Why does Rick Boucher hate my grandchildren?: "what I did was in coal's interest"

A Veteran of the Climate Wars Reflects On U.S. Failure to Act by Louis Peck: Yale Environment 360

His opponent, Morgan Griffith — whose campaign declared that “Boucher Betrayed Coal” — contends that the incumbent’s embrace of the climate bill was the primary factor in his defeat.
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I had to spend the better part of two months in an intense series of negotiations to modify the original draft by [House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman] Henry Waxman so as to make it acceptable for the coal-fired utilities. I was able to achieve that by providing free allowances, as opposed to having the allowances be auctioned, and by providing 2 billion tons of offsets on an annual basis throughout the life of the program – so that coal-fired utilities could simply pay others to reduce emissions, by planting trees for example, and take full credit for those emission reductions.
...It’s a one-step process to accuse me of betraying coal, but it’s a four-step process to explain that what I did was in coal’s interest.