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New Report Warns of Decline of Central Appalachian Coal Argues for New Focus on Economic Diversification and Renewable Energy for the Region
MORGANTOWN, WV - As the legislative season begins across Central Appalachia, a new report by Downstream Strategies details future challenges to coal production in the region and argues that policy-makers should strongly support renewable energy and the development of new economic opportunities for coal-producing areas.
"Coal has contributed significantly to local and state economies in Central Appalachia, but production has fallen substantially over the last 12 years as other coal basins and sources of fuel have become more competitive," said lead author Rory McIlmoil. "This trend is expected to continue as mining costs increase due to the depletion of the lowest cost coal reserves, and as new environmental regulations are implemented. As this happens, local and state economies will need new sources of jobs and revenue to replace coal mining jobs and taxes."
According to the report, Central Appalachian coal production is projected to fall by nearly 50% within the next ten years. Central Appalachia includes the coal-producing counties in southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia, and eastern Tennessee
The report points to renewable energy and energy efficiency as two sectors where new jobs and tax revenues can be created, as the region has a wealth of clean energy resources. The report concludes that losses related to the decline of the coal industry can be recaptured by gains from wind, solar, low-impact hydro, and sustainable biomass production, and from a strong focus on energy efficiency improvements.
To support the diversification of the regional energy economy, the report outlines a series of policy instruments, including requiring each state to provide 25% of their energy from renewable sources; the provision of grants, tax credits, clean energy bonds, or low-interest loans to support renewable energy development and manufacturing; the implementation and strengthening of net metering laws; and the development of workforce programs aimed at providing the skills and knowledge required for renewable energy industries. The study also argues for strong incentives for local ownership of energy development, to help maximize the local economic benefits of renewable energy projects.
"Given that coal production is projected to decline significantly in the coming decades, diversification of Central Appalachian economies is now more critical than ever," said co-author Evan Hansen, President of Downstream Strategies. "State leaders should use this legislative session to increase support for new economic development across the region, especially in the rural areas set to be the most impacted by a sharp decline in the region's coal economy."
In December 2009, West Virginia Senator Robert C. Byrd stated, "West Virginians can choose to anticipate change and adapt to it, or resist and be overrun by it. The time has arrived for the people of the Mountain State to think long and hard about which course they want to choose."
According to McIlmoil, "The same is true for all of Central Appalachia, and we hope this report helps policy-makers understand the changes that are coming so that they can support new industries. The renewable energy sector offers one of the greatest opportunities for economic development."
Downstream Strategies is an environmental consulting company in Morgantown, West Virginia, with program areas in environmental policy, environmental science, and geographic information systems. The company provides science, research, and tools to organizations, businesses, and agencies. It offers clients an alternative to mainstream environmental consulting by combining sound interdisciplinary skills with a core belief in the importance of protecting the environment and linking economic development with natural resource stewardship.
- An appeal is being filed by the West Virginia Labor History Association over the removal of Blair Mountain from the National Register of Historic Places.
- The Times Herald-Record, of New York's Hudson River Valley, profiled Mat Louis-Rosenberg of Coal River Mountain Watch.
"Mountaintop removal is the worst manmade catastrophe in the nation's history," he said. "It's also an economic catastrophe for West Virginia. The coal industry, while promising prosperity to the state, has devastated communities across the state."
Blankenship was feeling shy:
Blankenship declined comment on the "Rolling Stone" article and on accusations of violating the Clean Water Act. He also declined comment on accusations that mountaintop mining affects the health of the Appalachian people.
- When Don's feeling more talkative, he often says mountaintop removal is necessary to ward off competition from overseas. He might want to look into these guys at Massey Energy, who just signed a deal with Delhi, India-based Jindal Steel & Power for coal projects in India, Mongolia, Australia and the United States.
-The rightwing Charleston Daily Mail tells us that changes for the black lung benefits program that Senator Byrd put in the Senate health care bill are a "job killer."
How do we know?
"Experts" say, according to the Daily Mail - Experts like Steve Roberts of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, who, coincidentally, wanted Byrd to hold the health care bill hostage unless the coal owners' demands were met.
Some fine stenography by the Daily Mail's business editor, George Hohmann.
