Democrats still perplexed.
Via Circa:
The F&W, a printing shop selling everything from custom t-shirts to license plates, is one of the few stores in downtown Welch that hasn’t closed its doors. Deep in the heart of coal country, the small West Virginian town is the seat of government for McDowell County.
“This place was booming,” Frances Weaver, co-owner of the F&W said. “Welch was like New York to people that lived out here.”[…]
Last November, Circa was in McDowell on Election Night as people from the coal fields of southern West Virginia voted overwhelmingly for Trump, helping fuel his surprise victory. Many McDowell residents were skeptical of Trump’s promise to restore the coal economy, but cast cautiously optimistic votes anyway.
Trump’s pro-coal message helped him walk away with 91.5 percent of the primary vote in McDowell County — his largest margin during the primary season. And in the general election, Trump won every county in the state, taking 69 percent of the vote.
“We will put our miners back to work,” President Trump proclaimed in March as he signed executive orders aimed at dismantling his predecessor’s climate policies, including a ban on new coal leases on public lands. In February, Trump rolled back an Obama administration rule that blocked coal miners from dumping waste into waterways.
Junior Stacy, the part-owner of a mine that opened in March, says Trump’s deregulation has bolstered investor confidence. The day after Trump’s election, he called his future business partner and said he felt the climate was right for them to go into business. Stacy has been in the mining business for 45 years and believes this could be the start of a mining renaissance. […]
At first glance, McDowell County was an unlikely win for Trump. Its political history is typical for the region, having voted Democratic in all but one presidential election from 1936 to 2008.
But Chuck Keeney, a professor of history at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, says the groundwork was laid for a Republican victory as far back as 2000 when Al Gore, seen as an environmentalist whose policies would hurt the state, lost to George W. Bush. Bush won the Electoral College by 5 votes — the same number of votes held by West Virginia. In every presidential contest since, the state voted reliably red.
“They were going to go against Hillary Clinton, no matter what — even if she hadn’t made the very famous statement,” Keeney said.
The Democrat alienated much of coal country when she told a town hall audience in Columbus, Ohio “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” The comment, which came in the context of her plan to transition the country to clean energy, would haunt her campaign.