https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/whats-the-matter-with-west-virginia-culture-war-or-class-war
What’s the Matter with West Virginia: #Culture War or #Class War?
LES LEOPOLD
Jan 09, 2024
..."If the #Democrats had taken a real interest in the plight of coal country, it would have been relatively easy to work out a New Deal-like plan for redevelopment. The region needs improved physical infrastructure, stronger schools, and better healthcare facilities. The area could truly benefit from an increase in environmental reclamation jobs funded by the federal government. West Virginians care about the rivers, streams, and forests in which they hunt, fish, and hike. The reclamation of the local environment should have created strong connections between the local population and national Democratic environmentalists. But it didn’t happen. Instead, the Democrats wrote off the state. Good riddance.
As the Republicans continue to press cultural issues, as Tom Frank described, they leave the door open for Democratic solutions that could stop mass layoffs and create sustainable jobs from the millions who have been left behind. The Biden Administration’s bipartisan infrastructure program and green-energy Inflation Reduction Act, as currently conceived, won’t put the people of Mingo County back to work. Furthermore, these voters remember that Frank’s list of anti-working-class economic policies—deregulation, cuts in capital gains taxes, monopolization, and runaway inequality—all had the strong backing of the Democratic Party leadership.
It turns out that what’s the matter with Kansas or West Virginia is the wrong question. What’s the matter with the Democrats is what we should be asking.
#ZachShrewsbury in #WestVirginia and #DanOsborne in #Nebraska are answering that question as they run for the U.S. #Senate as unabashed working-class #candidates. (See Steve Early’s excellent reporting.)
Osborne, a former local union president who led a successful strike against the WK Kellogg Company in 2021, actually is leading in the polls against three-term Republican Senator Deb Fischer. For the first time in decades, the voters in these two states are hearing a progressive populist message from senatorial candidates, and it is ringing true.
The Democratic Party should listen carefully to what Shrewsbury says West Virginia needs.
“We need leaders that are cut from the working-class cloth," he says. "We need representation that will go toe to toe with corporate parasites and their bought politicians. We need a leader who will not waver in the face of these powers that keep the boot on our neck.”
