Why Biden’s clean-coal gaffe has legs:
This is Joe Biden from Saturday in Virginia:
CASTLEWOOD, Va. – In his first visit to Southwest Virginia, Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, speaking at the United Mine Workers’ annual fish fry here on Saturday, was quick to tout his ties to coal.
“I hope you won’t hold it against me, but I am a hard-coal miner, anthracite coal, Scranton, Pa.,” Biden said. “It’s nice to be back in coal country. . . . It’s a different accent [in Southwest Virginia] . . . but it’s the same deal. We were taught that our faith and our family was the only really important thing, and our faith and our family informed everything we did.”
Biden, a U.S. senator from Delaware, told the story of his great-grandfather, a mining engineer who was elected to the state Senate in 1904 and was rumored to be a Molly Maguire, a member of a secret organization tied to union activism and crime in the Pennsylvania coalfields in the 19th century.
“He went out of his way to prove that he wasn’t, and we were all praying that he was,” he said.
(Hat Tip: Never Yet Melted)