A fiery populist and a business-friendly centrist: Contrasting paths toward a Democratic resurgence

[TexasTowelie]

A fiery populist and a business-friendly centrist: Contrasting paths toward a Democratic resurgence in West Virginia


HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — It is the end of a sleepy holiday week, and sheets of rain flood the roads, but nearly every seat is filled at a town hall hosted by the heavily tattooed man wearing combat boots and seeking to win a congressional seat here.

The turnout would impress the most jaded political consultant. But Richard Ojeda doesn’t have any. That’s probably a good thing. The hourlong riff the blunt-spoken Democrat launches into in this Trump stronghold might have sent the average strategist running back over the hills toward Washington.

The former paratrooper rips into a White House immigration policy that has strong support here in West Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District. He brands coal and natural gas executives as slippery operators. He renounces the belief he held while a soldier that America is the world’s greatest country, saying the poverty and opioid addiction strangling his home state make him ashamed of the nation.

A cauldron of populist anger, the 47-year-old Ojeda breaks most every rule the Democratic consultant class has laid out for winning back coal country. He is nowhere near the playbook of West Virginia’s Democratic U.S. senator, Joe Manchin III, the folksy centrist and on-again, off-again ally of President Donald Trump who many in the party see as one of the last hopes for steering Democrats back to power in Appalachia.

Read more: http://www.postbulletin.com/news/politics/a-fiery-populist-and-a-business-friendly-centrist-contrasting-paths/article_9fd3f4da-bb1a-582a-b239-a326194cf68b.html

[HopeAgain]

1. Give me the populist

Manchin can go to hell if he votes for Kavanaugh.

[appalachiablue]

2. K & R