Don’t get me wrong, there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to see the Democrats completely decimated in West Virginia, and holding onto the governor’s mansion is probably the best way to sustain Team Blue’s pulse, but I just can’t get with this:
On Tuesday, coal billionaire Jim Justice convincingly defeated ex-U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin and state Senate Minority Leader Jeff Kessler in the Democratic primary. Justice, who is the wealthiest man in West Virginia, decisively outspent his opponents, though while he did some self-funding, he didn’t used his personal resources to flood the airwaves the same way other rich candidates have in other states.
Justice will now face state Senate President Bill Cole, who had no opposition in the Republican primary. A pair of recent polls show Justice with clear leads against Cole, though we’re still operating with limited data. However, Team Blue can take absolutely nothing for granted here in the fall. While Democrats have held the governorship since 2001, this conservative state has been trending Republican, especially during the Obama administration. In 2014, the GOP seized control of both chambers of the legislature for the first time since the Great Depression, and they also ended the Democrats’ generations-long hold over the 3rd Congressional District while easily taking an open U.S. Senate seat. Cole and national Republicans will work hard to complete West Virginia’s transformation from conservative Democratic bastion to Republican stronghold.
Cole and his allies at the Republican Governors Association also will have some material to hit Justice with. Justice has a history of late-fees and safety violations at his coalmines. In December of 2014, Justice was also caught on video berating the police officer who pulled him over for speeding. Justice’s Democratic foes didn’t have the resources to attack him over these issues in earnest, but the GOP is unlikely to have that problem. The good news for Democrats is that Justice can essentially spend as much money as he wants to get his message out. Daily Kos Elections rates the general election as Lean Republican.
I’m not an anti-coal absolutist in the sense that I expect West Virginia Democrats to sacrifice everything they care about on the altar of shunning coal, especially when I know that that would render them extinct in the short term. And I’d prefer candidates who aren’t the richest people in the state, but I can tolerate a self-funder every once in a while.
But a guy who has a bad record on mine safety and berates cops is not someone I’m going to support even when I agree with them on most issues.
Sorry, but that’s a bridge too far for me.
Really helps to have Hillary say she wants to see coal miners lose their jobs. Way to go for Team Blue!
BTW, in yesterday’s primary 19% voted for “other” instead of Sanders or Clinton, but none of the news media say who “other” is. Nineteen percent is a significant number. I, for one, am interested in who “other” is.
Following the status quo means that coal miners will continue to lose their jobs. You do understand that what mountaintop removal methods mean is that West Virginia has passed the point of peak coal. How much of the state will they destroy for poorer and poorer jobs.
To provide people incomes, they either have to have new jobs there (meaning infrastructure and investment — in what?) or people have to be subsidized to move elsewhere. Or people have to create a new economy at a lower standard of living — for West Virginia. The geography of the state is a challenging opponent to making a living and always has been.
I understand the problem. However, the correct messaging is NOT “I want to see coal miners lose their jobs.” Maybe something more positive like “I want to see coal miners get safer and better jobs”?
Jesus.
Two seconds of googling that took me.
This is textbook economic Dutch Disease. Don’t be an extraction state if you want a balanced economy. It’s no t like the symptoms and the cures aren’t perfectly well known, too, but there is seldom sophistication enough to fight the profiteers to a draw. Only Norway and Alaska come to mind.
As far as political promises…
Sigh…..When doing this kind of refutation to those on “our side” becomes a full time job, one wonders if we have truly jumped the shark.
Fortunately, it only took two seconds of my time.
It adds up.
.
You’re up against the progressive version of Clinton Derangement Syndrome. None of your fact checking will make a bit of difference.
Has retraining ever actually worked?
Retraining works for younger individuals if there is already demand for the positions they’re training for. But, generally it doesn’t.
Even demand might not be enough.
