Can anyone say anything at all nice about coal??

"You can't understand Pennsylvania unless you understand coal."

A Washington Post article describes a modern coal mine in Western Pennsylvania coal country.

The article is eye-opening about coal and the people who mine it. It is also a heads-up about the new Washington Post.

Coal rolls by on a conveyor belt 

I am sharing the article so it bypasses the paywall. The Washington Post adds this note to the article link: "You can't understand Pennsylvania unless you understand coal." Click here: link at Washington Post

Democrats can blow off reading this, and I expect many will. Damned if they are going to read anything that makes coal look like anything but a crime against humanity and the Earth. Democrats sneer at coal, calling it 18th-century technology in a world of high-tech renewable solar and wind. God help a Democratic politician who forgets the simple truth that coal is evil.

Democrats almost certainly cannot win the White House without winning Pennsylvania. Twice Pennsylvania's coal country voters overwhelmingly voted for Trump and tipped the state's vote to him. The consequence of Democrats not understanding coal is that America elects an authoritarian president who reverses every green energy policy achievement beloved by Democrats. 

The message of the Post story is that coal is highly automated, that it grinds out and conveys thousands of tons a day of coal from deep underground to railroad cars to power plants. The people doing this work get paid some $100,000 a year. It is a "single worker" job, a coal executive explains. A man can support his family, and the wife can stay home with the children. 

The article normalizes coal. It describes safety equipment and safety procedures. It describes the elevator that brings miners 800 feet down to the worksite as similar to the large elevators one sees in modern office towers. It describes second, third, and fourth-generation coal miners. It quotes people who are happy with their work. It describes coal as an important part of the country's energy mix now and for decades to come. 

What it does not do is treat coal as a stinking embarrassment to be held at arm's length by decent people.

I note a similarity to the Portland story, but in partisan reverse. Democrats treat the coal industry the way that people in the Fox News-MAGA-Trump bubble treat Portland. They hear nothing of Portland except "Democrat run city" burdened by antifa, riots, and misery. Even Oregon Republicans who should know better are blinded by the orthodoxy. They ignore or discount any sign of a normal city functioning normally. They would be kicked off the team if they expressed a neutral view of Portland.

My sense is that Democrats generally treat the coal industry the way that Trump and MAGA voters treat Portland.

I consider The Washington Post feature article to be neutral and descriptive -- and for that reason I consider it noteworthy. I don't believe The Post would have published this article two years ago, back before Jeff Bezos re-aligned his newspaper to become more Trump-compliant. Two years ago a coal industry article would show photographs of toothless people with blackened faces on ventilators living in unpainted dilapidated houses. This is different. The article describes the coal industry the way that people living in western Pennsylvania coal country see themselves, as people making a life producing something the world wants.

I am not trying to persuade Democratic readers to remove their rooftop solar panels and install coal furnaces in their homes. I do think that Democrats need to have a better understanding of how people in red areas understand the world. A neutral article on coal country will feel weird to Democratic readers. They may resist every sentence, but it is a worthy endeavor in political empathy.

Republicans in my area complain bitterly about how Oregon has a Democratic supermajority and that Republican candidates cannot win statewide offices. How unfair! They respond by spending more money on campaign ads. They need to wise up to the fact that leaders in their party lie about Portland and express open contempt for it. Metropolitan Portland has about half the state's voters. There should be no surprise that they reject Republican candidates by four-to-one margins.

Democrats, for their own part, need to wise up, too, about Pennsylvania. Or not, and keep losing elections.

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