Let's talk about Jack Conway.

[Potus]

I didn't pay very much attention to Kentucky until the past 3 or 4 days, besides seeing the occasional television ad. Just seeing ads and watching the last couple days, I have come to the conclusion that Jack Conway is a total loser because he's a robotic, textbook politician.

My question is: did Conway have a connection problem? How could someone with such a good, privileged life who speaks in constantly political platitudes care about someone like me? I'm reminded of the "too political" criticism of Hillary Clinton. That concern has been brought into stark contrast with bombastic non-politicians like Donald Trump and Matt Bevin. What is the significance of this "plastic candidate" issue in the KY-Gov race?

[Miles]

Yeah, Conway was awkward as hell in his ads. Why Beshear didn't do an ad or two for him is political malpractice.

[Hydera]

I don't think Jack Conway was that flawed of a candidate as the board believes.

Conway just didn't survive because the political circumstances in the state that had changed rapidly amongst National elections in Kentucky, finally went down stateside.

two factors had a large factor on the election.


1. Kim Davis episode caused many evangelicals who weren't planning to turnout in this election to turnout.  

2. The Backlash over Obama due to the conflict between Coal and Preisdent Obama.   The Eastern Kentucky coal region have swung republican despite being a long democratic stronghold even in the 1972 and 1984 elections. The Democrats nationwide has given up this region and it was open for grabs for the GOP.  If they think they can lose one of the only base they have in the state they might as well disband as a party in Kentucky.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Bevin will probably be a 1 termer anyways. KY will get a dose of him, just like Fletcher with deep budget cuts.

[Potus]

I don't think Jack Conway was that flawed of a candidate as the board believes.

Conway just didn't survive because the political circumstances in the state that had changed rapidly among-st National elections in Kentucky, finally went down stateside.

two factors had a large factor on the election.


1. Kim Davis episode caused many evangelicals who weren't planning to turnout in this election to turnout.  

2. The Backlash over Obama due to the conflict between Coal and Preisdent Obama.

Grimes and Beshear won against "blank slate" opponents. All of the money they raised could have painted their opponents as anything they want. There is a reason Conway ran behind all of the "competitive" Democrats.

[bobloblaw]

Bevin will probably be a 1 termer anyways. KY will get a dose of him, just like Fletcher with deep budget cuts.

waaaaaaaa waaaaaa waaaaa

[Free Bird]

Bevin will probably be a 1 termer anyways. KY will get a dose of him, just like Fletcher with deep budget cuts.

waaaaaaaa waaaaaa waaaaa

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

I was saying that, because Greg Stumbo is State Assembly Dem leader, not likely to challenge Paul, but 2019 or 2020 seem plausible to run.

[DINGO Joe]

Conway certainly looks and sounds awful, but coal is a pretty hefty factor, and pretty hard to campaign around.  Eastern Kentucky (and West Virginia for that matter) is a colony.  Only about 2 million tons of East Kentucky coal gets used in state, the rest gets shipped to end users elsewhere.  

Take Florida for example.  In 2001 Florida got more electricity from Coal than Natural Gas, by 2009 Florida was getting twice as much electricity from NG than coal and now it's more than 3X.  FP&L is actually buying a coal plant and shutting it down because that's cheaper than to continue buying power from the plant it was contracted to do.  Of the coal Florida does burn, it burns more from Colombia than East Kentucky.  Florida decided 15 years ago that Appalachia coal was becoming too expensive and they took advantage of technology (Natural Gas Combine Cycle plants) and luck (fracking and low NG prices) to forge a whole different path.  

I could repeat that story over and over again for each end user of Eastern Kentucky coal, but the people of East Kentucky aren't going to listen, they have their common delusion that if they squawk Obama enough time it'll all come back.  And politicians in both parties are enablers of this idea (Beshear did try to do some kind of summit in EKy trying to promote alternatives, but given geography, infrastructure, and quality of work force issues any transition will be beyond tough).  Grimes and Conway peddle the swill just as hard as Mitch and Bevin and they are all horrible rotten people.  The fact is that Appalachian coal is in it's seventh decade of decline and that will continue.  

So, let's talk about West Virginia.

 Only one state has fewer people than it did in 1950--West Virginia.  In 1950, West Virginia was the fourth youngest state, now it's the third oldest.  Combine that with the highest disability rate in the US  and WV has the highest percentage of people collecting SS checks, more than 25% of the state.  It has the highest drug usage of any state and the highest drug overdose death rate of any state by far.  Thanks to all of that and more, it has a death rate 15% higher than the next state.  It's birth rate is actually below average despite having the 6th highest teen birth rate.   It has a substandard infrastructure and extremely difficult terrain to try to maintain that infrastructure (airports actually crush houses in WV).   Since it's a colony,  it's already poor, but thanks to a collapse in commodity prices it's severance tax collections have blasted a huge whole in the state budget.

