Democrats have yet more bad news this week pointing toward a downward trend in the coming election cycle.
West Virginia, which has historically been a Democrat state, was the last holdout among the South in making the move to redstate.
For several presidential cycles now, voters have voted Republican.
And now finally old school Democrats have realized how out of step they are with the national Democrat party as it continues to trend leftward.
To wit WV Gov. Jim Justice announced yesterday that he will switch his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican.
Justice was joined by President Trump in a major announcement event in which Trump lauded Justice as “a good man. He’s got a backbone. He’s got real ideas.”
West Virginia has been under the Democrat gun for years with the left’s attack on the coal industry, on which the state lives and dies.
Democrats now only control 15 states.
Here’s more from the AP…
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announced Thursday he’s switching parties to join Republicans as President Donald Trump visited the increasingly conservative state.
Justice told about 9,000 Trump supporters at a rally in Huntington that he will be changing his registration Friday. He recently visited the White House twice with proposals on manufacturing and coal, neither he nor Trump are politicians and they both ran to get something done, he said.
“This man is a good man. He’s got a backbone. He’s got real ideas,” Justice said. “He cares about America. He cares about us in West Virginia.”
Trump said they spoke a few weeks ago about working together to open coal mines and create jobs in furniture manufacturing and other forms of manufacturing. “But Gov. Justice did something else very important tonight. He showed the country that our agenda rises above left or right,” he said.
Justice was elected in November with just 49 percent of the vote, 20 percentage points behind Trump’s total in the presidential contest in the state. Trump won 77 percent of West Virginia’s Republican primary voters in May.
The president promised throughout the campaign to resurrect the lagging coal industry that has declined amid changing energy markets, leaving many West Virginia communities devastated. The industry and many of its workers have blamed the decline mostly on former President Barack Obama and his environmental policies.
Justice’s defection leaves Democrats with just 15 governors among 50 states.
