If you can believe it, John McCain is now hitting the road with the message that Obama doesn’t care about poor people like John McCain does. Weapon one in that attack is McCain’s stupid proposal to suspend the federal gas tax for the summer. To summarize previous posts, that proposal is dumb because it won’t do anything to help consumers, and it will deprive the treasury of needed money.

Last week, Matt noted that Obama’s response to McCain’s proposal–that it’s not a good idea–was the right one. At the same time, he praised Clinton’s answer for its political savvy (her response being that she’d consider the holiday assuming certain unmeetable conditions could be met). Now it seems as though this was a smart move, given that McCain is hammering away at Obama (alternatively, McCain would just rather face Clinton).

Politically, over the long term, I don’t know if this was a good move for Clinton. Eventually, a bill might actually make it to the floor, and in that case a vote against for fiscal reasons can still be denounced as a vote against. The bigger issue, however, is that someone ought to be making the case to the voters that gas and other dirty fuels need to be more expensive.

A primary campaign is going to be a difficult place to make that case. In practice, the heavy lifting on this issue will probably need to come from outside groups not associated with any particular candidate. But we do need to price carbon in some way, and that will make things like gasoline more expensive. If the Democrats can’t come up with a politically digestible argument in favor of this, they’ll be continually under fire from conservatives railing against unfair and burdensome taxes. Hell, they may come under fire from the left, as well.

As for what that argument might be, well, pricing plus funding of alternatives is obviously something I support. But there isn’t that much more that the feds can do to reduce the burden, so it’s important to hammer home the idea that it’s irresponsible and self-defeating to oppose these policies in the first place. Time to break out the creative framing, I think. If the GOP can turn the estate tax into the death tax, surely the left can come up with something similar for carbon pricing.