March 25, 2024
Some of us are old enough to remember when West Virginia was solidly democrat. Republicans were rarely elected to statewide office. Bill Clinton won the state by 13 points. Robert (KKK) Byrd and Jay Rockefeller were the senators and Gaston Caperton was elected governor. Yet twenty five years later Donald Trump carried the state by 40 points and Joe Manchin was the only statewide elected democrat. All three of the state’s representatives were republicans. What happened? Mainly it was coal. West Virginia is coal country and democrats starting with Barack Obama declared war on coal. Hillary Clinton declared that she was going to shut down the coal industry in pursuit of climate change. Sure enough, the EPA has caused coal production in the state to decline by more than 30 percent and unemployment had sharply increased. Thus, West Virginian’s voted in their economic interest and not with their traditional identity. Of course, today’s “progressives” have abandoned rural poor whites with no college degree and that demography is the majority in the state. Nationally, the democrats have done the math. Most voters live in urban areas and the democrats have courted urban college educated higher income voters. This group is more liberal and has adopted diversity, equality and inclusion so long as they don’t have to live it. Consider that Hillary Clinton won almost 3 million more votes than Trump but only won 500 of the country’s 3,100 counties. That statistic is why democrats want to end the electoral college and have a popular vote instead. If that occurs, it will be almost impossible for a republican to be elected president.
One wonders if Biden’s war on the internal combustion engine will lose him Michigan. That state has a democrat governor whose reelection spoke volumes to the disarray in that state’s republican party. Both senators are democrats. But 6 of the state’s 13 representatives are republicans. Michigan’s union leadership is 100 percent democrat but its members may not be. Again it is not in the members’ economic interest to support a party that is intent in destroying diesel and gas vehicles and displacing thousands of workers. That the union membership doesn’t vote out its so-called leaders is puzzling. It will be interesting to see if Michigan does not join West Virginia in the solidly republican column – with the exception of Detroit.
Detroit will likely stay democrat because of its black majority. Jason Riley has pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, Hispanics are also now leaving the democrat party out of their economic interests rather than clinging to their traditional ethnic identity. Riley is implying that this is not true with most blacks, although growing numbers of black men are supporting Trump. This is part of the realignment of the parties that we have seen over the past 30 years. No longer are poor whites democrats. No longer are educated upper income whites republicans. Indeed, a recent poll of educated high earning whites showed that 82% supported Joe Biden! So despite all the envy politics where Biden says that this group is not paying their “fair share” and advocates the raising of their taxes, they overwhelmingly support him. Who said that these folks were smart?
Nine states are following the EPAs lead and are banning the sale of gas cars and trucks in 2025. Of course one is California, the others are New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Maryland. Vermont, Colorado and Virginia are slated to follow. Again, it is amazing that the voters in these states favor what their politicians are doing to them. But if they do not vote them out, they deserve the higher vehicle prices, the shorter tire life, the thousands of dollars to replace the batteries, higher energy prices, the higher insurance costs, the longer waits to fill up, the lack of range in the winter and the lithium battery fires.
haroldblackphd.com 