Washington State Governor Jay Inslee announced his candidacy for the 2020 presidential election. As has become a trend in political announcements, the Democrat released a video on Friday on YouTube.
Titled Our Movement with the hash tag #OurClimateMoment, the video positions Inslee for the moment as a single-issue candidate focused on climate change. In the video, Inslee says, “We’re the first generation to feel the sting of climate change. And we’re the last who can do something about it.” Invoking the moon project, he said the country’s “next mission must be to rise up to the most urgent challenge of our time—defeating climate change.”
The video closes with overlapping shots of people saying “This is our moment.” One of the figures is Bill Nye, a television personality known as “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” as CNN noted. Nye often addresses the issue of climate change. Inslee has not yet said that he’d support a Green New Deal, although he as spoken positively about it. He joins a crowded field with 12 other Democrats already having announced.
Inslee headed the Democratic Governors Association in 2018, which boosted his national profile. While traveling the country to support Democrats running for governor, also pushed the issue of climate change.
In a February 24 interview on CBS, Inslee turned a discussion about Donald Trump’s declaration of a border emergency to the climate change, saying, “That’s an emergency where we ought to have the help of the federal government.”
When asked about declaring an actual climate change emergency, Inslee said that while he considered the president’s actions “illegal and unconstitutional,” that “if there are new rules, the Republicans have to understand that Democrats will play by whatever the rules are particularly when it comes to climate change.”