- And speaking of Daily Mail hacks, just wanted to point out that we're two weeks out and Don Surber has yet to offer even a remotely substantive rebuttal to Ken Ward's post that obliterated the crap Don was inserting into DM editorials.
- Republican Senator James Inhofe has a distinguished career as a total shill for corporate America. Whether its pushing for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or comparing the world's scientific community to the Third Reich, he's worked hard to be the go-to guy for polluters... and He's quite proud of it. ...so it was only a matter of time until he came out solidly in favor of the destruction of the Appalachian Mountains.
The evidence is now crystal clear. The leadership of West Virginia needs to put the citizens of West Virginia--its people--ahead of corporate profits. Today we should all be calling for West Virginia political leadership to rally together to plan for an orderly end to mountaintop mining.
What we learned
This is a watershed moment in the history of mountaintop removal mining.
The science team entered the project with no preconceived notion about how effective mountain top removal mitigation might be or how damaging MTR is. After this study the interdisciplinary team of 11 scientists reached this conclusion (summarized by McClatchy):
The consequences of this mining in eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and southwestern Virginia are ""pervasive and irreversible," the article finds. Companies are required by law to take steps to reduce the damages, but their efforts don’t compensate for lost streams nor do they prevent lasting water pollution, it says.
The article is a summary of recent scientific studies of the consequences of blasting the tops off mountains to obtain coal and dumping the excess rock into streams in valleys. The authors also studied new water-quality data from West Virginia streams and found that mining polluted them, reducing their biological health and diversity.
Surprisingly little attention has been paid to this growing scientific evidence of the damages, they wrote, adding: "Regulators should no longer ignore rigorous science."
New permits shouldn’t be granted, they argued, "unless new methods can be subjected to rigorous peer review and shown to remedy these problems."
In the Kinkaid interview one of the scientists said it'll take 10,000 years for mountain top removal sites to return to pre-mining condition.
Another scientist said that residents living near mining operations should consider moving to protect their health.
Another said that no known restoration/mitigation plans could work--even if you could restore water flows and vegetation mixes (something we have no idea yet how to do), there are still major down stream chemical pollution problems.
Another scientist points out that the chemical pollution problems (e.g., selenium) are not just trace amounts that could theoretically be a problem, they've already shown up in concentrations higher up in the food chain. Animals are showing up with selenium poisoning and there are no health advisories for residents in West Virginia not to eat fish from streams below certain mines out of concern of selenium exposure.
What happens next?
The most comprehensive study ever on MTR coal mining appears in arguably the most prestigious scientific journal it could appear in. It confirms what coal mining community members have been saying all along: we're dying out here.
The scientists agree: they have called for a halt to mountain top removal mining because of public health hazards.
The most responsible thing for West Virginia leaders to do today is rally together on behalf of all citizens of West Virginia--develop a plan for phasing out all existing Mountain Top Removal coal mining.
I love hearing stories where people make positive change. It's easy to just complain and stick your head in the sand but I'm always inspired when I see how many folks are out there quietly doing the groundwork for the big changes we need.
SEED volunteers help with construction of a community center building in Rock Creek, WV
And change is undeniably upon the coal industry again. The increased use of mountaintop removal mining means that fewer miners are needed to meet company production goals. Meanwhile the Central Appalachian coal seams that remain to be mined are becoming thinner and more costly to mine. Mountaintop removal mining, a declining national demand for energy, rising mining costs and erratic spot market prices all add up to fewer jobs in the coal fields.
These are real problems. They affect real people. And West Virginia's elected officials are rightly concerned about jobs and the economic impact on local communities. I share those concerns. But the time has come to have an open and honest dialogue about coal's future in West Virginia.
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The greatest threats to the future of coal do not come from possible constraints on mountaintop removal mining or other environmental regulations, but rather from rigid mindsets, depleting coal reserves, and the declining demand for coal as more power plants begin shifting to biomass and natural gas as a way to reduce emissions.
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Change has been a constant throughout the history of our coal industry. West Virginians can choose to anticipate change and adapt to it, or resist and be overrun by it. One thing is clear. The time has arrived for the people of the Mountain State to think long and hard about which course they want to choose.
Some grassroots activists in West Virginia have been already been thinking "long and hard" about which course they want to choose. They want a way forward for their community that includes clean, safe, homegrown jobs.
