When I read yesterday in the Good News Roundup by arhpdx, that on June 18, 2022, “a grassroots slate of over 50 Democrats took control of the West Virginia Democratic Party after winning a majority of seats on the executive committee and ousting party leadership, thus ending Manchin’s de facto control of the state party apparatus,” I was genuinely surprised, and a bit stunned, given what a strong-hold I thought Manchin had on West Virginia Democrats.
After a six-year organizing push, everyone from the old guard is gone except for the treasurer, and a coalition of progressives, Independents, and moderates have replaced them. “They are set on revitalizing the state and forcing renewed support from the national party. The June 18 victories mark the beginning of the end for an era defined by atrophy, nose-diving voter rolls, and just a single Democratic statewide representative: Manchin.”
Their hope is that because they have won a lot of lower offices, and they care about the people in West Virginia instead of enriching themselves, “Manchin will no longer be the party’s only candidate who can run statewide and win.”
Politics in West Virginia has significantly changed during the last 25 years when they went from deep blue to ruby red. When coal production was at its highest level, West Virginia was a union town and voted democratic. In 1992, Bill Clinton won West Virginia by 13 points.
But, in the intervening years, coal production was significantly reduced, and most West Virginians blame Barack Obama for that, although it’s not true. According to the Atlantic, coal mining jobs in Appalachia fared far worse under the Reagan, Clinton, and George H.W. Bush administrations than they did under Obama. Still, in 2009, after Obama was installed as president, part of his Climate Bill goal was to “cut power plant carbon emissions by 30 percent,” and it was this push that left him and the democratic party deeply unpopular throughout the region.”
And, from the moment Joe Manchin, the former governor of West Virginia, started running in a special election in 2010 for Robert Bryd’s Senate seat, he ran on an anti-Obama platform. “Manchin said he would have voted against Obamacare, and would work to get rid of the ‘bad parts’ of it. He was suing the Environmental Protection Agency against restrictions on mountaintop mining and he denounced ‘President Obama's administration's attempts to destroy our coal industry and way of life in West Virginia.’" It was a curious strategy for Democrat who was largely unknown outside of his state. But, his state was turning red, and Manchin jumped on the bandwagon.
And, in West Virginia the bandwagon continued to turn increasingly red as the poverty level in West Virginia climbed. They are now the sixth most impoverished state in the country. By 2014, Republicans retook the West Virginia House of Delegates for the first time in 83 years. By the time Trump ran for president in 2016, he beat Hillary Clinton by 40 points in West Virginia. And, in his State of the Union address, TFG said “there was a war on coal, that coal’s jobs will return, that regulations by the Obama administration are responsible for its ills, and that the measures he has taken in office can reverse its fortunes.”
While TFG lied about the mining jobs and Infrastructure jobs, things in West Virginia dramatically changed anyway. From Trump’s Inauguration in January 2017 through March of 2020, ”West Virginia recorded the fastest labor-force growth among the states. Whether it truly was due to Trump is a debatable question. He had relaxed regulations on oil and gas development, and clear air, and expedited pipeline approvals. But equally helpful was a jump in natural gas prices, spurring energy companies to expand throughout the area. For one record-breaking season, there were almost 16,000 pipeline-construction workers in the state. Two major pipelines were being built, and there were all kinds of legal and environmental issues, which ultimately shut them down. But for one year there were so many pipeline workers that, for a few months, they even outnumbered coal miners in the state. Nearly 75 percent of the job growth in the state was related to energy, according to economist John Deskins of West Virginia University. It was a dramatic turnaround. They added nearly 37,000 jobs in that period.”
“Workers without a college education experienced some of the biggest job gains of Trump’s presidency ― until the pandemic hit. After years of sitting on the sidelines, these Americans began looking for work again, landing jobs in construction, warehouses, and oil and gas fields. The pace at which they found jobs even surprised some economists who had predicted that low-skill Americans would face strong head winds from automation and the opioid crisis.
