The vast gulf separating the champions of clean energy and the champions of cheap energy will prove very relevant in the next presidential election. Or at least that’s what I argue in my latest column for The Daily:

We don’t generally think of Ohio as an energy powerhouse, but it’s home to vast swaths of the Marcellus and Utica shale formations. Until recently, no one gave much thought to these shale formations. Though rich in the hydrocarbons that make our industrial civilization run, accessing the oil and natural gas embedded in them was difficult and expensive. But a number of new technologies, including hydraulic fracturing, better known as “fracking,” and steerable drilling, have transformed the landscape. The cost of unlocking the energy in shale formations has plummeted, and Ohio has become the epicenter of billions of dollars in new energy investment.

Given the extraordinary potential of shale gas, you’d think that enthusiasm for it would be universal. But advocates of renewable energy, particularly the kinds that are far more expensive than shale gas, have launched a fierce PR war against fracking, centered on environmental concerns. The basic case against it is that the fluids used in hydraulic fracking are dangerous to human health and that the drilling process destroys natural landscapes. In “The Shale Gas Shock,” science writer Matt Ridley argues that these concerns are overblown. While shale gas is far from perfect, it is, in Ridley’s view, “cheaper, cleaner, more environmentally beneficial and more humane than electricity from coal, oil, nuclear, wind, solar and biomass.” That might not be good enough for the green movement, much of which has an almost theological objection to fracking and drilling. But it will be for millions of Ohio voters, who recognize the potential of shale gas to offer them a better life.

The political implications are straightforward:

Ohio’s potential comeback has national implications. For decades, Ohio has been one of America’s chief electoral battlegrounds. During the last presidential election, economic turmoil helped Obama win the state. In 2010, however, high unemployment and anti-incumbent anger led Ohio voters to vote out Ted Strickland, a once-popular Democratic governor, and replace him with the polarizing and gutsy conservative John Kasich. With the next election still a long way off, all we can reliably say is that Ohio is up for grabs.

A new Quinnipiac poll finds that Obama holds narrow leads over Mitt Romney (44 to 42 percent) and Rick Perry (44 to 41 percent). Once Republicans have a nominee, they’d be wise to press the energy issue to their advantage. In recent weeks, Obama has been firing up the base by promising to eliminate “tax loopholes for oil companies.” Among other things, the Obama administration’s new deficit plan proposes axing a tax code provision that allows energy companies to deduct the expenses of drilling new wells. This would dramatically raise the costs of developing new energy sources in Ohio, at a time when the state unemployment rate has climbed from 8.6 percent in May to 9.1 percent in August.

Unless the president retreats from bashing the oil and gas industry, Ohio might just slip out of his grasp.

I’m frankly amazed that the White House hasn’t connected the dots between its war on the expensing of drilling costs and an energy development that will benefit some of the country’s most economically hard-hit regions. This is why I’m convinced that the president really does believe he’s doing the right thing, and that the political cost is acceptable. It could be that the Obama campaign is essentially writing off states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, and banking on winning over upscale voters in states like Colorado, Virginia, and North Carolina. Perhaps that will turn out to be a wise decision. I’m skeptical — provided the next Republican nominee understands the scale of the shale gas opportunity and why it matters. 

There is no small irony in the president’s strategy of writing off the industrial Midwest and its working class voters in favor of a coalition of “wired workers” and public employees.