Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

Winning a Policy Debate Is All About Timing

Groups aiming to push climate change to the top of the Democratic Party’s agenda won’t get there without a better-timed strategy.

July 16, 2021 at 1:18 PM UTC

By Jonathan Bernstein

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

Some of us are paying attention.
Photographer: Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images North America

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How do policy options move to the top of a party’s agenda? The short answer: when groups fight for them, the right way, at the right time. And while it’s never clear what’s the right way, we can say some things about it, and a lot about the timing within the political cycle.