I think there are other options beyond coal because coal's not gonna be here forever - our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, what are they gonna do when coal's not here? There needs to be some kind of other jobs besides coal. I think there's a lot of smaller businesses that would like to be in this area, but they're scared off because of the mining. If you can get a few things started, you can get a few people to work - you can even employ these high school graduates. There's not a lot of young people; what ones are here, they leave or they go in the mines because that's the only thing to do, and by the time they're 30, they're half-dead.
Unfortunately, since too many politicians remain focused on bringing large-scale coal-based development to Appalachia we still need a hand-up for communities ravaged by coal-mining, not yet another hand-out for coal mining companies.
These grassroots activists need our help
Like any volunteer effort, the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development project cannot be sustained by sweat equity alone. It needs your help. There is an immediate need for anemometers to measure wind feasibility, then there are additional costs associated with the purchase and installation of wind turbines in the Coal River Valley.
Sustainable Energy and Economic Development is a community organizing project connecting residents of the Coal River Valley to one another and to the outside resources they need to make their small business and renewable energy ventures a reality. We began by meeting with twelve families in the valley over the summer and fall, and identified three inspiring projects to pursue. Two families are in the beginning stages of a community owned wind development project. One group of woodworkers are building a wood kiln to dry and increase the value of sustainably forested lumber. The SEED Community Team formed as a group of locals generating new ideas for community revival and economic diversification in monthly meetings. In their latest meeting, they resolved to build a community owned greenhouse and plan to break ground on the project in the winter. The entrepreneurial spirit is spreading!
Sustainable Energy and Economic Development is structured to ensure accountability to community members. It begins with listening to community members, and the Community Team ensures that project organizers do not veer off course in the collaborative process of small business development.
Organizers are working on two wind development projects in the the valley. They need to start raising funds today to be able to purchase and install a 100 kilowatt wind turbines as soon as possible and stake the community's claim on the toe of Coal River Mountain. This single-turbine installation lays the groundwork for larger wind development in the future.
I, too, am frustrated with Washington these days. The solution, however, is not to tune out but to work locally, "where you can celebrate victory," in the words of Cindy Sheehan.
Joel Kotkin of New Geography has an article today at Forbes.com on grass-roots small business diversification in which fits right in with a comment I made yesterday on Coal Tattoo.
The waste-wood plant is a start, but what if we had a lot of entrepreneurs brainstorming lots of small-scale, low-capital projects - real growth is based on lots of relatively low-paying jobs.
Kotkin says
Other single-industry-dominated regions, notably Detroit, have made much noise about moving into other fields, but their emphasis has frequently revolved around high-profile, highly subsidized projects such as "green" industries, entertainment or tourism.
Sound familiar?
He notes that Apppalachia's "unique culture also could provide some of the basis for a regional recovery," and quotes Kentucky League of Cities President Sylvia Lovely:
"Modernity" in its current unadulterated form--with a lack of community, homogeneity and disconnect from the natural world--could be losing its allure for millions of Americans. In terms of what matters, she suggests, Appalachian towns may possess "if not more information, perhaps more wisdom than those who hold themselves out as experts."
Despite the constant talk of the dominance of coal, that is a political legacy, no longer an economic reality. There are fewer miners left in West Virginia than there were in 1900. There are more federal employees, providing services to the nation at places like the FBI and the Bureau of Public Debt, than there are employees in the coal industry. And despite the decline of manufacturing, we still have far more people employed in manufacturing than coal. The West Virginia economy is already diverse. What can we do to make it more so?
500 mountains are gone forever. What will we build on the flat places as a living memorial to the mountains, the miners, the communities, the people who worked hard and died younger than they should have to keep the lights on and the factories running? What if it were something that allowed people to live well, in accord with our mountaineer pride, independence, love of family, community, and the beauty of the mountains?
What kinds of things might we do? What do we need for the Governor, our legislators, our local governments to do with policy, laws, and regulation to encourage this?
Your lights are on, but you're not home,
your will is not your own
Might as well face it you're addicted to coal.
West Virginia suffers from a resource curse. Coal mining wealth is illusory--the benefits have long been obvious to those dependent on Big Coal for a living even if the costs (largely hidden) were high. Yet, the costs are no longer as hidden and the benefits no longer so great.