There is a bit of difference between WV and EKy coal as WV is the largest producer of met coal used for steel making and most of that met coal is exported around the globe.  The good thing about met coal is that it fetches a higher price than thermal (electric) coal and thus you can employee more people if needed to get it out of the ground.  West Virginia actually added coal jobs in Obama's first term thanks to a global boom in the met coal market (thanks to Chinese demand and natural disaster in Australia) but that has totally reversed after a peak in 2012 and man, are the colonial overlords throwing WV off the train.  

Of course, the two main coaltards running for Gov in WV aren't going to try to discuss that, they'll just bleet "War on Coal", and the colony will continue it's descent into a demographic and public health hell.  It's disgusting.

It should be noted that the Eastern Panhandle has nothing to do with coal and has much better demographics and health and has actually gained more than 100,000 people since 1950 (while the rest of the state is down 270,000), but it only makes up 10% of the state.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Conway certainly looks and sounds awful, but coal is a pretty hefty factor, and pretty hard to campaign around.  Eastern Kentucky (and West Virginia for that matter) is a colony.  Only about 2 million tons of East Kentucky coal gets used in state, the rest gets shipped to end users elsewhere.  

Take Florida for example.  In 2001 Florida got more electricity from Coal than Natural Gas, by 2009 Florida was getting twice as much electricity from NG than coal and now it's more than 3X.  FP&L is actually buying a coal plant and shutting it down because that's cheaper than to continue buying power from the plant it was contracted to do.  Of the coal Florida does burn, it burns more from Colombia than East Kentucky.  Florida decided 15 years ago that Appalachia coal was becoming too expensive and they took advantage of technology (Natural Gas Combine Cycle plants) and luck (fracking and low NG prices) to forge a whole different path.  

I could repeat that story over and over again for each end user of Eastern Kentucky coal, but the people of East Kentucky aren't going to listen, they have their common delusion that if they squawk Obama enough time it'll all come back.  And politicians in both parties are enablers of this idea (Beshear did try to do some kind of summit in EKy trying to promote alternatives, but given geography, infrastructure, and quality of work force issues any transition will be beyond tough).  Grimes and Conway peddle the swill just as hard as Mitch and Bevin and they are all horrible rotten people.  The fact is that Appalachian coal is in it's seventh decade of decline and that will continue.  

So, let's talk about West Virginia.

 Only one state has fewer people than it did in 1950--West Virginia.  In 1950, West Virginia was the fourth youngest state, now it's the third oldest.  Combine that with the highest disability rate in the US  and WV has the highest percentage of people collecting SS checks, more than 25% of the state.  It has the highest drug usage of any state and the highest drug overdose death rate of any state by far.  Thanks to all of that and more, it has a death rate 15% higher than the next state.  It's birth rate is actually below average despite having the 6th highest teen birth rate.   It has a substandard infrastructure and extremely difficult terrain to try to maintain that infrastructure (airports actually crush houses in WV).   Since it's a colony,  it's already poor, but thanks to a collapse in commodity prices it's severance tax collections have blasted a huge whole in the state budget.

There is a bit of difference between WV and EKy coal as WV is the largest producer of met coal used for steel making and most of that met coal is exported around the globe.  The good thing about met coal is that it fetches a higher price than thermal (electric) coal and thus you can employee more people if needed to get it out of the ground.  West Virginia actually added coal jobs in Obama's first term thanks to a global boom in the met coal market (thanks to Chinese demand and natural disaster in Australia) but that has totally reversed after a peak in 2012 and man, are the colonial overlords throwing WV off the train.  

Of course, the two main coaltards running for Gov in WV aren't going to try to discuss that, they'll just bleet "War on Coal", and the colony will continue it's descent into a demographic and public health hell.  It's disgusting.

It should be noted that the Eastern Panhandle has nothing to do with coal and has much better demographics and health and has actually gained more than 100,000 people since 1950 (while the rest of the state is down 270,000), but it only makes up 10% of the state.

