Chapter 726 - 338: Progressive Civil War

Washington D.C., Hart Senate Office Building.

Leo pushed open the heavy wooden door to Daniel Sanders’s office.

The room was already full of people.

Sanders sat behind a large desk.

Leo pulled out the chair directly across from Sanders and sat down. He placed a thick, bound proposal flat on the tabletop.

"I trust everyone knows what we’re here to discuss." Leo looked at everyone present and got straight to the point. "So I’ll be direct."

"Our Computing Power Special Zone in Pennsylvania needs energy."

"A tremendous amount of energy."

"We need a baseload power source that is completely stable and has zero carbon emissions. The current energy options cannot meet industrial demands of this scale."

Leo pushed the proposal forward slightly.

"I’ve decided to restart the decommissioned units at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant. Furthermore, we will also designate an area in the Allegheny Mountains to build small modular reactors."

The room was silent for three seconds.

Alexandra shot up from the sofa.

The young Representative from the New York Bronx District slammed the documents in her hand onto the coffee table.

"Absolutely not!" Alexandra shouted, staring intently at Leo. "Leo, we’ve always supported what you’re doing in the Rust Belt."

"You fight insurance companies and stand up for workers’ interests. We considered you a hero of the Progressives. And now you want to bury nuclear waste in our constituents’ backyards!"

Susan, the environmental champion from California, was next to speak.

"Three Mile Island was the site of the worst nuclear accident in United States history, and now you want to restart it? There is no way that will pass an environmental assessment."

"We fought for over a decade against the permanent nuclear waste repository project at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. We barely managed to stop highly radioactive waste from contaminating the groundwater, and now you want to create thousands of tons of new nuclear waste."

Sanders sat in his chair, his expression grave.

"Leo, nuclear energy is dangerous and extremely expensive," Sanders said, looking at Leo. "More importantly, it’s an industry with absolute capital concentration."

"Building a nuclear power plant requires an investment of tens of billions of US dollars. Only monopolistic energy giants like Constellation Energy or Vistra can afford to play that game."

Sanders crossed his arms over his chest.

"The core of the Green New Deal we advocate for is decentralization. We want communities to have their own solar microgrids. We want control over energy to be in the hands of ordinary people."

"Your aggressive push for nuclear power will inevitably lead to our energy supply being monopolized once again by a handful of corporate giants."

"This completely contradicts our political platform. I cannot support you in Congress."

Here, in front of the core members of the Progressives, Sanders had once again made his position clear.

Leo remained seated, calmly weathering this fierce barrage.

He had long anticipated this reaction.

Sanders himself was a pioneer of the anti-nuclear movement and had given multiple speeches in the Senate calling for the closure of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant.

"Senator, we need to face physical reality," Leo said, looking at Sanders. "Decentralized community microgrids can light up household lightbulbs, but they can’t power large steel furnaces or support a hundred thousand high-end graphics cards training an AI model simultaneously."

"Industrial revitalization requires a massive and continuous energy input. If we completely abandon nuclear power, Pennsylvania’s only other option is to build new natural gas power plants on a massive scale."

"That would generate astronomical carbon emissions, and your climate goals would be dead on arrival."

Alexandra shook her head.

"We can develop energy storage technology! We can build large-scale battery arrays to solve the intermittency problem of wind and solar."

Mark, who had been silent until now, spoke up.

"The cost of energy storage technology is too high. Current battery arrays can’t possibly cover the industrial power gap for all of Western Pennsylvania."

Mark stood up and walked to the side of the desk.

"Besides, I support Leo’s plan."

This burly Representative from Minnesota was the primary agent for the manufacturing unions in Congress, representing the few remaining large heavy-industry unions in the Midwest.

Alexandra and Susan both turned to look at Mark.

"Mark, are you crazy?" Alexandra demanded. "Do you have any idea how many votes from environmentalist constituents this will cost us?"

"All I know is that a nuclear power plant provides jobs," Mark said, looking Alexandra straight in the eye. "Operating a nuclear plant requires several thousand highly skilled workers. All of those positions are protected by the Union, with starting salaries far above the national average."

"Restarting the plant would also immediately create jobs for several thousand construction workers and specialized welders."

Mark turned to Sanders.

"Senator, I represent the working class. The workers in the Midwest worry every day that their factories will shut down. Natural gas extraction is restricted, and the coal mines have already been closed. If you won’t even let us have nuclear power, how are my constituents supposed to provide for their families?"

"Should they go be temp workers in California’s solar panel factories? A lot of those solar companies hire cheap, non-union labor."

The room once again descended into a fierce debate.

Leo remained in his chair, observing the schism forming within the Progressives.

This kind of split was an inevitable product of electoral politics in the United States.