Climate change legislation is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for our political leadership to take bold action to help diversify the Appalachian economy. So far, that leadership is lacking. Join me today in calling for West Virginia state officials, Congressional representatives and senators to to chart a new course. Let's all kick the habit of the dirty black rock.
West Virginia is both blessed and cursed with abundant natural resources. Historically, coal has been a major employer and source of wealth. But--and it is a big BUT--there are three big weaknesses in an economy based on extraction industries like coal:
2. Due to competition for employees, capital, and land, large-scale mining operations crowd out other development.
3. There are a lot of socially, environmentally, and ecologically damaging by-products of the extraction and burning of coal. Some recent estimates shows the costs of Big Coal far out-weight the benefits.
Taken together, residents of the most coal rich portions of Appalachia are among the poorest in all other measures.
West Virginia's State Rock
On the one hand, the black rock has been the economic bedrock for much of the West Virginian's 143 years in existence. On the other, the history of coal is decades of long steady decline.
Within a decade of statehood, West Virginia began commercially exploiting its coal deposits. Coke production peaked in 1910 at 4,217,381 tons. Production of all types of coal peaked in 1997 at 181,914,000 tons. In 2008, production has dropped 9% from the peak to 165,750,817. Back in 1940, even before Sen. Robert C. Byrd was an elected official (he entered the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1946), West Virginia coal mining employment peaked at 130,457. By 2008, the number had dropped 84% to 20,927. (source)
Appalachian coal is no longer the lowest cost energy source. Western coal reserves are cheaper and less polluting. (Even West Virginia electric plants now get some of their coal from the Wyoming / Montana Powder River Basin.) Instead of the 100-200 years of United States coal supply the industry likes to claim, the truth is much closer to 100-200 months of economically viable major deposits remain in West Virginia.
Big Coal is now the tail that wags the dog in West Virginia.
The Resource Curse
What have you done for us lately?
Big coal, what have you done for us lately?
How can it be when West Virginia has enjoyed a Century-long abundance of valuable natural resources, it compares so poorly to the rest of the country economically? How can it be that the counties with the most coal extracted are among the poorest places in the United States?
West Virginia suffers from a resource curse. The curse of natural resource wealth is extraction industries extract valuable items from the ground, take the wealth out of communities, and leave behind spent land and spent people.
Coal mining is a dirty business. Mountaintop removal is an even dirtier one - it requires a huge amount of land and crowds out all other potential nearby economic development.
In a recent presentation, Chris Hamilton of the West Virginia Coal Association said one of the challenges the coal mining industry faces is the lack of local workers. How ironic! If only the coal companies were better neighbors, there would be potential employees near coal mines. No wonder coal mines pay such high wages. There's no one left nearby to work for them!
Mortgaging our Future
Coal is a non-renewable resource. Once we burn it, it is gone. One day it will all be gone.
We never ask for more than we deserve
Big Coal knows it's the truth
They seem to think they're God's gift to this earth
We're tellin' 'em no way
Our political leadership is playing with the future of the entire planet to feed their addiction to the black rock. It may be the only economic safety West Virginia politicians have ever known, but meanwhile neighboringstates--hell, even China, India, Europe and the United Arab Emirates--are all laying the ground work for a softer landing when their non-renewable fuels run out.
Lifting the Curse
The West Virginia economy is addicted to the illusory wealth of Big Coal. The benefits of a few high paying jobs are obvious and immediate, the costs of environmental degradation and lack of economic diversity are easier to ignore. Millions of Americans benefit today from lower power bills, turning a blind eye as Appalachia turns into a national sacrifice zone.
There is a better way forward. Instead of spending billions in dollars to keep the coal industry on artificial life support, we should be investing those billions in the people of Appalachia. When the next shift of coal miners are laid off, they deserve economic opportunities that aren't dependent on extraction industries.
I implore our elected officials to demonstrate a different kind of leadership focused on the needs of the people, not the needs of the corporations.
We need a hand-up for coal communities, not another hand-out for coal companies.
Take Action - Please help today!