Great post. Very informative.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Conway's political career is permanently over. The man should be imprisoned if he ever tries to run for something ever, ever, ever again.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Bevin will probably be a 1 termer anyways. KY will get a dose of him, just like Fletcher with deep budget cuts.

waaaaaaaa waaaaaa waaaaa

[Ebsy]

Conway certainly looks and sounds awful, but coal is a pretty hefty factor, and pretty hard to campaign around.  Eastern Kentucky (and West Virginia for that matter) is a colony.  Only about 2 million tons of East Kentucky coal gets used in state, the rest gets shipped to end users elsewhere.  

Take Florida for example.  In 2001 Florida got more electricity from Coal than Natural Gas, by 2009 Florida was getting twice as much electricity from NG than coal and now it's more than 3X.  FP&L is actually buying a coal plant and shutting it down because that's cheaper than to continue buying power from the plant it was contracted to do.  Of the coal Florida does burn, it burns more from Colombia than East Kentucky.  Florida decided 15 years ago that Appalachia coal was becoming too expensive and they took advantage of technology (Natural Gas Combine Cycle plants) and luck (fracking and low NG prices) to forge a whole different path.  

I could repeat that story over and over again for each end user of Eastern Kentucky coal, but the people of East Kentucky aren't going to listen, they have their common delusion that if they squawk Obama enough time it'll all come back.  And politicians in both parties are enablers of this idea (Beshear did try to do some kind of summit in EKy trying to promote alternatives, but given geography, infrastructure, and quality of work force issues any transition will be beyond tough).  Grimes and Conway peddle the swill just as hard as Mitch and Bevin and they are all horrible rotten people.  The fact is that Appalachian coal is in it's seventh decade of decline and that will continue.  

So, let's talk about West Virginia.

 Only one state has fewer people than it did in 1950--West Virginia.  In 1950, West Virginia was the fourth youngest state, now it's the third oldest.  Combine that with the highest disability rate in the US  and WV has the highest percentage of people collecting SS checks, more than 25% of the state.  It has the highest drug usage of any state and the highest drug overdose death rate of any state by far.  Thanks to all of that and more, it has a death rate 15% higher than the next state.  It's birth rate is actually below average despite having the 6th highest teen birth rate.   It has a substandard infrastructure and extremely difficult terrain to try to maintain that infrastructure (airports actually crush houses in WV).   Since it's a colony,  it's already poor, but thanks to a collapse in commodity prices it's severance tax collections have blasted a huge whole in the state budget.

There is a bit of difference between WV and EKy coal as WV is the largest producer of met coal used for steel making and most of that met coal is exported around the globe.  The good thing about met coal is that it fetches a higher price than thermal (electric) coal and thus you can employee more people if needed to get it out of the ground.  West Virginia actually added coal jobs in Obama's first term thanks to a global boom in the met coal market (thanks to Chinese demand and natural disaster in Australia) but that has totally reversed after a peak in 2012 and man, are the colonial overlords throwing WV off the train.  

Of course, the two main coaltards running for Gov in WV aren't going to try to discuss that, they'll just bleet "War on Coal", and the colony will continue it's descent into a demographic and public health hell.  It's disgusting.

It should be noted that the Eastern Panhandle has nothing to do with coal and has much better demographics and health and has actually gained more than 100,000 people since 1950 (while the rest of the state is down 270,000), but it only makes up 10% of the state.

Very informative.

[Holmes]

Conway certainly looks and sounds awful, but coal is a pretty hefty factor, and pretty hard to campaign around.  Eastern Kentucky (and West Virginia for that matter) is a colony.  Only about 2 million tons of East Kentucky coal gets used in state, the rest gets shipped to end users elsewhere.  

Take Florida for example.  In 2001 Florida got more electricity from Coal than Natural Gas, by 2009 Florida was getting twice as much electricity from NG than coal and now it's more than 3X.  FP&L is actually buying a coal plant and shutting it down because that's cheaper than to continue buying power from the plant it was contracted to do.  Of the coal Florida does burn, it burns more from Colombia than East Kentucky.  Florida decided 15 years ago that Appalachia coal was becoming too expensive and they took advantage of technology (Natural Gas Combine Cycle plants) and luck (fracking and low NG prices) to forge a whole different path.  

I could repeat that story over and over again for each end user of Eastern Kentucky coal, but the people of East Kentucky aren't going to listen, they have their common delusion that if they squawk Obama enough time it'll all come back.  And politicians in both parties are enablers of this idea (Beshear did try to do some kind of summit in EKy trying to promote alternatives, but given geography, infrastructure, and quality of work force issues any transition will be beyond tough).  Grimes and Conway peddle the swill just as hard as Mitch and Bevin and they are all horrible rotten people.  The fact is that Appalachian coal is in it's seventh decade of decline and that will continue.  

