The main reasons for the collapse are structural: geology (the state’s southern coalfields are increasingly uncompetitive as the easiest-to-mine coal is gone), the increasing use of natural gas for power generation nationally, and a weak market for coal exports. But the drop in coal production and employment coincided with Obama’s presidency, creating an opportunity for the West Virginia Republican Party. Despite the fact that federal environmental regulations have had minimal impact on the decline of the state’s coal industry, the sector’s rapid decline provided the perfect opportunity for Republicans to attack the Obama administration’s “war on coal.”

The West Virginia Democratic Party created an analogous situation by championing dominant extractive industries in the state while also claiming to be the party of labor. The decline of the coal industry laid bare the fact that the state Democratic Party has no real vision for supporting workers, particularly as the tensions between
creating jobs and protecting the environment become increasingly fraught.

[...] Republican governor Henry Hatfield (1913–17) once asked:

Why will not those who have large holdings in our commonwealth assist in the up-building of the state? When will relief come to us? Will it be when these hills and valleys have been exhausted of their bounties of nature and when these great mountains have shed their last stately oak, and when the hills will resound with emptiness because the mineral beds that once reposed within have been exhausted in a market beyond the state borders?

The economic transformation needed to build an economic system in the interest of workers while remaining within natural limits is a long-term transformation. But
we must begin it. The alternative, a continued failure to address underlying economic realities, will continue to drive voters to the Right.