West Virginia, despite being as far from Cosmopolitan as you can get has been a Democratic stronghold until the last election cycle
Also, West Virginia isn't all of Appalachia. SE Ohio, rural Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina are coal producing regions that are also very conservative.
Edit could the downvoter parked here show their face, literally five seconds after posting and you're downvoting have to assume you've gone down the thread downvoting everything, so just say hi
Their votes are "taken for granted" because they're a tiny constituency, and their livelihood was always going to disappear. Mines have become progressively more automated (like everything else) and between natural gas and renewable energy options, it's simply no longer the economic home run it used to be.
The lack of reality among some around here does amaze me
Ok, read the parent. Appalachian Miners do not vote overwhelmingly Republican to protect their union jobs and government subsidies. For the longest time they voted Democratic to Protect their Union Jobs and Government subsides until their jobs were no longer there.
Their jobs aren't coming back, that's a given, and the reaction to that was to stop voting for the people they thought would protect their way of living, only to see a shift over the last decade where their voice was completely drowned out in the Democratic party
edit @CalChris Because your reading comprehension is not the best. They voted for their own economic interests by voting Democratic. You do realize in 2008 both of WVs Senators were Dems and so was their governor. Since the Depression the vast majority of West Virginia's Senate seats have been filled by Dems
And they'll find themselves with no long-term improvement in employment, and a dramatically weaker safety net as a bonus.
https://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers...
Looks more like Cheeto took them for a ride. He does that. Is WV voting its interest in the opioid crisis? I don't think more guns, gays and god will get them out of it.
When people are despised and neglected, they tend to notice.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic#/media/File%...
Not sure why the governing party isn’t being held responsible for, you know, governing.
The transgender kids and sexual assault of college women coverage was on Fox. Again, guns, gays and god ain’t gonna get us out of this. But it will deliver the votes in places like WV.
People innth field were talking about it before that, but meth was still getting more attention; that's pretty much true of each of the unbroken sequence of specific-drug abuse crises, too.
Whack-a-mole with specific drugs isn't a solution, it is something that will never make any progress but can generate the perpetual illusion of action.
You want to deal with cocaine/crack/meth/opioids and whatever tomorrow's iteration is, you deal with the health (including mental health and substance use disorder) prevention and treatment system, including cost and access issues, broadly. And the Dems are the only ones that aren't actively fighting to make that worse, rather than better, across the board. Everything else is the equivalent of shipping homeless from one town to the next to “fix” homelessness.
In fact, it was worse during the "Obama years" than before or after. "Steadily fell during the Obama years" is a flat lie.
Capitalism is great, government is evil blah blah. But everyone loves those subsidised government programs.