Published: March 15, 2016 | Share This

Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign event at Miles College. (Photo: David Goldman, AP)
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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have dug herself a deep hole across Kentucky and Appalachia, even though she may not have intended to do so - while possibly gaining votes in other, greener states.

On CNN, she said: “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

That was Sunday night, and it was just a part of her expansive comments about how she did not want to leave miners and others in coal country behind during a power generation shift to cleaner sources of energy, and that she was committed to boosting devastated coal-community economies.

Still, the words that might end up in campaign ads will be the truncated version that appears to attack people’s livelihoods. Even if she would not be able to win in Kentucky, those words could cause collateral damage for a party already accused of carrying out a “war on coal.”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, was quick to pounce. He Tweeted out “I won’t let her do it.”

Paul, running for re-election, also Tweeted: “Kentucky voters know which party in Washington is trying to destroy their state and industry and they know I am fighting for them.”

Clinton’s comments had the ring of what then Sen. Barack Obama once said, which has never been forgotten in states like Kentucky:  “So if somebody wants to build a coal power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

Some have argued those comments were taken out of context. Still, President Obama has carried out an aggressive climate change agenda, which is a threat to coal. We will see whether Sec. Clinton clarifies or adds anything to these CNN comments in the hours or days ahead.

The fact is, coal jobs in Kentucky have been on the decline for years, and for a variety of reasons, including a dramatic decrease in the cost of natural gas, which is also cleaner burning. Sec. Clinton and her competition in the Democratic primaries have said they plan to continue a clean energy shift, declaring climate change a top priority. Meanwhile, Republican candidates for president have denied or mocked mainstream climate change science, or they have said there is little the United States can do to make a difference.

Source: (March 14, 2016) Courier-Journal

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