WV was a safe blue state until 2000. But it was a blue state because of the unions. And Gore was the one who really started pushing hard against the largest union industries in the state, which is why the state flipped so hard and so suddenly.

This is a huge thing that a lot of people, especially young people (millennials included here), tend to miss.

I may not have narrowed it down to Gore specifically, but at some point between, say...1985 and 2000...the Democratic party really seemed to just take unions and blue collar workers for granted...people who'd been a historic pillar of the party.

I'm not sure why this happened, but I suspect deep pockets of donors in big business had a part in it. Regardless, that decision may have had its desired effect in the short term, but in the long term, it basically put the Rust Belt in play. PA, OH, IN, MI, WI, and MN could/should be solid bets to break blue in every national race, but now you have these states full of registered Democrats who have voted Republican in at least half of the last six elections.

I always thought that WV was more about coal, but the union angle makes a ton of sense as well, and through that lens, it makes perfect sense to include them as maybe "Rust Belt adjacent".