Between the collapse of coal labor and the opioid crisis, West Virginia is one of the few regions in this country where daily life really is demonstrably worse now than a generation or two ago. It’s no surprise that “make America great again” would honestly resonate with West Virginia voters – I don’t want to sound like a jerk, but their slice of America sucks.
No careers, no opportunity, no other exploitable resources, no hope, no future. Nearly anybody with the wherewithal, resources, and modern job skills to escape has already done so. Desperate people do desperate things.
Sometimes DINOs vote right. Though they drive me mad at times, I don’t dismiss them. Gov John Bel Edwards (D-LA) is a DINO, but he gave Louisiana Medicaid expansion.
Like him or not, I can vouch that Manchin is not posing with the tough guy attitude. The Manchins (Mancinis originally) came from the same hardscrabble town in southern Italy, San Giovanni in Fiore, as my family did. Our ancestors worked in horrible conditions in the mines in norther WV to better their families. They supported John L. Lewis and the United Mine Workers to secure basic safety and economic conditions for mine workers. Though it went on for much of the 20th Century, the climax was in the 1920s. This included breaking the “company stores” that the mining conglomerates used to basically keep the workers in de-facto indentured servitude by requiring them to buy all necessities from the company, often on credit at inflated prices. During the massive 1922 strikes, my great grandparents and their 9 children were thrown out of their modest mining camp house and into army-style barracks for refusing to cross the picket lines. The Manchins lived through similar conditions. The WV Democratic politics that remain today are based on that history. Joe Manchin comes from a long line of warriors in those fights. He has stayed in power because he hasn’t forgotten what got him to where he is today, and that is the interests of blue collar WV, which for better or worse is inextricably tied with coal.
It’s a well known dark side of labor history that companies often took advantage of union racism and pitted poor white workers against (unskilled) black workers – so they wouldn’t see where the real target they should direct their grievances at.
Given that Trump won the state by a better than 3:1 ratio over Clinton, and that Manchin is hanging with the Dems (and the needs of his WV constituents) on ACA repeal, I’m willing to be very pragmatic about Manchin’s poor overall alignment with liberal ideals.
That is a very important point and is a major part of the race dynamics in WV today. I read about this in the history books but also heard firsthand accounts from my grandfather, aunts, uncles, and cousins who grew up there in the first half of the 20th century. Fomenting divisions among racial and ethnic groups was the key strategy among the wealthy corporate barons to try to keep the poor people fighting among themselves and not against the economic exploitation to which they were and are subjected. The racial resentment seen in Appalachia today is clearly a hangover of that cynical decades-long strategy.
