Why Trump Won’t Save the Rust Belt

[applegrove]

Why Trump Won’t Save the Rust Belt

By EDWARD McCLELLAND at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/opinion/campaign-stops/why-trump-wont-save-the-rust-belt.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0

"SNIP...............


The changes in Michigan’s economy present a problem for Mr. Trump. The Republican Party’s pursuit of whites without college degrees has been offering diminishing returns since it converted the Reagan Democrats — in 1980, they were 65 percent of the electorate, compared with 36 percent in 2012 — but Mr. Trump has tailored his politically incorrect alpha male persona and his protectionist message specifically to them.

The Fisher Body plant across the street from my school is long gone. Most of the jobs are gone, too. As Lansing’s mayor, Virg Bernero, has noted, G.M. can build the same number of cars with 5,000 workers as it did with 25,000 in the 1950s and ’60s.

The Trump conundrum is that his campaign is about loss. His appeal is strongest among people who feel their social, economic and political influence slipping away, but he appeals to them specifically because their numbers are dwindling, thus making them less effective as an electoral coalition.

A candidate of the past can’t win the present. As my physics teacher predicted, Michigan now has more college graduates and fewer autoworkers than it did in the 1980s. Mr. Trump is promising to restore a way of life that, even then, we knew was disappearing.


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[onehandle]

1. Also, he'll never be President. nt

[gopiscrap]

2. Trump's not going to do any good for anybody but himself