There weren’t just a lot of jobs. West Virginians described it as a “gold mine.” These companies were not only hiring, but at salaries way beyond anything West Virginians had seen in decades. And, all the pipeline workers who came to work needed places to sleep, and eat. Locals were leasing their land to natural gas companies, and suddenly many West Virginians were making more money than they ever could have imagined. But then coronavirus hit, there was a recession, the pipelines were shut down, and everything was lost. By the end of the Trump presidency, all the gains had been wiped out, and 30,000 more jobs were lost in West Virginia.
And, Trump’s claim of putting miners back to work was as false as his unsuccessful attempts to use the Defense Production Act to prop up coal plants. Initially, 1,200 new mining jobs were created, but during his presidency, the number of people employed by the coal mining industry fell by 15%. His trade wars didn’t help, the pandemic curtailed the demand for coal, and natural gas prices plummeted.
So, why did so many West Virginians vote for Trump in 2020? He made “getting miners back to work” a cornerstone of his campaign, even though he lied about the results, saying he had created 45,000 jobs. But West Virginians liked him, and felt he was fighting for them. He campaigned there numerous times. But, perhaps more importantly, as Democratic strategist Mike Plante from West Virginia said, “he knew how to talk to people in state who feel left out of the national conversation. Trump was telling a story. He was saying, “The elites are all looking down their noses at you. I’m going to stick it to the people that stick it to you.” And, West Virginians rewarded him with their votes.
On the other hand, Joe Biden never campaigned in West Virginia at all, but he won the presidential election. The last time he had visited West Virginia was in 2012 with Obama, and Biden made a number of gaffes that didn’t endear him to anyone. Although Biden comes from a working class background, and perhaps might have been the sort of person West Virginians could like, he never came to West Virginia, and they saw Trump as their savior.
But, the bottom line is that through the Biden Infrastructure bill, $6 billion dollars was targeted for West Virginia, and while Biden could have used this as an opportunity to visit, he didn’t. While I tried to find out if the money had improved Biden’s popularity, it hadn’t. In West Virginia, President Biden receives his lowest Approval rating at 21% and his highest Disapproval rating at 73%. and, he lost a third of his voters’ support six months into his presidency. Although there are different opinions, in some articles I read that 68 percent of West Virginians support BBB, although Manchin torpedoed it. In another article, I read that 72% of West Virginians supported Manchin’s “no vote.”
Still, according to a Morning Consult poll from April 25,2022, since Biden took office, Manchin's job approval rating has jumped 16 percent to a 57% approval rating in 2022, up from 39% in 2021. It is by far the largest increase of any senator.
Still, if this democratic coalition that now controls the West Virginia Democratic Party truly wants to help their fellow citizens, supporting BBB would be the best way. And, maybe they should seek to meet with Biden about it rather than Manchin. Rumor has it that some people in West Virginia feel that Manchin is out of touch with his constituents. Perhaps it’s because in a state where the median income is $48,037, and the per capita income is $27,346, Manchin drives an $81,000 Maserati Levante, and lives in a house on the Kanawha River that he and his wife purchased for $765,000 in January 2021. When they are in Washington, D.C., they live in a houseboat that cost $250,000.
In a December 21, 2021 Opinion piece in the Register~Herald from Beckley, West Virginia, entitled WVa Working Families Need BBB Lifelines, the author spells it out. “West Virginia families are struggling with childcare, home health care and education costs, increasing prescription medication prices, and other essential services. By extending the child tax credit and providing paid family leave as found in Build Back Better, new parents will be able to offset the tremendous costs of raising a child while also ensuring they can return to work when they are ready, spurring economic growth and actively combating inflation. For my family, like thousands of other working families across the state, the prospect of lowering the cost of essential services like childcare, education, prescription drugs and health care is a lifeline that is long overdue.”
The question is: Will their message get to President Biden?