In the latest Democratic debate on Sunday night, former Vice President Joe Biden said that if he becomes president, there will be “no new fracking” taking place in the country, according to The Daily Caller.
Biden made the declaration after his rival, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), claimed that he wasn’t tough enough on big oil companies. Biden went even further by claiming that, as president, he would push for a high-speed rail system that would “take millions of automobiles off the road,” without providing any specifics as to how it would work.
The comments reflect Biden’s increasingly leftward shift on the subject of energy, as he sacrifices his previously moderate positions to appeal to the party’s far-left base. He had previously said that he would gladly sacrifice hundreds of thousands of blue-collar energy jobs in order to make America more “green.”
Biden and Sanders are two of the last three remaining candidates in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, along with Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), who was excluded from the debate stage by the DNC. Biden is once again considered the frontrunner for the nomination, after multiple candidates dropped out and coalesced behind his candidacy to stop Sanders.