Posted on 11/08/2014 3:00:21 PM PST by Kaslin
It sure seems that way to Politico after the midterm elections. The writing has been on the wall since the Democratic Party nominated and elected a President who declared that his energy policies would “bankrupt” coal operators in a 2008 interview, but the cycle didn’t complete itself until after Barack Obama’s EPA began to pursue those policies in earnest. What used to be the heart of Democratic working-class union strength has now flipped entirely red, and probably permanently:
The Republicans’ romp this week may have permanently turned coal country from blue to red.
Coal-heavy districts in West Virginia, Kentucky and Illinois that had been steadily moving away from Democrats in recent elections appear to have completed that shift Tuesday, when they overwhelmingly backed Republicans who vowed to oppose what they call President Barack Obama’s “war on coal.” …
In West Virginia, once a long-time Democratic stronghold, Republicans will take control of both houses of the state legislature for the first time since 1931. Republicans picked up seven seats in the state Senate to bring the balance to 17-17, and then Democrat Daniel Hall switched parties Wednesday to give the majority to the GOP.
Voters there also elected Rep. Shelley Moore Capito as their first GOP senator in 56 years, and Republicans won three congressional contests, even kicking out 38-year incumbent Rep. Nick Rahall.
Coal was only one issue for voters, who also cited the economy and Obamacare as reasons for ditching the Democrats in the midterms. But with EPA moving ahead on rules to limit greenhouse gases from power plants, and its past pollution regulations helping push dozens of old coal-fired power plants into retirement, candidates who line up with the president became a tough sell in areas that have few other industries outside the shrinking coal-mining sector.
Democrats did manage to win in Pennsylvania, unseating unpopular Republican Tom Corbett in a 10-point walk, but that’s more of an anomaly. Republicans won 13 out of 18 House districts in the Keystone State, making the state look like this:
On top of that, despite Corbett’s loss, Republicans actually extended their majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. They added 3 takeaways to get a 30-20 majority in the state Senate and picked up eight seats in the state House and now have a commanding 119-84 margin. Tom Wolf will become governor, but he’s not going to have much luck getting a progressive agenda through the state legislature.
In the House of Representatives map, coal country now looks like this (pickups shown in light pink):
The problem for Democrats won’t just be with coal, either. Natural gas is an emerging energy source that could provide much cleaner conversion, and has abundant resources for the next century or more at today’s known holdings. However, fracking will be necessary to extract it, and Obama’s EPA has made it clear that they will be hostile to that technology as well. The fracking map goes beyond the coal-country map, which means that Democratic attempts to squelch that industry will have a wider impact than Obama’s war on coal.
It will have a longer-lasting impact, too. Democrats tell Politico’s Erica Martinson that they think they’ll have a chance to woo back coal-country voters after Obama leaves office, but it’s no secret that Democrats have backed efforts to curtail fracking and shut down efforts to extract that natural gas that could provide coal country another lease on economic life, as well as other areas outside of the traditional coal-producing region. The EPA’s attacks on fracking now will have echoes for years, perhaps decades, in this very same region and beyond. As the campaign of Alison Lundergan Grimes showed in losing by 15 points, merely paying lip service to coal miners won’t be sufficient for Democrats who keep playing footsie with the environmental extremists that want to put these voters and their families out of work and out of options.
If Democrats want to win elections in this region, they have to stop killing its primary industries. In the words of James Carville, it’s the economy, stupid.
Joe Manchin is looking for the right time to bolt. I suspect it will happen the first time Obama veto’s a pro-energy/pro-West Virginia Bill.
Of course, and it has been over for a while. What’s worse for dems, their last few coal advocates were thinned out on Tuesday as blue dogs got strangled.
I really think Manchin is going for the WV governorship (either as a Dem or Repub), which means we are going to have an open senate seat that is a lock for the general.
Might want to start considering nominees. I think it’s a little soon for Freshman Tea Partier Mooney to go for it, and I don’t want to see him lose his house seat for nothing.
Are there any solid state senators? WV needs a Cruz style advocate, and I’m afraid Capito ain’t it.
WOW .... Now, that’s a lot of RED ....
Point of historic trivia to note.
West Virginia, surprisingly to the pundits, went for George W. Bush in 2000. And though West Virginia has so few electoral votes, they were enough to put Bush over the top after the circus recount in Florida was over.
If West Virginia had gone Democrat in 2000 as so many expected, what happened in Florida would not have mattered, and Al Gore would have been elected president.
Just a note that at least since 2000, this Republican trend in West Virginia has been building up.
My thinking is that the people of West Virginia, though many of them are poor by national standards, and thus “should be” Democrats, have felt increasingly alienated from the liberal in your face politics of the national Democrats. And don’t want to be associated with that any longer.
And, realize that a vote for a Democrat House member is a vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, and a vote for a Democrat Senate candidate is a vote for Harry Reid.
Now could this also potentially mean the end of United Mineworkers? The past head of UMW is an outright Marxist and also likely has blood on his hands.
Now could this also potentially mean the end of United Mineworkers? The past head of UMW is an outright Marxist and also likely has blood on his hands.
I wonder how much money the UMWA union tossed into the money pit of dem candidates...
Nah the War on Coal will never be over as long as the EPA exists.
The one key thing Democrat Governor Hickelooper did here in Colorado that earned him reelection was, as governor, take the fracking issue off the table.
That enraged the Left beyond anything else he’s done, but it saved his political life.
“Joe Manchin is looking for the right time to bolt. I suspect it will happen the first time Obama veto’s a pro-energy/pro-West Virginia Bill.”
Is this an educated guess or do you have reliable information from a good source?
If I was Manchin I would flip but you never know what somebody else’s incentives and pressure points are.
It was an absolute sin what was done to the coal miners! Many of them lost their jobs, because of climate change lies. Our very own government persecuted these workers. We should all be ashamed. Here’s hoping they can get their incomes back.
Amazingly these union dumb asses continue to vote for THEIR enemy.
They get what they deserve IMO.
IF the country survives two more years of Obama.
And
IF the republican senate and congress govern like patriots and adults instead of keeping their snouts in the pork trough and stuffing the pockets of their friends and themselves.
And
IF the country doesn’t vote stupidly again in 2016 and elect another communist as president.
Then it could turn out that Barack Obama’s real legacy will be as the man who, thjrough his own excesses and incompetence, brought the democrat party to its knees, killed the liberal big government tidal wave that has been smothering America for the last 50 years, and put America back on the path to becoming a Conmstitutional Republic,
Based on the redness of the maps, I would think your assertion is incorrect...
Their union thug bosses are a completely different story...
They never should have supported Democrats to begin with.
Somehow, every time I see Alison Lundergan Grimes I think of the runaway bride.
I guess I meant to say in the last 2 elections. They wised up in this one.
And if they want to keep the Greens from eating away at their strongholds like Boston and San Francisco, they have to keep killing those same industries.
Sucks to be them... :)
Now that is some gerrymandering, folks. Counties in the very center of Pennsylania with no towns over 10,000, where schools close three different times in the school year for hunting, are in the same Congressional district as half of the Pennsylvania counties that border New Jersey and New York and are just a ferry ride from Manhattan Island itself.
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