1. First: the elephant in the room that he doesn't mention explicitly but haunts the whole piece: climate change is real, we've already overshot and the only way to turn the corner is to leave fossil fuel in the ground. To ignore that is to talk about rocketry and ignore gravity.

2. What he says about climate is patently false (more on that later) but to the extent he's saying "politicians shouldn't do the right thing unless it's popular", I'd note only that that is a toddlers view of leadership. If the popular kids are mean, should you be mean?

3. Leadership is about doing what is necessary, not just what is popular. Read literally anything our founders wrote about virtue, and the inherent risks to a society based on democratic processes to sustain the rule of law to the extent that unvirtuous people gain power.

4. Yglesias instead seems to implicitly argue that politicians should only do what wins elections, virtue be damned. One wonders what he thinks of those foolish 1850s abolitionists. As Condleeza Rice once said, politics is the art of making the impossible inevitable. That ain't this.

5. But enough on climate. This is an opinion piece and if MY's opinion is that we shouldn't act on climate at a scale sufficient to the threat there's not much I can do. Let's go to the facts. First, the idea that Obama won in 2012 because he embraced an all-of-the-above strategy. Really?

6. That election had a robust debate over the gulf war and criticism of the size of the 2008 bailout. Romney was framed as an out of touch plutocrat. To the extent energy came up it was the criticism of the Dems for Waxman Markey cap & trade in 2009, not "thank you for drilling".