Interesting little tidbits about John L. Lewis.
Where ever did you get the idea that trade-unionism was solely the doing of Democrats and Commies.
You'll notice in this particular Wiki article that a "Progressive" has tried his best to tie Lewis to the leftwingtards, but he's not quite successful in doing that (which is one of the reasons I provide this particular reference ~ if Wiki's band of gay Commies can't turn a dead man into a lefty then no one can).
You might check the last Presidential race to see how West Virginia went ~ or Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Utah ~ you know, the places with coal mines and coal miners.
Remember, today's Democratic party has elected to eliminate coal, coalmines, coalmining and coalminers.
The Republicans favor fossil fuel extraction until such time as we have a satisfactory replacement.
Coal miners, like everyone else, do ultimately vote their own interests ~ and lately that's been for George Bush and the Republican Party ~ kind of like things were up until the Great Depression. Roosevelt, of course, made some promises and he got the votes. Then he lost them.
BTW, our RINOs should have been over there trying to convert Senator Dorgan once they found out what a strong AFL-CIO-UAW type unionist he was (in the undocumented tourist debate) ~ guy sounded more like John L. Lewis than any Democrat I've ever heard.
Here in our county in western pa., we sit in the middle of bituminous coal country. Though most of the mines are closed, most of the people in the coal-mining communities would rather vote for bagged dirt than a Republican. I work for a Republican elected official and she always wins by a landslide, but her smallest number of votes are in the out-lying coal mining communities. Our county did come out in favor of Bush last election, but the next county over from us, Cambria - another coal-mining county - was a blue county. If you look at a Pa. map of blue/red counties, you’ll see that most of Pa. voted red, other than the bigger cities and Cambria county. That’s Murtha’s county!