Success Quote by Jennifer Granholm

Politics rarely admits it’s negotiating in real time, but Granholm does here: policy isn’t being unveiled so much as brokered. The line is built on a familiar Democratic tightrope from the early 2000s, when raising CAFE standards (fuel-economy rules) read, in Michigan and other industrial states, as a direct threat to union jobs and domestic manufacturers already reeling from global competition. By foregrounding “conversations” and “what he told us,” Granholm frames the Kerry campaign not as an ideological machine but as a coalition manager, calibrating language for constituencies that can veto a platform with a few bad headlines.

The intent is reassurance with a paper trail. She’s not arguing the merits of CAFE; she’s signaling that labor and auto leaders were consulted and, implicitly, accommodated. “Did not want to sacrifice jobs” is the emotional anchor and the political alibi. It preemptively answers the attack ad: environmental regulation equals layoffs. The phrase “work with the auto industry” is doing double duty: it softens “regulation” into “partnership,” and it gives industry a seat at the table that critics would call capture and supporters would call pragmatism.

Subtext: climate ambition is negotiable; job security is the non-negotiable headline. In that era, Democrats often sold environmental policy less as moral urgency than as an industrial strategy that wouldn’t spook manufacturing states. Granholm’s quote captures that transactional syntax: don’t say “raise standards,” say “achieve that goal” together, slowly, without triggering the word everyone fears most in an auto town - “sacrifice.”