So, let's talk about West Virginia.

 Only one state has fewer people than it did in 1950--West Virginia.  In 1950, West Virginia was the fourth youngest state, now it's the third oldest.  Combine that with the highest disability rate in the US  and WV has the highest percentage of people collecting SS checks, more than 25% of the state.  It has the highest drug usage of any state and the highest drug overdose death rate of any state by far.  Thanks to all of that and more, it has a death rate 15% higher than the next state.  It's birth rate is actually below average despite having the 6th highest teen birth rate.   It has a substandard infrastructure and extremely difficult terrain to try to maintain that infrastructure (airports actually crush houses in WV).   Since it's a colony,  it's already poor, but thanks to a collapse in commodity prices it's severance tax collections have blasted a huge whole in the state budget.

There is a bit of difference between WV and EKy coal as WV is the largest producer of met coal used for steel making and most of that met coal is exported around the globe.  The good thing about met coal is that it fetches a higher price than thermal (electric) coal and thus you can employee more people if needed to get it out of the ground.  West Virginia actually added coal jobs in Obama's first term thanks to a global boom in the met coal market (thanks to Chinese demand and natural disaster in Australia) but that has totally reversed after a peak in 2012 and man, are the colonial overlords throwing WV off the train.  

Of course, the two main coaltards running for Gov in WV aren't going to try to discuss that, they'll just bleet "War on Coal", and the colony will continue it's descent into a demographic and public health hell.  It's disgusting.

It should be noted that the Eastern Panhandle has nothing to do with coal and has much better demographics and health and has actually gained more than 100,000 people since 1950 (while the rest of the state is down 270,000), but it only makes up 10% of the state.

This makes it all the more interesting that Houston, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, etc. show no signs of descending into demographic hell now and they haven't during past oil collapses.  It's interesting to consider what sets coal apart.   

There aren't many other industries that West Virginia or Kentucky can fall on, unlike in those large urban centers you've listed. Forestry is a non-starter nowadays.

[Xing]

Right, people totally said he was a terrible candidate before he lost...

He was a mediocre candidate who ran in a state that is now clearly unwinnable for Democrats. Candidate quality obviously isn't the biggest reason why he lost, just look at Bevin...

[Holmes]

Right, people totally said he was a terrible candidate before he lost...

He was a mediocre candidate who ran in a state that is now clearly unwinnable for Democrats. Candidate quality obviously isn't the biggest reason why he lost, just look at Bevin...

People were saying Conway was a bad candidate, especially after his performance in the Senate race in 2010.

And since Republicans won the governor's race, Kentucky = unwinnable for Democrats? Dems are making that into a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they don't even put an effort in it then the results will reflect that.

[Hydera]

Candidate quality obviously isn't the biggest reason why he lost, just look at Bevin...

Won't stop the bernie sander supporter types who are so convinced that if any dem candidate just ran on a ultra progressive platform, suddenly large swaths of progressives would turnout and push them to the finish line regardless of circumstances. For godsake there were people blaming Wendy Davis losing on "well... but... Obviously she lost because she was too defensive of gun ownership and would of won by campaigning on gun control!!!"

Right, people totally said he was a terrible candidate before he lost...

He was a mediocre candidate who ran in a state that is now clearly unwinnable for Democrats. Candidate quality obviously isn't the biggest reason why he lost, just look at Bevin...

People were saying Conway was a bad candidate, especially after his performance in the Senate race in 2010.

And since Republicans won the governor's race, Kentucky = unwinnable for Democrats? Dems are making that into a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they don't even put an effort in it then the results will reflect that.

There are tons of elections were the outcome is dependent on the candidate and lots of others where its dependent on the circumstances. This one is not dependent on the candidate, your canada so you probably know less about the circumstances in the state than even a person who doesnt live there.

Kentucky has been trending away from democrats since the 40s. However in particular, Obama accelerated it with not only his policies diverging a lot from the state.

Democrats could of found a better candidate and that person still would of lost. Conway was not a factor, the circumstances was.

[Holmes]

Right, people totally said he was a terrible candidate before he lost...

He was a mediocre candidate who ran in a state that is now clearly unwinnable for Democrats. Candidate quality obviously isn't the biggest reason why he lost, just look at Bevin...

People were saying Conway was a bad candidate, especially after his performance in the Senate race in 2010.

And since Republicans won the governor's race, Kentucky = unwinnable for Democrats? Dems are making that into a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they don't even put an effort in it then the results will reflect that.

