrated by [President Obama’s] new EPA rule. This proposal is disastrous for Kentucky coal & manufacturing economies.”
As governor, Beshear supported a lawsuit by his attorney general, and 21 other states, against the Obama administration over the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. Beshear blasted the EPA’s regulations as “ill-conceived one-size-fits-all plan will do significant harm to Kentucky families, our manufacturing companies and the overall economy.”
One of President Trump’s top campaign promises was to roll back burdensome regulations, particularly those on the coal industry. Trump’s comments contrasted with Hillary Clinton’s notable gaffe during her White House run, where she told Ohio town hall attendees that her administration would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
Maybe Beshear wasn’t the best guy to carry the torch for the Democratic Party after all?
