Since the election, I’ve been hearing a lot of folks here (most well to my right) bellyaching that Joe Manchin isn’t a “real” Democrat and that he might as well just switch parties. Stop your gob! Show a little solidarity, please. I’d love to have a socialist Senator from WV, or even a lefty Dem, but that’s not what we’ve got for the next two years, or what we’re getting any time soon.
You want Joe Manchin to vote with us when we need him badly? You want him to push his envelope of electability to the left? Give him a little help tomorrow. Call your Senator. Make sure the Senate helps him deliver on permanently extending expiring healthcare benefits to the retired coal miners that mined the fuel that was the largest source of electricity in this country during WWII and in each and every full calendar year since. Give him that to run on in 2018, or he’s going to have to move even farther right to try to keep his seat in 2018.
Don’t much care for coal, what it does to people, or the environment? Yeah, me neither. It’s filthy stuff, and nobody knows that better, or paid a higher price, than the people who grew up in coal country, have seen folks killed and crippled in the mines, or kin dead and dying of black lung. The U.S. was built on coal, just like it was built on slavery, even if you’ve never personally seen a fucking lump of coal in your life. Coal isn’t the coal miners’ fault, any more than child labor is the fault of children. Coal must end, but we owe coal miners. Let’s live up to that.
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