Why Hillary Clinton Can’t Win in Coal Country

The New Republic reports:

Coal is on the ballot today in West Virginia. Although there’s no mystery at this point about who will win the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations, the state’s primary has offered a preview of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s coming general-election battle for white, working-class voters who are worried about the struggles of coal and other industries—a bloc that’ll be key in competitive general-election battlegrounds like Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The West Virginia primary is a gauge of whether Clinton can promote strong environmental measures without losing too much support from voters and unions who see those regulations as “job-killing.” And it hasn’t gone well.

On the trail in West Virginia, Clinton has faced fire for her tone-deaf (but decontextualized) comment at a March CNN forum, when she promised to “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” In the same breath, Clinton uttered her promises to bring new economic opportunity to the area and “to make clear that we don’t want to forget those people,” but Republicans and industry seized on her “out of business” remark and ran with it. Clinton’s now-infamous comment led to a confrontation last week with a recently out-of-work coal miner who referenced it and said the candidate had a lot of gall to “come in here and tell us how you’re going to be our friend.”

Hillary Clinton's war on coal.