The Democrat Party and the United Mine Workers Union have enjoyed a long and successful marriage. Union leadership, most rank-and-file miners and retirees have backed Democrat politicians, who have returned the favor with policies that benefit the union.
But that relationship has hit the skids. The national Democrat Party, and its de-facto leader, President Obama, have found a new BFF—the environmental movement. The UMWA, with its commitment to coal and a declining membership, is of no benefit to Green Team Obama.
The relationship had been in decline, but the EPA’s announcement this week of the new carbon emission standards that will wreck the coal industry are the official divorce papers. Here’s how the Wall Street Journal summed it up:
“The Environmental Protection Agency’s mammoth rule is an important political movement because it shows that national Democrats have come down decisively on the side of modern environmentalists over the working-class voters who were once their base,” the Journal opined. “Tom Steyer of Farallon Capital fame has trounced Cecil Roberts of the United Mine Workers Union.”
Roberts manages a diminished union with aging and sick retirees; Steyer is a billionaire environmentalist who promises to spend $100 million this election cycle supporting candidates who pledge to do something about climate change.
Whose phone call do you think gets returned by the White House and leading Democrat Party officials?
Roberts, like a lot of working class Democrats, has been left behind by the green lean of the new Democrat Party. “I think this rule and the White House announcing this rule was really a slap in the face at some really good Democrats out here, not just in the coalfields necessarily, but in rural America,” Roberts told me on Talkline Thursday.
It’s a significant day when Cecil Roberts and the Wall Street Journal editorial page are in agreement. This is confirmation of the leftward drift of the national Democrat Party. “I didn’t leave the party; the party left me.”
Yes, Roberts knew about candidate Obama’s famous quote to the San Francisco Chronicle about bankrupting coal-fired power plants, but he chose to believe Obama’s more public promised commitment to “clean coal.”
Either Obama misled coal miners or Roberts and others in the union chose to hear what they wanted to hear.
Following the Roberts interview on Talkline, I heard from a number of listeners who said the UMWA is getting what it deserves for its support of Obama in the 2008 election. (The union did not endorse a candidate in 2012). But what good is retribution?
We’re all in this together now, everyone in West Virginia who believes these new carbon rules will put miners out of work, severely damage the state’s economy and not make one damn bit of difference in the climate.