There are tons of elections were the outcome is dependent on the candidate and lots of others where its dependent on the circumstances. This one is not dependent on the candidate, your canada so you probably know less about the circumstances in the state than even a person who doesnt live there.

Kentucky has been trending away from democrats since the 40s. However in particular, Obama accelerated it with not only his policies diverging a lot from the state.

Democrats could of found a better candidate and that person still would of lost. Conway was not a factor, the circumstances was.

I live in California. And as someone who used to live in Canada, I know all about elections that are more about circumstance than candidates themselves. But my point still stands, if a party is going to get discouraged over one bad election result and "trends from the 1940's", then sure, they should just give up. But these are the same people that gave Democrats a landslide victory 4 years ago and still elect a Democratic state legislature.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Is there any significance to the fact that Conway still won Floyd County by 12%? As a coal county, I thought it would be one that was getting much more Republican, yet still Conway did 21 points better there than statewide.

Are people packing into Prestonsburg and turning it into more of a central city?

[Rockefeller GOP]

Is there any significance to the fact that Conway still won Floyd County by 12%? As a coal county, I thought it would be one that was getting much more Republican, yet still Conway did 21 points better there than statewide.

Are people packing into Prestonsburg and turning it into more of a central city?

No, there are still just a lot of rural, socially conservative Democrats in KY ... Their candidates just used to win independents to put them over the top, and now they aren't.

[DINGO Joe]

RE: Houston, Tulsa & OKC

Well, these are where the colonial overlords live.  In the case of coal it's St. Louis, where 3 of the top 10 coal companies have their HQs (used to be 4 until Patriot's collapse).  And actually, odd fact, Tulsa has the HQ of a top 10 coal company, while Kentucky and WV combined have zero.  Even Billionaire Gov candidate Jim Justice has the HQ of his company in Roanoke, VA.

In the case of oil, there's also the pipeline and refining business, refining is still going gangbusters in the US thank to low costs and the ability to export finished products.  Now, it's true that when pricing collapses that the white collar jobs get cut too, and even consolidated (jobs go from Tulsa, OKC, New Orleans, Denver back to the mothership--Houston) but if things get really bad, the wastelands will be in North Dakota and West Texas, unless you can make a car that runs on air (in which case Houston would be pretty scary and Beaumont, TX would be like something out of Mad Max).

Now, for coal the equivalent of pipelines and refining are railroads and power plants.  Railroads have definitely been cutting jobs in the region.  CSX eliminated a regional office in Roanoke, VA and shut down rail yards in Corbin, KY and Erwin, TN (btw, they once Hung an elephant at the Erwin rail yards.  As for power plants, WV and PA traditionally have export coal electricity to the east coast from power plants in coal country, but the Marcellus has resulted in a boom of NG plants being built in VA, NJ, DE and East PA so the plants in coal country will run less or shut down.  In the case of WV, thanks to a short-sighted (almost certainly coal-bleeting) PSC, if the local utility can't sell it's excess power to out-of-staters, then local ratepayers are stuck with the fixed costs,  meaning their rates will go up.

Probably more than anyone wanted to know, but I could practically write a book on this stuff.

[kansasdemocrat]

I don't think Jack Conway was that flawed of a candidate as the board believes.

Conway just didn't survive because the political circumstances in the state that had changed rapidly amongst National elections in Kentucky, finally went down stateside.

two factors had a large factor on the election.


1. Kim Davis episode caused many evangelicals who weren't planning to turnout in this election to turnout.  

2. The Backlash over Obama due to the conflict between Coal and Preisdent Obama.   The Eastern Kentucky coal region have swung republican despite being a long democratic stronghold even in the 1972 and 1984 elections. The Democrats nationwide has given up this region and it was open for grabs for the GOP.  If they think they can lose one of the only base they have in the state they might as well disband as a party in Kentucky.

^^More joke analysis from a right-winger.

Conway was a low energy loser running against a high-energy Republican that average people saw as generic (newsflash: the public will never care about the inside-baseball "misdeeds" of people like Bevin).

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

We shall see in the La, whether this is a realignment, which it is more or less, because Dems are holding onto their states at the presidential level. It has to do more or less with Conway. Dems were expected to get swept in these contests, anyways, but Conway should have won.

[henster]

Conway was far too negative and ran way too few positive ads. I don't think he ran a single ad focused on Kynect on how it's helped people and the implications of it being ended. And he didn't have Beshear in an ad for him either which was very odd. Conway basically tried to do what McAuliffe did in VA against Cucinelli but the lean of the state was too much.