On May 1st, I predicted that the Democrats would not relent on offshore drilling until the price of gas at the pump reached $12. I think I was close to right. The Democratic Senate leadership demonstrated that $10 a gallon was not high enough to allow offshore drilling. You might think that this is politically stupid: after all, at $10 a gallon, the impact would be devastating, particularly to the poor and middle class voters. But there is a hard core of environmental extremist who have been very faithful in supporting the Democrats, and losing their support would be very painful. While voters might punish Democrats for their opposition, allowing offshore drilling would not win them any votes, and it would certainly cost them the environmentalist support. The Democrats are between a rock and a hard place, assuming that Republicans have the wit to press the issue very very hard. We’ll see.
