I don’t understand how such a small state even has coal left.
What’s their plan when it runs out? More suckling on the federal tit? That’s really what republicans like best.
Extraction is the definition of a dead-end industry. Eventually it runs out. Why is the state ensuring that its economy will fail when demand for coal dries up in another 10-20 years?
It’s already dried up a lot.
I don’t know - and that just baffles me.
Coal is a dead industry. It’s a finite resource. It’s killing the planet. Yet it’s the life blood for so many in the state that people fight any effort to make things better.
I heard a WV woman earlier today on CNN literally saying that she’d rather see more “1000 year floods” hit the state then see anything happen to coal. If that’s not the epitome of “fuck you got mine” I don’t know what is.
Mind blown.
It kills the miners, too. There is no amount of PPE that makes coal mining safe, in the short or long term.
Genuinely, the Progressive opportunity is to offer people something better than coal. Something that pays as well but is less hazardous.
Which is of course precisely what so many progressive climate change plans are trying to do.
Sadly the GQP is so damn good with its disinformation campaign and appealing to low information voters that things like the Green New Deal are transformed into “socialist cow-hating communism”.
That’s why it will take someone who is from WV, comes off as WVian, culturally, but is charismatic enough to win over voters to the idea that they can take the state into the future rather than the past.
Some data but not how much is left.
https://www.eia.gov/state/print.php?sid=WV
There are some reserve numbers in there.
Interesting that 91% of their energy comes from coal fired plants. What happens when it runs out?
Mary Lou Retton, you’re our only hope!
but he can’t become a republican. every time npr mentions his name they call him a “moderate democrat” and since he and sinema are two different people together they are the “moderate wing” of the democratic party.
if he leaves - sinema will be the last lone moderate in congress
/s
( i do so wish i could get them to tell me where joe biden sits on the political spectrum. if everyone to his left is a progressive and if everyone to his right is a moderate, i guess he must be the unicorn wing of the party? )
/end tangential rant
i just had another thought. what if other democrats “leaked” it ( fabricated it ) to help remind him that:
there’s not a lot the party can do to put pressure on him right now. even taking committee assignments away could backfire by causing him to dig in more, or rage quit
all they have right now are carrots
by reframing the media’s attention on him as not a team player, by getting his democratic constituents angry at the potential betrayal… that might be a good stick
generally i don’t credit people with nth dimensional chess. but maybe this is some old fashioned dirty politics. ( and if so, i hope it works )
Another very good possibility. I like this one more, tbh.
So, the story is maybe sorta true? This sounds like more of a threat than an offer.
Fuck off, Joe. A “moderate, centrist Democrat” would be all in on a big infrastructure bill to improve people’s lives. You’re just a junior grifter looking for a handout.
Manchin was all in on the big infrastructure bill.
Maybe, but you also need to consider than in a state that went for Trump by a flippin’ 40% margin we may not get an especially progressive Democrat elected Senator in the near future regardless of what Manchin does. (In his last campaign he said he wasn’t planning to run again in 2024 anyway but who knows) I hope I’m wrong and that we do get someone good there the next time around, but in the meantime there are a lot of states with Senate races in the 2022 election where victory for a progressive candidate seems more achievable based on how the 2020 election went. For example Florida has a senate race coming up and they were basically a toss-up in 2020. Even very red states like Utah, Kansas and Missouri gave Trump a much smaller victory than West Virginia did, so if you’re going to prioritize which states to compete in, focusing too much on West Virginia to the exclusion of other states seems misguided.
Edit to add:
If what I wrote above sounds too pessimistic about the prospects in WV, think of it like this instead: if you’re optimistic about getting a better Senator in WV, then you should be even more optimistic about getting good Senators elected in Idaho, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Alaska and Florida. Every one of those states has a Republican incumbent up for a senate race in 2022, and every one of those states had a smaller proportion of their population vote for Trump than West Virginia did in 2020. (Wyoming is the only state in the union that was more Trumpy than West Virginia in 2020)
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