Any large political alliance is cobbled together from constituent groups with completely different demands.

Politicians must make difficult choices between these groups.

Alexandra represented the young, progressive voters in big cities. They lived in economically developed areas like New York or Los Angeles and weren’t sensitive to high electricity bills.

They pursued absolute environmental justice and ideological purity, demanding the complete elimination of all potential sources of pollution.

Mark represented the blue-collar workers of the Rust Belt and the Midwest, who were facing the most direct existential crisis.

They needed continuous industrial orders, stable factory operations, and wages that could pay their mortgages and medical bills.

On energy policy, these two sets of needs created an irreconcilable conflict.

Sanders had tried to bridge this divide with the Green New Deal, promising that clean energy jobs would replace fossil fuel jobs.

But Leo had laid the cold, hard reality on the table.

The vacuum created during the transitional period of industrial upgrading couldn’t be filled with empty promises.

A politician had to choose which group’s interests to represent.

"Everyone, we need a unified stance," Leo said, knocking on the table. "I came to Washington today because I need your absolute support at the congressional level."

Susan looked at Leo.

"You already have immense executive power in Pennsylvania; you even control the State Assembly. You could absolutely push this project forward on your own within the state. Why run to Washington and force us to take a stand?"

"Because I need money."

Leo’s answer was brutally direct.

"Loan approval from the Department of Energy requires political backing from Congress. I need all of you to stay quiet, and even vote in favor of this project in key committees."

Facing this group, Leo didn’t need to explain much about why he needed a loan from the Department of Energy.

These politicians had done the same thing countless times when advancing their own projects.

Alexandra let out a cold laugh.

"Leo, you’ve been brainwashed by those energy giants and industrial capitalists. The way you’re talking now, you sound exactly like an agent of the plutocrats, willing to do anything for profit."

"This is the logic of survival," Leo said, not backing down. "No federal loan, no nuclear power plant. No nuclear power plant, no Computing Power Special Zone. And Pennsylvania’s industrial revitalization will grind to a halt."

"I won’t threaten the White House over this," Leo continued. "Because I’m confident this is a project that the leadership of both parties will support."

Leo looked at Sanders.

"I hope we can push this forward as a united front for the Progressives. We can use this as an opportunity to bring the nuclear industry under our regulatory framework."

"We can force those energy giants to accept stricter labor protection clauses and allow the unions to be deeply involved in the operational management of the power plants."

"This is our chance to take a dominant position in the future energy landscape, not be shut out of it forever."

Sanders slowly rose to his feet.

He walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, his back to everyone in the room.

"Leo, your proposal crosses a line for the Progressives," Sanders’s voice reached their ears. "I can understand Mark’s urgency in protecting workers’ livelihoods, and I admit we face immense real-world obstacles to our climate goals."

Sanders turned around.

"But I cannot publicly support the expansion of nuclear power. The moment I open that door, our credibility with environmentalist voters across the country will completely collapse. The political foundation of the Progressives would be uprooted."

"This is a zero-sum game," Leo said. "You have to make a choice."

"My choice is to refuse," Sanders gave a clear answer. "I will not stop Mark from privately fighting for your interests, but the Progressive caucus will vote against any bill providing a federal loan guarantee for this project."

The atmosphere in the conference room dropped to freezing.

Alexandra picked up her coat.

"You’ve disappointed us so much, Leo," Alexandra said as she walked to the door. "You’re becoming the very person we used to detest—a complete and utter agent of big capital."

"From this day forward, the Progressive organizations in New York will completely boycott all the energy projects you’re implementing in Pennsylvania."

Susan followed close behind Alexandra and left the office.

Mark sighed and walked over to Leo, patting him on the shoulder.

"I’ll do my best to lobby a few Representatives from the Midwest for you in the House," Mark said, then also left the room.

Only Leo and Sanders were left in the office.

Leo closed the document in front of him and stood up.

"Senator, you’ve lost a golden opportunity to unite the blue-collar class across all of America," Leo said, looking at the politician. "Ideological purity can’t turn the gears of a factory. I will get that loan. I will knock on the Department of Energy’s door my own way."

Leo turned and left.

He had originally hoped to rely on the internal unity of the Progressives to further drive his agenda within the Democratic Party.

But he had overestimated the tolerance of their ideology.

It now seemed impossible to completely take over this group of old, hidebound Progressives.

Leo walked out of the Congress Building and stood on the wide steps, gazing at the spire of the Washington Monument in the distance.

’If that’s how it is...’

A cold look came into Leo’s eyes.

’Then the only thing to do is dismantle this broken-down ship, take the salvaged planks, and build a new warship.’

’This time, he would be the one to define what progress is.’