Living in KY, I absolutely get why this is hard. The attachment to coal is purely an emotional one. There’s no argument against coal that Appalachia wants to hear or that they’ll even accept because it’s not even about coal itself. Coal represents so many things and merely acts as a stand in for a myriad of other grievances and represents a shared past and heritage.
I’ve seen both great and bad pols fall into this trap. Coal country really only wants to hear one thing, that lawmakers will do everything in their power to protect coal, their way of life and heritage. The fight for coal is about tradition, preservation of the past, fear of an ever changing world, etc. It’s about, “my daddy dug coal, his daddy dug coal, my great granddaddy dug coal, etc.” It’s no different from the fears and resentments of other rural voters who feel left out and left behind except there’s a bond forged due to the danger of the work, a brotherhood that makes them deeply entrenched into protecting an industry that’s destroying them and their loved ones.
The last line on the series finale of Justified sums it up quite nicely. Boyd asked Raylon why he drove all the way up to KY from Miami to tell him in person about Ava’s death. The answer was a simple one that summed up the entire series and everything that happened-“we dug coal together”.
Here’s the thing-sure, it hurts her in WV, KY, and possibly some small towns in OH-all places she absolutely doesn’t need to win, places where she’ll still do better than Obama in '08 and '12, and areas where Democrats have been doing poorly for a very long time. On the other hand, it helps her in Louisville, Lexington, Huntington, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland, places where any Democrat needs to run up their vote totals in order to win those states. At worst, it’s a wash.
The demise of coal as an employer in Appalachia was foreordained before the idea of reducing greenhouse gasses was a serious point of discussion. Continuous mining mechanization in the underground mines, the expansion of the Wyoming and Montana coal fields, where 50 foot seams of high quality coal lay under a few feet of prairie dirt, and the declining demand for new steel (as much due to steel’s recyclibility as to the reduction in demand to build new infrastructure) were killing coal employment even before Kentucky and West Virginia began to fall behind Wyoming in total production.
But people sat there in the Appalachian coal towns, year after year, convinced the jobs would come back some day if only they waited long enough and politicians in those states said all they really needed to do to bring them back was consent to the demise of the UMWA.
From the perspective that it has an impact on people’s lives, what’s going on with the coal industry is rough, but it has to be this way. For the sake of our planet, we have to cultivate cleaner forms of energy. Clinton doesn’t owe this man an apology because he can’t face this hard truth. She has said in several of her debates that the have to find solutions for regions like West Virginia. Hint. They don’t involve propping up an industry that should be laid to rest.
Sanders is doing well in Louisville, I think. I see Bernie signs and bumper stickers every day, but that’s really no indication of what his actual support looks like. It’s Derby and people are out celebrating, so it’s hard to tell. He’s going to have a rally here today at the Big Four Bridge downtown during rush hour on a day that’s filled with activities in the area. They’ve already issued a traffic congestion warning (we don’t do well with traffic here lol), and THAT really could hurt him. We’ll see.
I can just hear The Donald: “I’ll bring those jobs back we’ve lost and create more. Trust me! Trust me! On day one. I’m the only one who can do it.”
A WV resident has put forth the truth better than I could:
[- No president, of either party, can do a damned thing about coal mining
jobs. (Neither can any of our state politicians, though you’d never
guess it from their campaigns!)
West Virginia’s very geography
makes investment very, very expensive; only two of the state’s 55
counties (Berkeley and Jefferson, in the Eastern Panhandle) are mostly
flat. In the remaining 53 counties, something like 79% of the land has a
greater than 4% grade.
Claiming that mountaintop removal sites
produce flat land is a dream - or a nightmare. Talk about toxic waste!
And those sites are still surrounded by mountains, making the building
of needed infrastructure (like roads and bridges) again very, very
expensive.
West Virginia (indeed, all of Appalachia) has been a
sacrifice zone for the rest of the country for more than a century, but I
don’t see any non-local politicians stepping up and agreeing they need
to help foot the bill for the damage done in order to give the other 40+
states cheap power.
We have lousy schools, and the currently
Republican-controlled legislature is likely going to cut their budgets
HARD because we have such a shortfall. (Indeed, the legislature
adjourned without passing any budget, and I’ve been told by a Dem
legislator they’re unlikely to do anything about it until after our
primary on May 10, “so they can see which way the wind is blowing.”)
IOW, it doesn’t matter what Hillary or Trump say. Unless the feds basically take
over and revamp this state from top to bottom, nothing is going to get
better and many, many things are going to continue to get worse.
And I’m an optimist compared to most folks here. ]
The irony in this kerfuffle is that Sec. Clinton was trying to tell these people that she would use her powers as president to provide assistance to the towns which are being ravaged, impacted by the collapsing coal economy, but that’s not what she said. Her statement was an unfortunate, but unintended gaff.
Often Sec. Clinton’s campaigning problem is that she tries to be a forcefully loud and dynamic speaker in her stump speeches, and the shout to heaven and come to Jesus boiler room speech is hard to pull off. She needs simply to just be herself by just telling her own story and presenting her policies in her own words…clearly and with passion. Let the Trump Chump take care of the screaming.
Oh well…and to the point! The best goal isn’t to turn back the clock on an obsolete and dangerous industry but to bring ways for coal country to move forward with the newer technologies, and that was what Clinton was talking about: Don’t abandon West Virginians as energy evolves to remove their past economic center, but instead help them move to serve the new energy industries.
I agree – that is what it is exactly about. Rational heads say all the right things – coal is on decline, it’s hazardous to coal miners’ health and environment, we should invest in renewable energy industries and new needed skill training in the area for inevitable transition, etc… only to encounter hostility and stubborn resistance from those very people who, objectively speaking, most likely would benefit from those “right things.” And it’s not limited to coal. Human beings are more irrational than rational, and there is always fear of the unknown and uncertainty in people’s minds. Plus, in actuality, adjustment to newness is not always easy for everyone, esp for older people in old industries.
Another reason progressive reforms should be implemented carefully – since they don’t happen in abstract.
Where I live in PA (one of those counties Hillary carried 3:2), there weren’t a lot of signs and bumper stickers anyway, regardless of the candidates (R or D). On the Democratic side, I don’t remember seeing Hillary’s bumper stickers, not a single one, whereas Sanders’s bumper stickers were seen relatively often (I saw a couple of his yard signs as well).
My father’s side of the family is from WV and have had uncles die from black lung and all that comes with coal. Yet, they are proud of the heritage. One of my uncles is in his eighties and still president of his local of the United Mine Workers Union. It’s a complicated relationship and no politician who is telling them the truth is going to make them happy. I’m actually curious to hear what Trumka has to say because he comes from the Mine Workers union also.
As a side note, Applachia gets a bad rap because of the poverty there, but it is some of the most beautiful, pastoral land in the country. I plan on buying a house on the side of one of those lush green mountains down 81 one day when I tire of DC. If one ever gets the chance, they should definitely visit.
I would say over and over that Coal Country needs State Governments and a Federal Government working together to create a NEW economy that will create more and better jobs than the mines ever delivered.
I’d be willing to bet that some of the people hanging onto coal as a job industry would also fight Fed and State transition assistance as some sort of “government takeover.”
“a bit sad and sorry that I gave people an excuse to be angry at me…”.
She didn’t give the coal miners an ‘excuse’. She gave them a ‘reason’. Thus the implication of Clinton as ‘victim’ and marginalizing the coal miners at the same time for using an ‘excuse’ to criticize her. She should have stopped at “a bit sad and sorry”. But the woman can’t help herself.
