The candidacy of Don Blankenship came crashing down today like a coked-out druggie coming off an ugly binge.
Harshing the mellow of the indicted coal baron, the West Virginia state Supreme Court ordered the secretary of state “to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure that Donald L. Blankenship does not appear on the 2018 General Election Ballot for the Office of United States Senator for the State of West Virginia.”
A delusional Blankenship was trying to sue his way onto the ballot as a third-party candidate. To do so, he had to challenge the constitutionality of the state’s “sore-loser law,” given that he had lost the GOP primary. But after months of wild gesticulations, millions spent in political consulting and legal fees, and bizarre accusations that the Majority Leader of the United States Senate was somehow secretly running a cocaine smuggling ring, Blankenship is done. And seriously, good riddance.
Now West Virginia can start to coming clean after finally just saying no to his nihilist populism. This is important because although he was easy to dismiss, Blankenship was really quite dangerous.
His candidacy was a protest and his platform victimhood. Despite his millions of dollars and his mansions, Blankenship insisted that he was the victim of a system rigged at all levels—economic, legal, and political. When sentenced to prison for a mining accident that left 29 of his employees dead, Blankenship didn’t take responsibility. He accused Obama’s Department of Justice of making him a political prisoner.
The other charges of victimhood, including his bizarre claim that command economies like communist China are more equitable to their citizens than capitalist democracies, are not worth detailing further. His perverse campaign pitch though is worth diagnosing because Blankenship might be gone but the desperate hopelessness is not.
Blankenship was the manifestation of the “LOL Nothing Matters” meme that circulates on the darker corners of political Twitter. He told an Appalachian electorate that had been written off and pushed down for so long that they had nothing left to lose. And then, on Election Day, more than 20,000 said, “sure, Blankenship is a convicted criminal but why the heck not?” They pulled the lever while simultaneously rolling up their sleeves and collectively mainlining cynicism into their veins.
For that chunk of West Virginia, life still hasn’t gotten better. Trump promised to Make America Great Again and Trump delivered for the economy of the Mountain State. But he wasn’t able to do it quickly enough to restore confidence in the status quo. A third of Republicans in that state backed Blankenship despite the president’s call that they do the opposite. If Blankenship was allowed on the ballot as a third party candidate, perhaps even more would have done the same.
Thanks to the state Supreme Court, now the West Virginia electorate has a choice between two vastly different candidates, Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican Patrick Morrisey. But both are sober choices because both still at least believe that things can always get better.