This is where I really wish there was a bill or an ACES amendment in front of Congress I could ask you to contact Congress about. Unfortunately, no one is advocating directly for the people of Appalachia in climate change legislation. Until there is, here are some very worthy organizations:
Visit I Love Mountains to tell the Obama EPA to protect water quality and stop mountain top removal.
Support Coal River Wind to bring wind power to the Appalachian coal fields.
Support the nonviolent protests of Climate Ground Zero against mountain top removal in Appalachia.
Legacy of Coal is a newly-launched diary series inspired by the panels at Netroots Nation. We hope to publicize the issues around coal use and mining, including MTR, the damage to less-politically-powerful areas of our country, and the general impact of energy and economic policy. Of course, this leads to the broader issues of climate change, health care, and human rights. While none of us can know everything about these issues, it is by working together we can make a difference. If you would like to guest-host, please contact jlms_qkwATxmissionDOTcom. This diary series is dedicated to our country's coal miners and the people waiting for them to come home.
Also available in Orange. Photo credit: Anthracite Coal by The Bill Hughes Gazette, Blockquoted lyrics adapted from songs popularized by Robert Palmer and Janet Jackson.
That's a really clear trend. It's now cheaper to extract coal in MT/WY. The easy-to-reach and highest value coal is gone from Appalachia. In a few decades, Big Coal will completely move on.
I agree with Erik Reece of Lexington, KY. It's time for a 'new deal' for Appalachia(h/t to va dare for the link):
A form of strip mining called mountaintop removal has ripped apart all of the ridgelines that surround this forest, leaving miles of lifeless gray plateaus, lunar wastelands. Mountaintop removal entails the blasting of entire summits to rubble in an effort to reach, as quickly and inexpensively as possible, thin seams of bituminous coal. Trees, topsoil and sandstone are dumped into the valleys below. More than 1,000 miles of streams have been buried in this way, and an Environmental Protection Agency study found that 95 percent of headwater streams near mines have been contaminated by heavy metals leeching from the sites.
When it comes to mountaintop removal, a certain fatalism seems to take hold in Appalachia -- the coal companies are too powerful, some politicians are corrupt, the regulators won't regulate and the news media don't care. But we cannot give up on rehabilitating Appalachia.
Erik Reece continues outlining not only the problems we face, but a hopeful future for new solutions as well.
Appalachia's land is dying. Its fractured communities show the typical symptoms of hopelessness, including OxyContin abuse rates higher than anywhere in the country. Meanwhile, 22 states power houses and businesses with Kentucky coal. The people of central and southern Appalachia have relinquished much of their natural wealth to the rest of the country and have received next to nothing in return.
To right these wrongs, first we need federal legislation that will halt the decapitation of mountains and bring accountability to an industry that is out of control. Then we need a New Deal for Appalachia that would expand the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative, or create a similar program, to finally return some of the region's lost wealth in the form of jobs and trees, rebuilt topsoil and resuscitated communities.
Financing should come from a carbon tax on Appalachian coal bought and burned by utility companies across the country -- a tax that would also discourage the wasteful emissions of greenhouse gases. Such a project would educate and employ an entire generation of foresters and forest managers, who would be followed by locally owned wood-product industries and craftsmen like Patrick Angel's brother Mike, who makes much sought-after hardwood chairs just like ones his grandfather fashioned.
We know that our species, and most other species, will survive only in a future that burns no coal or oil. The question now is whether we have the nerve to get there before the world's oldest mountains are gone.
I couldn't agree more. Let's start investing financial resources in sustainable development. The extraction economy has been a disaster for this region--liquid coal is not the answer. Sustainable energy solutions are sustainable economic solutions.
Flickr photo credit: Erik Reece by Kentuckians For The Commonwealth
teacherken told me after the panel on Appalachia and mountaintop removal it was the "most powerful panel" he'd been to in the four years of going to DailyKos/Netroots Nation conventions. He writes about it here:
The panel that struck me most profoundly, perhaps more than any I have encountered in four years of attending these conventions, was on Saturday. "Green Begins in Appalachia: Ending Mountain Removal" moved those who attended greatly. It began with Jeff Biggers telling us why he did not want to use the microphone, because if you think about it the wire powering it connects with the destruction of mountains in Appalachia, in West Virginia, Kentucky, and as I have seen for myself Virginia. Lorelie Scarbro told us how communities are being destroyed, and how those in the Coal River Valley are trying to use the ridges for wind power rather than destroying the ridges to remove the coal underneath, in the process burying even more streams and poisoning even more wells. Stephanie Pistello talked about a one sentence law that could stop mountaintop removal by restoring a definition of fill that was changed under the Bush administration - and reminded us that the man most responsible for that change, former mining executive Stephen Griles, is now in a federal penitentiary.
