Posted on 02/18/2020 7:38:44 PM PST by karpov
For generations, Pennsylvania’s blue-collar voters found political refuge in the Democratic Party. Even when the national party moved leftward on social issues, this voting bloc—largely Catholic, with multigenerational roots in coal and steel towns—elected Democrats to defend their economic interests. But the party’s environmental activists are jeopardizing this allegiance. A clash is taking place between progressives, who want a carbon-free future, and organized labor, which sees fossil-fuel industries and the jobs they create as essential for many communities. This opposition, reflective of a national trend, could fracture the party statewide and help ensure another victory for Donald Trump.
From Pennsylvania’s big-city wards to its rural townships, union members feel disenfranchised within a party that once championed their interests. In South Philadelphia, for example, the closure of Philadelphia Energy Solutions, the East Coast’s largest and oldest oil refinery, has exposed divisions between the city’s powerful building-trades unions and a newer liberal constituency. Located in the 26th ward—one of only three wards citywide that supported Trump in 2016—the refinery symbolizes the cultural tensions of a changing neighborhood. Near the city’s sports stadiums, older Italian residents, who revere the late mayor Frank Rizzo, live side-by-side with young, secular, and progressive professionals on blocks lined with row homes.
The refinery, shuttered after a massive fire last year that resulted in bankruptcy, prompted discussions about how to redevelop a parcel of land larger than the Center City district. Labor leaders, with support from the Trump administration, called for restoring a facility that supplied 335,000 barrels per day—principally to New York’s market. In January, the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council rallied at City Hall, where the organization’s leaders ripped “elitists” and “rich kids” for prioritizing environmental concerns over saving jobs.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
The Republicans are the party of the working blue collar man...
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Ping.
And Trump relates to working blue collar men very well
And fat white collar ones like me :)
Not quite. They SHOULD be the party of blue collar working men, but unfortunately the establishment still desperately tries to suck up to Silicon Valley and Wall Street.
If the GOP wants to stay viable, it’s going to have to reject the desire to go back to the Paul Ryan era after Trump.
All of this - coal, propane, natural gas, oil, etc. is NATURAL energy from the Earth.
(Chris Tucker from the movie "Friday", when talking about weed) "Man God put this here on Earth for us man!
From where I sit, across the river from Philly, seems to e that PA unions will never endorse a Republican. They will holler and yell and moan and groan as the dems screw them but in the end they will write the checks to the dem pols and send their enorsements to the newspapers just like they always have. Because the unions (not the members, the actual entity) are really nothing more than a bunch of PACs that don’t have to ask nicely for contributions and donations for funding.
PA hasn’t a national reputation for public corruption and political ineptness, but it certainly should. Both parties at the state level are dirty and self-dealing. The state has the nation’s largest full time legislature, but most of the legislators are spending their legislative sessions figuring out how to best milk their per diem checks and still get reelected.
Philadelphia for decades was abandoned by the republicans not because it was necessarily a very liberal city, but because the republican party leadership was effectively bought off with patronage jobs in the parking authority. The absence of any meaningful party organization in the largest population center in the state meant that many winnable statewide elections were lost for republicans.
Outsiders have made some headway, but it’s isolated and if the party doesn’t support you, it’s tough to get elected statewide. Lou Barletta was too much of a Trump supporter (and his tough talk on illegal immigration rules up the chamber of commerce donors) and the party sat on its hands rather than help him get elected. Scott Wagner has been getting the same treatment. Even the Democrats had their lieutenant governor primaried in the last election by a single issue (pot legalization) Bernie supporter. It’s just a mess.
We have no idea just how much oil and natural gas are under the surface of the Earth. We have only drilled a few short miles into the Earth. There are oceans of hydrocarbons on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Hydrocarbons are naturally occurring, not pollution.
There is no party called the “Democratic Party” it is the Democrat Party which is made up of demonrats.
“...Pennsylvania’s blue-collar voters found political refuge in the Democratic Party...”
Dear Pennsylvania Blue COllar Workers:
Psst... guess what... The democrat party hates you and all you stand for. Especially if you’re white, male, and straight. They want you erased.
Per Abiogenic theory, hydrocarbons, under terrific pressure, form complex molecules, and sometimes get trapped under fossilized swamps, salt domes, sedimentary sand beds, where it is contaminated. The amount of contamination, and what kinds of contaminants separate sweet and sour crude, and light and heavy, up to bunker grade crude that can go right into a ship's tank, out of the ground.
It makes more sense than the other way around, that the fluid is generated by the dead swamp. "Scientific consensus" used to say that "spontaneous generation" created the maggots coming from dead meat, and fleas from dust.
I’ll believe it when Pittsburgh dumps our idiotic Mike Doyle, Democrat for life, Representative.
“Republicans is fer da rich people, Democrats is fer da workin’ man”
The union bosses won’t endorse Trump.
But the rank-and-file will vote for him.
Ignorant writer does not know that is Democrat.
As a Pennsylvanian this is the best news I’ve heard in quite some time.
Anything that keeps the Dem Party divided and bickering, and unable to successfully run faux moderates like Conor Lamb, is a win for our side.
Not so sure the unions will endorse the dems this time around.
A few of them are running on the single-payer platform, which would wipe out the unions’ platinum health care plans.
“..The truth is the democratic party wants all regular working people erased...”
Pretty difficult to erase people who are actively going to resist, return the favor, and do some of their own erasing.
Ain’t the Second Amendment a BEAUTIFUL thing??? :^)
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