Donald Trump’s Appeal to Rust Belt Workers

New York Times ^ | July 2,2016 | STEVEN GREENHOUSE

[Hojczyk]

Andy Brumfield, 49, a unionized corrections officer at the county jail here, said he was excited by Mr. Trump’s promises to bring jobs back. “He can’t do any worse than the politicians that we have,” he said. He cheers Mr. Trump’s tough talk on trade and his vow to build a wall along the Mexican border. “People are coming across willy-nilly,” he said. “There are a lot of people who want to harm our country.”

An army veteran who served in the first gulf war, Mr. Brumfield is upset with Mrs. Clinton for supporting tougher gun control. “I don’t believe anybody has the constitutional right to take away anything from anybody,” he said.

Michael Korns, chairman of the Republican committee here in Westmoreland County, is confident that Mr. Trump can win Pennsylvania, where Mr. Obama defeated Mitt Romney in 2012 by a margin of 310,000 votes, 52 percent to 46.6 percent.

“Many voters feel that the Democratic Party, which they had supported for generations, has largely abandoned blue-collar workers,” Mr. Korns said. “There’s also increasingly a feeling that the Republican Party has abandoned them as well, that neither party has much interest in the day-to-day economics of working people. And then when Trump came in, he spoke to them, he grabbed them.”

[Ann Archy]

CLOSE the Borders and OPEN the Factories!!

[toddausauras]

Uh oh, they’re; starting to realize the lies aren’t going to work this year. Forget the Bradley effect, were talking about the DONALD effect.

[Trumpinator]

The GOP won't heal itself until it accepts that it was wrong to adopt the neocons overseas interventionist agenda which drained the countries treasuries and damaged the volunteer military and it was wrong to adopt free trade as a mantra.

Right now on this very forum we have people who will claim the Iraq war was a good idea and that free trade is a Republican ideal (the old world GOP was never interventionist nor for free trade).

[KC_Conspirator]

Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” message resonates with many of this region’s workers, whose wages — and hopes — have been tugged downward by the abandoned steel mills and coal mines The Obama Economy and Democrats. Take Dennis Haines, 57, thrown out of work in January when the printing plant where he worked for 30 years closed.

Anyone notice that they mention coal and steel workers, then quote a guy who does not work in coal or steel, but in printing? If the same stats were used today as in 2008, the Bush years, the unemployment rate would be 10-12%.