Dems struggle to reclaim coal country from Trump, GOP

But retaking miners’ issues back from President-elect Trump and the Republicans won’t be easy for Manchin and other red-state Democrats up for re-election in 2018, especially after their party has repeatedly prioritized action on climate change, a point Trump drove home relentlessly during the campaign.

“I think Mr. Trump carried West Virginia pretty handily and also won Ohio,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters Friday. “That’s shaped the way people look at these things.”

Manchin and several other Democrats from coal-mining states across Appalachia threatened to shut down the government temporarily this weekend over the difference between a four-month and year-long extension of health insurance for retired coal workers and their widows. The effort ultimately fizzled when it appeared as if several Democrats would abandon the quest and vote with Republicans to prevent a government shutdown.

The West Virginia Democrat teamed up with Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and several other Democrats up for re-election in 2018, to scold Republicans for wanting to ditch town to enjoy the holidays while leaving miners and their widows with only a four-month healthcare patch. When the effort appeared to be breaking apart late Friday, Manchin, Brown and several others vowed to redouble the fight in the new year.

At one point this week, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., lashed out at Republicans for abandoning the very same voters who they promised to help during the election.

“How dare they elect a president on the notion that he will support coal miners when the first chance they get, they screw over the widowers and the pension owners that were coal miners — it’s just outrageous,” she said.

Brown and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, whose term also is up in 2018, took House Republicans to task for cutting a provision from the water infrastructure bill that would have required projects to use U.S. steel. The two senators argued that the Republicans were already reneging on Trump’s “Buy America” promise.

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., rejected Manchin’s efforts to cast Democrats as the true champions of miners and American workers, and said Obama’s environmental policies are to blame for the miners’ health care dilemma. He also said he would work to provide a longer-term solution at the beginning of the year.

McConnell said he would have preferred that “so many miners’ places of employment hadn’t been driven into bankruptcy in recent years, which as we all know is due in no small part to President Obama, his policies, and the overwhelming majority of Senate Democrats who support all those polices.”

“Most of the Senate Democrats support the war on coal,” he added.

A stand-out moment in the presidential campaign came in early May, when Trump took advantage of Hillary Clinton’s devastating promise to “to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business” by transitioning miners to renewable energy jobs.

The billionaire businessman flew into Charleston, W.Va., donned a hard hat at a rally and made shoveling motions, as if he were in a mine, digging out coal. The audience members, some holding signs reading “Trump digs coal” roared their support as Trump promised to put “our miners back to work.”

The future of coal workers also played a critical role in Sen. Rob Portman’s decisive defeat of Democratic rival Ted Strickland. Portman and his allies hammered Strickland for “abandoning” his native region by endorsing liberals’ “war on coal” to try to reverse the effects of climate change.

Over the final months of the campaign, Portman and his allies ran TV ads featuring the plight of mine workers and repeating Clinton’s pledge to put them “out of business” while touting his endorsement from the United Mine Workers.

Political campaigns hinge on politicians’ ability to convince voters they can improve their lives. Across the country’s heartland, Trump promised hope, even if his pledge to bring jobs back to coal country and the Rust Belt is a tall order.

The American market for coal is in sharp decline. Utility companies are less reliant on coal, in part because natural gas drilling has become easier and cheaper but also because Obama, with broad support from the Democratic Party, issued strict regulations to cut emissions from power plants.

The issue is complex, but Democrats have made it easy for Trump to step in and champion jobs for miners and other American workers. In addition to Clinton’s mid-year pledge to put coal miners “out of business,” Democrats have repeatedly hit the coal industry and boasted of ending the country’s reliance on coal.

During Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s farewell address, for instance, he bragged about closing all of the coal-fired power plants in Nevada during his final years in office. The remarks showed little concern for the fate of some of his Democratic colleagues up for re-election in 2018, a year in which 23 Senate Democrats will face re-election compared to just eight Senate Republicans.

Republicans are already targeting Brown over his support for environmental regulations and shuttering coal plants.

On Friday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Senate Republicans re-election arm, issued a release accusing Brown of being a “Sierra Club senator” who “masquerades as a friend of coal miners.”

“Senator Sherrod Brown has officially launched an election-focused rebranding effort to soften his longstanding anti-coal record after witnessing the crushing defeat of Ted Strickland,” the NRSC said.

The release pointed out that the Sierra Club, whose mission focused on moving the United States away from the production and use of coal, has endorsed Brown for being “a progressive environmental senator” and Brown’s co-sponsorship of a 2010 renewable energy bill that claimed to produce enough energy to shut down 300 “dirty, large coal plants.” The group also reprised 2012 quotes from Brown arguing that the Democrats’ war on coal is a figment of the right’s imagination.

“There is no war on coal. Period,” Brown argued during a 2012 candidates debate with GOP challenger Josh Mandel.

Susan Ferrechio contributed to this story