The one who moved me most was Bob Kincaid. He started by telling us about ancestors who arrived in his neck of the woods from Scotland and Ireland in the 1700s. He then told us about grandchildren, a 2 year old in a playpen, and a 1 year old in the crib, the 11th generation of his family in that area. He wonders if there will be a twelfth. He wondered if his people were not considered Americans, because you don't do this to your fellow citizens.
As I listened, I wondered if the mining executives and their political supporters might consider the loss of these communities and the habitat and the mountains as collateral damage, and I said to someone with whom I spoke later that collateral damage is a cleaned up synonym for atrocity. That was one of the nicer words I could use - crimes against humanity, crimes against nature and other similar thoughts occurred to me.
Many of us will enjoy this since we had many of the same criticisms of him.
The comments get really funny here when he tries to claim he didn't read the diary. Don't miss this one either.
update: Since DHinMI was the one who did the most harm pushing bigotry against Appalachia, this is a good place to put this 538 analysis that It's not about Appalachia which blows away Houle's posts about Obama's "Appalachia problem."
P.S. I like these scatterplots, but I think the maps are useful too, in particular for shooting down the story that whites in Appalachia were particularly anti-Obama.
With Tony Doukoupil's incendiary Newsweek.com article about Governor Joe Manchin's "hillbilly image" scrub-away campaign now having generated almost 700 comments and the national press's having had a field day with justice for sale issues in West Virginia this week, it's obvious that the Mountain State's reputation for everything from sordid, quasi-Third World backwater politics to its quality of life is under assault again, not unlike the way it was after the May 13 primary, when the national and international press had an orgy over presumably retrogade racial attitudes in West Virginia specifically and Appalachia generally.
My take on that troubling question is that many West Virginians were alternately repelled and confused by Obama's Otherness. Meaning, yes, his exotic biography, perplexing name and bi-racial heritage. But it also reflected widespread uneasiness here with what he symbolized, with the core demographic elements of the change forces coalescing in this country and culminating in the qualified mandate Obama received in November.
More specifically, though, Obama's in-your-face emergence was startling in a year they were prepared to come back home and vote for Hillary after their long dalliance with Bush.
They wondered: Who are these "elites" in Cambridge, Berkeley, Charlottesville, Madison and Chicago's North Shore who've hijacked the party (again?) in a year the Democrats have their best shot at retaking the White House (and, more important, the national agenda) since 1992, if not 1976?
Add to that the (to them) disturbing bloc voting in urban areas and Southern states with large black populations, and working-class (ie, non-college-educated) Appalachians were asking, "Do we get screwed yet again?"
The pervasiveness of that attitude found its best expression most recently in a blog post on Hippie Killer's indispensable Fifth Column by the excellent and extremely articulate "Cyberpaw," who wrote:
It's just black-eye after shun-brand, after pillorying after public shaming for us, isn't it? It just never lets up.
When I think I see some headway for my home state; some path to a better future, some Cornpone Corleone like Manchin [swaggers] in, or the most compromised judge since Pontius Pilate ends up on the front page of a major newspaper. Then some flatheaded reporter goes twenty miles up the holler and takes pictures of some tribe of Jukes and calls it "Appalachian culture."
The worst part is that wound is, for the most part, self-inflicted. During the election, I can't tell you the number of people who I had respect and even love for who repeated that obnoxious joke about Obama repainting the "White" house (har har har.) Or who told me that they were voting McCain (despite being Democrats) because "all the blacks will get revenge" if Obama wins.
Yet, "hillbilly" West Virginia Appalachians ain't dumb. They know their own self-interest when they see it, and when they don't. Their bottom line sense of who's for'em and who's again'em's been shaped by an entire history of exploitation by elites economic, social and cultural, as the late John O'Brien documents in his seminal book, At Home in the Heart of Appalachia.
