What happened to West Virginia and Virginia

[Hydera]

Ever since democrats adopted environmentalism and carbon reduction as a platform back in 2000 to convince nader voters to come back. West Virginia hasn't voted democrat since.

http://www.cbsnews.com/campaign2000results/state/poll_wvop-.html

Union members which were mostly that of the coal workers, went from strongly democrat for many generations,  to 50/50 between Gore and Bush and have voted more and more republican.


Meanwhile in Virginia. There was a military personal/defense contracting jobs boom in Virginia during the Iraq war which was paid by the government. That many were thankful for, which was why counties like Loudon, Prince William county. And in Hampton roads, Suffolk, Chesapeake county. Went for Bush again in 2004. While a lot of states were not doing well in the early-mid 2000's. Virginia was an exception since those jobs and the runoff demand created by those jobs allowed the state to rebound. So by 2008 and 2012, once republicans rediscovered their fondness for reducing government spending. A lot of people who were employed because of the war and didn't want to see their jobs gone, quickly switched to the democrats.

Also add that with the huge increase in turnout by blacks and hispanics in the state. Virginia switched.

[Hydera]

Ever since democrats adopted environmentalism and carbon reduction as a platform back in 2000 to convince nader voters to come back. West Virginia hasn't voted democrat since.

http://www.cbsnews.com/campaign2000results/state/poll_wvop-.html

Union members which were mostly that of the coal workers, went from strongly democrat for many generations,  to 50/50 between Gore and Bush and have voted more and more republican.


Meanwhile in Virginia. There was a military personal/defense contracting jobs boom in Virginia during the Iraq war which was paid by the government. That many were thankful for, which was why counties like Loudon, Prince William county. And in Hampton roads, Suffolk, Chesapeake county. Went for Bush again in 2004. While a lot of states were not doing well in the early-mid 2000's. Virginia was an exception since those jobs and the runoff demand created by those jobs allowed the state to rebound. So by 2008 and 2012, once republicans rediscovered their fondness for reducing government spending. A lot of people who were employed because of the war and didn't want to see their jobs gone, quickly switched to the democrats.

Also add that with the huge increase in turnout by blacks and hispanics in the state. Virginia switched.

John Kerry was the first Democrat since LBJ (IIRC) to win Fairfax county and that was long before Republicans decided to embrace again fiscal conservatism.

Uh, when exactly were the Republicans not embracing fiscal conservatism, at least in campaign rhetoric ?

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GCEC96


They had a majority in congress from 2000-2006, majority in senate 2003-2006. But spending kept increasing. A lot of it had to do with the iraq war.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/FDEFX

[Hydera]

Same thing that happened to the Democratic Party nationally; the cosmopolitan wing grew and gained more influence while the unionized working-class wing was thrown under the bus.

I think this is the first time in a while there wasn't a "our democrats in those states became racists" from a red avatar.

Understandably the democrats saw long time voter growth in the environmentalist movement. So they abandoned working class natural resource extarcting industries like coal, oil and gas. And their opposition to coal lost them parts of west Virginia and coal country in kentucky which resisted nixon and reagan.

Democrats today don't understand why they get flak for saying sh**t about the coal industry. Try telling texans they have to stop extracing oil and see how their state reacts. Hint: its more than the people working in oil who will be angry.

[Hydera]

It's pretty hard to argue that race had nothing to do with the South switching to the Republican party during Reagan's two terms.

1. Large economic rebound in 1983 and 1984 after a recession in 1981 and 1982.

2. Carter still won a lot of rural southern areas in 1980.

3. Mondale did not sit well with southerners who voted for a southerner from georgia who did peanut farming just four years ago. Humphrey, McGovern and Mondale were too left for the south.

4. Southerners will not naturally under any circumstance favor a liberal compared to southern centrists like Bill Clinton and southern centre-leftist carter. Heck Al Gore thought he would still win states in the south because he had a Tennessee accent when he went left to try to convince nader votes to come to him. In reality people in the south thought of him as a Foghorn Leghorn who pissed on "southern social conservative values" compared to Bush a Yosemite sam with a rough texas country accent who at least "believed the things they did". I don't even agree with many southern socially conservative values. But its not "its because of race!!!".