Appearing as a panel member on the Sunday, April 20, Disrupt with Karen Finney, MSNBC political analyst Jonathan Alter -- formerly of Newsweek -- asserted that President Obama's move to delay a final decision on the Keystone Pipeline "strongly increases the likelihood that he will rule against the pipeline after the election."

He recounted a history of Democratic presidents appeasing liberal environmentalists before leaving office when it is politically safer.

A bit later, he took a jab at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for criticizing the President's decision on the pipeline as the MSNBC analyst asked if McConnell "only like[s] dirty shovel-ready jobs," and asserted that Republicans are "not sincere about wanting to put Americans to work" because of opposition to President Obama's American Jobs Act.

Below is a transcript of the relevant portions of the Sunday, April 20, Disrupt with Karen Finney on MSNBC:

ALTER: But something I think hasn't gotten mentioned enough. We don't know for sure what his ultimate decision will be, but I think this strongly increases the likelihood that he will rule against the pipeline after the election.

For this reason: There's a pattern of Democratic presidents in the past, at the end of their time in office, making big, bold, unilateral, pro-environmental decisions that are in accord with the pro-environmental principles of the Democratic Party.

(...)

Mitch McConnell, he says, "Well, this is a shovel-ready project. Why don't we vote?" Does he only like dirty shovel-ready projects? The American Jobs Acts, which the Republicans defeated, there are dozens of shovel-ready infrastructure projects that could get going right now to create seven million jobs if the Republicans would just simply get over their anti-Obama bias and say, "Let's put America to work." They're not sincere about wanting to put Americans to work.