Not really. The number of people employed in and around the coal industry in the US was pretty small by 2016. Also note, that Trump got a lot less votes that Mitt Romney in 2012, so that despite all the pandering - there wasn't some massive rush to vote for Trump.
Also, the union density in mining in the US is not as high as it used to be (don't know what the exact figures are).
Re:Big Coal Plants Begin to Close
by lifeisstillgood on Saturday August 17, 2019 @12:55PM
(#20724897)
Some industries have political impacts way beyond their numerical size would suggest. Farming is one such. Coal was in the UK and seems to have been for the US - Trump won votes appealing to people who had never even seen a mine let alone been down one. But they will vote to support the miners in the same way Idaho is won by supporting farmers.
Yes Clinton won the popular vote. No unions are ridiculously under represented in the States (you need to fix that BTW)
But in the end seem from this side of the pond this was a political message - coal mining was a proxy for "proper American jobs for proper Americans without all this economics and climate change nonsense"
And that has a fairly sizeable base.
Whether trump will find that same base happy to swallow a similar message now he is the incumbent remains to be seen.
The decline in home coal use was directly correlated to the strike - and the decline in imported coal use is as much old plant and expensive marginal costs as the shift to gas.
At some point replacing the coal fired infrastructure stopped making economic sense - and with no political leverage the whole thing collapsed really quickly.
Something we might be happy to learn when looking at oil and gas generation - once solar prices and volume are there the industry just vanishes.