Locally a union machinist was discussing his industry. There is a definitely a demand for machinists, but the trade schools are not producing machinists skilled enough for those jobs and because companies are stingy AND because of retirements, there are no longer enough experienced machinists to take apprentices enough to fit demand which means you have machinists, and you demands for them, but you still can’t fill the role so maybe you start looking to hire machinists from abroad.
Personally I think we need to bring back on the job training in a big way but that is beside the point.
Actually, I don’t think that’s besides the point. Germany has a strong apprenticeship system and that’s a big part of why it retains a highly skilled workforce and a lot of manufacturing. The government can act to make it work better, too:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-germany-is-so-much-better-at-training-its-wo
rkers/381550/
My wife works for a German company and she noted that the German IT guys ALL want to get work visas for America. Is IT treated different that manufacturing in Germany I wonder?
Are they prepared to be used like rented mules?
Damn straight. Try to find a pattern maker!
Can computerized design and 3-D manufacture replace them?
Soon, but not right now AFAIK.
Only if there is an industry or industries that come in locally to hire people. And only if you are not talking about a massive number of people.
Increasingly, the ecological disruption of the US economy erases both of those conditions.
Too bad there’s not serious discussion of this issue by people with money an power.
Agree with that. Retraining will do nothing of itself without industry nearby who need it. Better to use infrastructure programs. That should almost be a no brainier.
You may find it on google but that is NOT how TV & radio news reported it, even SiriusXM Potus.
How many West Virginia voters use google to fact check and how many listen to the 6:00 News? You are living in a bubble, not the real world.
And doesn’t 19% of the West Virginia Democrats saying “none of the above” not pique your curiosity?
How big are the restoration efforts? Clean-up?
Ecotourism is growing, from some reports.
Rewilding is paying off in Europe for rural communities.
Be a great place for predator restocking–a huge draw in Western states.
The coal and chemical industries have weaseled out of every restoration and clean-up effort that did not have strong federal and court muscle behind it. Guess how that has been going the past decade and a half. Only the high-profile spill into the Greenbrier (or was it the Kanawha) River got major action. Likewise with the high-visibility trial of one very well known CEO who contravened sound safety practices.
Rewilding means the return of catamounts and bobcats in numbers–and the control of coyotes, which have become invasive in the East. The population density of West Virginia, although low is much higher than that in the West. Rewilding could cause problems in settlements more frequently than where it is going on in Western states. And WV is pretty thick with settlements, despite their rural character. Lots of valley and hollow settlements even now. Might require segregation into larger wildlife refuges, which requires government action, which brings out the shotguns.
Even the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Shenandoah National Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, and all of the Piedmont TVA lakes in the South rand into that.
Only 12.8% Other in Dem Primary. No mystery on who they are. The De La Fuente has been the crank many states and get the crank vote. Judd is a perennial crank. Here’s Farrell, trying to be a favorite son candidate but skipped running in any prior elections.
To be fair, the number of coal mining jobs has been declining since 1923. So, HRC was awkwardly stating a reality that has been impacting WV for decades and one nobody has any constructive answers to.
Tourism and wind power could provide plenty of jobs, although it would be difficult to get jobs that pay as well as unionized coal jobs once did (but isn’t that true everywhere?). Still, a lot better than the current situation.
This article discusses what Central Illinois is doing about the loss of coal mining jobs. It’s not great, but it is being addressed. Coal was a big industry in Central and Southern Illinois for 100 years, although it has been on the steep decline since the 1970’s. Mother Jones is buried in Mt. Olive, IL. She has an impressive memorial, which is a tourist attraction.
http://www.sj-r.com/news/20160423/mine-layoffs-hit-hardest-in-areas-that-can-afford-it-least
Here’s Judd from four years ago: prison inmate wins more than 40% in WV primary/
Just in general, there are many occasions in which morality coincides with pragmatism: in this case, for example, such a governor, if elected, could damage the democratic brand long term, even nationally
This story illustrates exactly why I am a bear about this election.
