He started out cocky, promising that he was going to radically transform America and destroy the coal industry in the process, but now look at him.
He's doing the dance of the lame duck.
Time's running out, he hasn't made all the changes he hoped to make or done nearly as much damage to coal as he felt confident he could do, and his cockiness has turned to petulance.
The effort to delimit and undo his “legacy” has already begun, and some would argue that Donald Trump seems to have accomplished more in a month as president-elect than Obama did in eight years as president. It's got to be eating him up inside.
Few take him seriously anymore, and no-drama Obama is pitching a fit.
He didn't enter the office of the presidency very gracefully, and he won't leave it that way either. As he exits the White House, it will be with one last digital salute to the coal industry.
At the last minute, with Trump's inauguration only a few weeks away, the U.S. Interior Department made one final contribution to Obama's War on Coal by issuing its Stream Protection Rule, scheduled to go into effect the day before Trump takes office. While Interior insists that the rule will mean the loss of “only” 300 mining jobs, the National Mining Association pegs the potential loss at 40,000 or more.
Take that, West Virginia! Take that, America! In your face!
This childish display of pique is likely to have no lasting effect, since Republicans in Congress can reverse the rule with a simple majority, and Democrats like our own Joe Manchin may very well join them in repudiating Obama's outgoing overreach.
Inauguration Day can't come soon enough – for our state and our country.