And it was the opposite of their perceived self-interest that they saw in the Rise of Obama.
For he represented, and was being carried to power by, a wave of demographic changes--educational, ideogical, economic--that they found confusing if not downright threatening.
Taking a hard look at the new coalition forming in American politics, they didn't see their reflection in the mirror. (For a granular view of the core demographic elements of the first new realignment in American politics since 1980 and the second one since 1932, see John Judis's must-read piece in The New Republic, America the Liberal.)
The case has been made (by state native and influential liberal writer Michael Tomasky) that "West Virginia didn't vote like a Deep South state last fall," but this data newly assembled the great Nate Silver is sobering.
Analyzing post-election data based on income groupings, Silver shows that if the election outcome had been confined only to voters with an income of less than $20,000, only four states still would have preferred McCain to Obama: Idaho, Wyoming, Utah...and West Virginia.
Yep. Among the poorest voters, Obama fared better in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas (the only state to give Hillary a bigger margin of victory in the primaries than West Virginia) and Oklahoma than he did here.
Looking at the CNN exit poll data, which Tomasky correctly used to make his argument, it still needs to be noted that Obama carried no significant groups other than Democrats overall (69 percent) and managed a 50-50 split with state voters aged 18-24 (McCain carried handily in the white 18-29 demographic, 54-45).
(Here are the numbers Tomasky astutely used: Nationally, Obama lost white working-class voters by a 12 percent margin, and by 16 percent in West Virginia. Among white working-class men, Obama lost by 16 percent nationally and 18
percent in West Virginia. Among women, he lost by 7 percent nationally and 14
percent in West Virginia.)
It would be preposterous to infer from those results that West Virginia is racist, but it's equally delusional to conclude that racial misgivings weren't significant last fall in West Virginia, either, especially when the poorest group of voters in this state cast their lot more with Idaho than Mississippi, Oklahoma or Alabama.
But, until proven otherwise, I don't believe working-class West Virginians specifically and Appalachians generally won't vote their self-interest, especially when they see that Obama's policies don't represent "the revenge of the blacks."
In other words, health care.
And here are the stark facts when it comes to health care distribution and income in West Virginia: according to the West Virginia Center for Budget and Policy, only about 25 percent of West Virginia workers make at least $35,000 and have employer-supported health insurance.
Tomasky says that West Virginia can be in play for Obama in 2012 if health care reform's been enacted in the meantime.
And Obama, as Silver also points out, is now shoving his green chips to the center of the table on that very issue.
Tomasky's caveat is that if the Obama administration also moves aggressively on carbon cap policies, the showdown in West Virginia will pivot along Democrat "here's what we've done for you lately" lines versus Big Coal's inevitable "Obama's a job/economic development killer" line of attack.
Sounds about right to me, and it looks today that that's where we may be headed. And if those pushes come to shoves, it'll be interesting to see on which side of the fault line the Blue Dog/Underwood Democrats of this state, like Governor Manchin, fall.
Now, here's my challenge to Tim Kaine and Democratic National Committee: if it's true that the DNC will be attempting to consolidate its 2008 gains and Howard Dean's 50-state strategy by focussing on "swing states," where better for President Obama to come when he leaves the Oval Office to stump for health care reform than West Virginia?
Because, if Obama can carry West Virginia four years from now, it's over.
The "we're still a center-right nation" meme? Fini.
And it will mean the results of 2008 weren't the most significant political realignment in this nation since 1980, they were the most significant and lasting since 1932.
I thought Appalachia was what right wingers like to call the "REAL America." So, why does Bill O'Reilly hate Appalachia and its people - the people that Jim Webb writes about in "Born Fighting" - so much? Here is some of what O'Reilly had to say:
I submit to you that the culture in Appalachia harms the children almost beyond repair... There's really nothing we can do about it," O'Reilly told Sawyer.
She had a different view, of course. She said, "The great opportunity is the information economy... These kids are as smart as the kids in India."
"Sure," O'Reilly agreed. "But their parents are screwed up. That's the thing... Kids get married at 16 and 17. Their parents are drunks. I'm generalizing now. (Gee, ya think?) There's a lot of meth. There's a lot of irresponsibility. There's fear to go. Look, if I'm born in Appalachia, the first chance I get, I go to Miami. Because that's where the jobs are. But they stay there. And the cycle of poverty for 200 years - boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I don't want to sound hopeless about it but I think it IS hopeless."