Democratic victory under the current circumstances does not move toward good policy; it moves faster at the state and local level toward folly and corruption. Corporate and polluter capture is going on in all states and with both parties.
Just look at the Janet Cowell situation in North Carolina. A Democratic Treasurer already set up and serving on corporate boards while being the sole pension fund trustee for all of the state’s employees. What does that do to the Democratic brand? Or the three Durham NC county commissioners, who were voted out in the primary but did a sweetheart deal for a developer that enables the developer to dodge $1 million that he should be paying the county government. Although non-partisan, all of the commissioners have run as Democrats in the past. Their excuse? The shopping center that will cost the county funds to repair stormwater infringement into a flood plain will bring in retail jobs. But there are no tenants signed up yet. In this area for developers, the promise of “jobs” is catnip for politiicans, especially when there is damage to the environment involved. The fact that all of these commissioners are black has added a racial dimension that Durham has worked hard to overcome. The commissioners have not helped by treating the issue as “because they are black” rather than on the environment mertis of the case. The developer, a prominent Democrat, even got the GOP legislature to write a special bill for him to allow him to get around the state environmental rules, which puts the state in violation of its commitments to the EPA.
President Obama notwithstanding, solving local, state, and national problems through electoral politics is being activel blocked now because of the greater organizational, media, and legal resources of the rulers of the status qua and the awakening of individual CEOs to direct political engagement.
The people of West Virginia continue to be screwed by the actions of their “betters” as the Mountain State creeps toward the environment of Mordor.
Well, by the standard you land on here, Clinton’s well-publicized “coal jobs are going away” comment and decent job of holding her position even when talking to a jobless coal industry worker in West Virginia is an important brand-building portion of her campaign, correct?
I’m sure you know this, but that comment was so taken out of context. Reminded me of “You didn’t build that.” But nonetheless, it was a really sloppy turn of phrase within an otherwise sensible answer. I also think the tone was a little too smug? Pleased? something…
I completely know it was taken out of context. But Hillary isn’t trying to promise to West Virginia and Kentucky miners that their jobs will come back if they elect her President and it’ll be just fine. Unlike Trump, who will help coal miners win so much they’ll be sick of winning.
I was speaking to TarheelDem’s concerns about the Democratic Party becoming the Pollution Party. It’s worth commending Hillary, President Obama and other Party leaders who have actually taken a number of actions and positions which aggressively address climate and environmental issues. Hell, the EPA’s actions have been sufficiently aggressive to see the Agency sued over and over and over again by polluting interests, such as energy companies and the Republican Party.
…the LEGALIZATION of direct political engagement by interested individual CEOs.
They always could run. Now they can bring money from their corporate legal entities with them and are not limited to their personal money.
This is not your Father’s Democratic Party. It certainly isn’t my father’s Democratic party which was Bernie Sanders’ father’s Democratic Party. Maybe it isn’t even your Democratic Party.
Do some serious thought, Booman, not to the mechanics of winning, which you are superb at, but to the ethics of our societal structure and the ethics of boosting those who callously pretend to be the champion of the people but are in fact the champion of the people’s enemies. You have pointed out how the rotten structure of the Republican Party is collapsing, but fail to see the internal cancer in the Democratic Party. BOTH parties must die in a realignment. It matters not if one or both retain their ancient names. It’s Bastille Day and you stand with the Royalists.
My father’s Democratic Party included Secretary of State James F. “Jimmy” Byrnes, Secretary of Commerce Luther Hodges of North Carolina, Governor then Senator Fritz Hollings, Governor then Senator Olin Johnston, Rep. William Jennings Bryan Dorn, Governor Robert McNair, Governor John West, Governor Richard Riley — as well the Barnwell Ring who controlled the State House and Edgefield native Strom Thurmond.
Of course, the business executives back then tended to hide the fact when they were adolescent jerks.
