Politicians making false promises about coal
No wonder in coal country we hear the common refrain, “War on Coal.”
In fact, yard signs blaming the “War on Coal” on President Obama gained notoriety in 2012. That was the year Obama ran for re-election, ultimately defeating Republican nominee Mitt Romney. It’s no coincidence, though, that the “War on Coal” movement took hold that year and who was behind it.
In 2012, about 82,000 people worked in the coal industry, half of them in West Virginia and Kentucky. Then and current U.S. Senate majority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, was in a frustratingly tough and unaccustomed re-election battle that year. What state does Sen. McConnell represent? Kentucky. The “War on Coal” was a cornerstone of his re-election campaign.
Politicians today aren’t reviving the “War on Coal” slogan, but many are promising a much better future for coal, but without explaining how. Here’s what Trump said recently during a campaign stop in coal country: “Let me tell you: the miners in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, which was so great to me last week in Ohio and all over; they’re going to start to work again believe me. You’re going to be proud again to be miners.”
Republicans aren’t alone cozying up to irate coal voters. Pennsylvania state Rep. Pam Snyder, a Democrat who has represented coal-rich Greene County since 2012, in her television ads says she will “protect” the jobs of coal miners.
Neither Trump nor Snyder nor any other politician using coal as a wedge issue in the current election has a chance of fulfilling their promise if elected. In fact, they can’t or won’t even detail how they will accomplish what they promise. They simply hope to mine votes of frustrated coal miners and their families.
Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman said there is no chance that Trump or any other politician can reverse the decades decline of the coal industry that has wiped out many of its jobs. “The real war on coal, or at least on coal workers, took place a generation ago, waged not by liberal environmentalist but by the coal industry itself. And coal workers lost.” Why? “Strip mines and machinery in general,” Krugman argues, “have allowed us to produce more coal with very few miners.”
Of the impossible promises Trump has made in the past year, Krugman said Trump’s vow to restore the coal industry is near the top of the list.
Greene County matters in this November’s presidential election with Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral college votes. Trump needs to win there to help offset the heavily Democratic vote in and around Philadelphia. Greene County has demographics favorable for Trump. The county is overwhelmingly white and has a lower percentage of college educated graduates — Trump’s base — than the state as a whole. And Greene County has gone for the Republican candidate in the last two presidential races.
“This is going to be an area that makes Trump president or breaks him,” said Joseph DiSarro, political science professor at Washington and Jefferson College.
Greene County Commission Chairman Blair Zimmerman, a Democrat, said that Trump has an edge in the county based on his promise to “bring back coal.” But Zimmerman, a retired coal miner, thinks Trump’s claim is unrealistic.
“I can say that General Motors is going to move to Greene County and put 3,000 jobs here,” Zimmerman was quoted in a media report. “You can say whatever you want, but that doesn’t mean it’s real. But people buy into it. They’re drinking the Kool-Aid. That’s what I think.”
A resident of Uniontown, Richard Ringer can be reached by email at ringer.mwgroup@gmail.com.