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> OTOH, Trump just straight up lied to them. He said he'd protect their jobs, but coal jobs in his first term continued to decline at the same rate they did dur
by jmye 1y ago
> OTOH, Trump just straight up lied to them. He said he'd protect their jobs, but coal jobs in his first term continued to decline at the same rate they did during Obama's. He did nothing for them.
Populism in a nutshell. Those coal miners didn't want to hear about how they could learn something new and do something new, even if it was better. All of that takes effort and work.
One person tried realism, the other told them what they wanted to hear and gave them someone else to blame for why they weren't as rich as they thought they should be. And then the rest of us get harangued with "why won't you listen to all of these people" when we have, extensively, and what they're literally saying is antithetical to everything this country stands for (to say nothing of what their 'heartfelt' religious/moral beliefs supposedly stand for).
- bryanlarsen 1y agoTrump term 1 was just straight up lying. It was natgas killing coal in his first term, and natgas was part of his constituency so he did nothing. Trump term 2 is more like populism. This term, it's solar that's killing coal. And solar is woke, so Trump is actually doing something for coal this term. It's the diffuse vote effect. Trump might save a couple thousand coal jobs, which is a really big deal for those couple thousand people and swings their vote. Meanwhile, it increases the cost of energy for 350 million Americans but that's a very marginal effect. And it increases climate change for 8.2 billion people, but those 7.9 billion of those don't vote in American elections.