Last election, we noted that poor whites--in the form of Appalachians--are one group you can still get away with insulting in otherwise "polite company." Bill O'Reilly is picking it up right where many others left off.
Via, the always worth reading Al Giordano highlights James Wolcott's winners and losers of 2008. In addition to Al in the winners column was Nate Silver of the indispensible FiveThirtyEight.com. Here's how James Wolcott described Nate and his work in 2008:
No shiny arrow shot swifter and loftier from obscurity to quotable authority than Nate Silver, whose FiveThirtyEight.com site became the expert sensation of the election season. (Five hundred thirty-eight is the sum of electoral-college votes up for contention.) Crunching poll numbers until they sang with clarity, Silver, a managing partner and sabermetrician at Baseball Prospectus and a former Daily Kos diarist, made many of the old pros look as if they were stuck in the previous century, milking cows. Not only did his disciplined models and microfine data mining command respect, his prognostications hit the Zen mark on Election Day. "This uncanny accuracy is the equivalent of dropping a penny from the top of a 50 story building and landing it in a shot glass," John Cole wrote at Balloon Juice. "This is sick accurate." Silver also became an instant cable-news savant, his geek-genius glasses and owlish mien worthy of a Starfleet sub-adjutant whose quadratic equations coolly foil an attack from a Romulan vessel while the senior officers are frantically poking at their touch screens.
This gives me a chance to revisit one of Nate's posts where he revisited Obama's so-called "Appalachia problem" that other lesser lights had claimed existed. Silver found it was based less off race than familiarity with the candidate:
I think the most telling example might be South Carolina, which Obama did not campaign in because of any particular demographic strengths, but merely because it happened to enjoy an early position on the primary calendar. In that state, Obama did 4 points better than John Kerry among white voters, even though he didn't really visit the state after January. (Interestingly, it did not seem to matter whether Obama visited a state during the primary cycle or the general election; merely spending time on the ground there was what counted.)
The question, really, is to what extent Barack Obama's underperformance among certain types of white voters was a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you're not asking for somebody's vote, you're usually not going to get it. This may be particularly true if you're a black person and the voter is a rural Southern white person.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that the voter is hellbent against you. I tend to think that racism runs along a spectrum. Many, or perhaps even most white voters are a little bit racist, but for relatively few is race a complete deal-breaker. Many of them will vote for you if you're actively soliciting their votes, and they've had time to grow comfortable with you. If Obama had been targeting Georgia's or West Virgina's electoral votes as actively as he sought Florida's or North Carolina's, might he have won them? I don't know, but I think he'd have had a fighting chance.
Those of us who know West Virginia, from Gov. Joe Manchin on down, said if Obama had campaigned here, he would have won here. Certainly he would have had a better chance. But others in the blogosphere would rather stick with their superficial narrative of villifying those of us in West Virginia instead of looking past their preconceived stereotypes.
There's a zombie narrative infesting the minds of otherwise reality-based denizens of Blogtopia.
Obama's "Appalachian Problem" began in the minds of DailyKos front-pages. They promulgated forth, using devious zombie-mind-tricks like beautiful maps, shifting arguments and flowery prose, a false--yet deviously attractive--narrative: the problem for Obama isn't any of the usual subgroups the Right demonize, it's the only subgroup left for the otherwise politically correct to pick on--not just poor whites, but the poorest of ignorant poor whites here in Appalachia.
Oh, and what a target-rich environment us overly stereotyped Appalachian hollow-dwellers are!
Zombie narrative death spikes
First, as a reminder for those of us who know an Appalachian-American when we see one, but still have difficulty remembering the boundaries of Appalachia:
The Federal Government defines the
Appalachian Region as "a 200,000-square-mile region that follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from southern New York to northern Mississippi. It includes all of West Virginia and parts of twelve other states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia."
More formally:
Now, on to the fact-rich diaries that dissect Obama's electoral strengths and weaknesses. (Please... as you are reading these, note the absence of any correlation between Appalachian geography, demographics, or... well... anything.)
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