If I follow correctly, your father’s Democratic Party was the Dixiecrat version, in the days when the only meaningful elections in the South were the Democratic primaries. In much of the South the same system still exists; only the labels have been changed.
My point is that during my father’s era the Dixiecrat version split and an alternative appeared and was immediately squashed.
The current one-party system in the South where there is zero Democratic opposition tends eventually to split Democrats in the mid-1940s geographically or by personal networks or by industrial sectors with competing interests.
Even in the Cotton Ed Smith pre-Dixiecrat (pre the name) days, there were vicious intra-party fights made all the more vicious because they were really about nothing but personal power.
But in my father’s day, you could have a pro-labor Senator (Olin Johnston), governors who invested in roads, schools, colleges and universities, educational broadcasting, and research parks. And most significantly, politicians who took on the racist attitudes of their states and for a while brought about some significant changes. Part of the reason that North Carolina did not have GOP control of the legislature until 2010 was the policies those politicians pursued. Part of the reason the Democrats lost power was selling out to corporate power and feathering personal nests with corporate money.
I think more cops needs to be berated, maybe even most of them. A lot of the problems with police is that they can berate citizens with impunity. I sure as fuck can’t do it, I’d get disappeared or end up dead.
That said, you can’t expand without actually standing for something. It’s built on sand otherwise.
Isn’t it a given that WV is a wacky state and that we don’t want anything to do with any Dems coming out of there, anyway? Manchin is still a pain in the ass, right? Seems like more of the same out of that state to me.
WV is hardly a wacky state, especially these days. But it is a state in which the politicians’ primarily source of donations are the corporations in the coal and chemical industries. Thus Manchin. He marches to the drummer in fear of losing next time around.
Nelson Rockefeller was independently wealthy and was a warrior on poverty called to action by Kennedy’s interest in dealing with poverty in Appalachia. Rockefeller also had fossil fuel corporate interests. There were relatively wide limits, but limits none the less, about how far he was willing to go.
No doubt many WV voters hope that Justice will be paternalistic toward WV people and not a grasping economic tyrant. BTW, that’s what Trump voters think about Trump–he’ll be a billionaire for the people.
The closest American politics has ever come to that were the two Roosevelts and John Kennedy. You might find the words “traitors to their class” associated at some point with all three of those.
Erm, that’d be Jay Rockefeller. . . .
Sorry, senior moment.
Also got Winthrop Rockefeller in Arkansas. Brother to Nelson and uncle to Jay. You almost need a genealogy chart for the Rockefellers. They were busy people.
As the blog’s Southern Appalachia resident, let me add my 2 cents.
Justice as been called the state’s Trump. That is not far off. Flamboyant but effective as a CEO. However, like Trump, he is making wild promises as to mine employment which is outside his control. Unless Trump and Justice are willing to add a 30% surcharge on natural gas, its going to take years for the surplus gas on the market to be soaked up and begin to have a demand for coal in electricity generation as a substitute.
Like Trump, blames the EPA. But the actions of the EPA has been in enforcing current regulations. New regulations would not go into effect for 10-20 yrs.
Saved the Greenbrier resort and 600+ employees, invested much needed funds and got it national recognition again.
Has a reputation of not paying his bills, to govt or private vendors.
While not as toxic as Don Blankenship, miners working for him say he does cut corners on safety. Its pretty well known that if he doesn’t win the election, will probably close some mines.
While Dem Governorship of a state like WV might not seem much on the national scale, it is one more voice on many social issues on our side. Also in naming replacements to Congressional seats and Senators when the time comes….etc… and as a counterbalance to radical rightests in the Legislature who just vote on and pass whatever piece of crap legislation being pushed by the national conservative agenda.
Cole is a chain car dealership owner. Probably not bad in a Republican businessman sense, but he would be forced lock step with a GOP legislature and pass those national agenda items. He will get a lot of National GOP support and PAC money to get that agenda passed.
R