‘There are a lot of bitter people here, I’m one of them’: rust belt voters on why they backed Trump again despite his broken promises

Twinkling Trekkie Circus

That was just a worthless spectacle that a gullible public was made to believe was an achievement. We've really gone downhill since useful engineers built the Transcontinental Railroad and the Panama Canal.
You just don’t appreciate the engineering talent and ingenuity it took to accomplish that.
 
Donald Trump claims to have a college degree, but he talks and writes like someone who never graduated from high school.
Kamala Harris claims to have a law degree and can’t formulate a sentence that isn’t a mish-mosh of world salad.
 
The Guardian

Many in Youngstown, Ohio, believe the president-elect will tackle the town’s decline this time. Others are worried about his character flaws. Their concerns help explain how he returned to power – and how his second term might play out

Andrew Gumbel
Sat 11 Jan 2025 07.00 EST
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The last time Donald Trump was president, he travelled to Youngstown, Ohio, among the most depressed of America’s rust belt cities, and promised voters the impossible. The high-paying steel, railroad and car industry jobs that once made Youngstown a hard-living, hard-drinking blue-collar boom town were coming back, he said. “Don’t move. Don’t sell your house,” he crowed to a rapturous crowd in 2017. “We’re going to fill up those factories – or rip ”em down and build brand new ones”.

None of that happened. Indeed, within 18 months, General Motors (GM) announced that it was suspending operations at its one remaining manufacturing plant outside Youngstown, throwing 5,000 jobs into jeopardy in a community with little else to cling to. Trump’s reaction was to say the closure didn’t matter, because the jobs would be replaced “in, like, two minutes”.

That, too, did not happen. People moved away, marriages broke down, depression soared and, locals say, a handful of people took their own lives.

Ordinarily, politicians who promise the moon and fail to deliver get punished at the ballot box. But that did not happen to Trump either. Instead, he has steadily built up his popularity in Youngstown, a city that was once a well-oiled Democratic party machine but has now turned into one of his most remarkable bases of working-class support.

“Does [Trump] understand at all what you’re going through?” Joe Biden asked Ohio voters during the 2020 presidential campaign, referring directly to the GM closure. “Does he see you where you are and where you want to be? Does he care?”

To which the answer, in Youngstown, has been an astonishing and vigorous “yes”...

Anyone seeking to understand the earthquake that has shaken US politics – to the point where a convicted felon, serial liar and twice-impeached former president can return to the White House in triumph, as Trump will do on 20 January – might learn a lot from the disillusioned working-class voters of north-east Ohio.

They tell blunt, profanity-laden stories of watching their city slump ever deeper into decline and express a real bleakness about the future. They see a political class corrupted by big-money donors who, they say, don’t care about communities like theirs. White voters point to conversations about justice – for racial minorities, for the children of immigrants, for women worried about losing their reproductive rights, for transgender teenagers – and question why nobody ever talks about justice for them.

Few expect Trump to fix everything or believe him when he says he will. What they do believe is that the system is broken and corrupt, just as Trump says it is, and that a candidate who promises to tear it down and start again might just be on to something.

“We just want a change, a change in the weather,” a retired aluminium worker wanting to go just by his first name, Paul, said as he sat with a group of friends in a cigarette shop in Struthers, a down-at-heel overwhelmingly white Youngstown suburb once known for its thick clusters of bars, pizza parlours, strip clubs and illegal gambling joints.

Paul and his friends come to the shop most days not to smoke – smoking is not allowed – but to scratch away at lottery tickets and reminisce about the old days, when a single factory salary could support a whole family and the main drag in Struthers was packed every Friday night with working men flush with their weekly pay packet...

The high-paying factory jobs started disappearing in the late 1970s with the closure of Youngstown Sheet & Tube, based in Struthers, and the bars and other businesses followed soon after...

“We feel left behind,” said another cigarette shop patron, a former railroad worker who wanted to be known just as Joe. “People who’ve lived here all their lives are working two or three jobs just to pay their bills.”


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When Henry Ford started his first assembly line in 1913 he said, "It will be a haven for those without the brains to do anything else." For four generations it was. Now that haven is coming to an end.

View attachment 1065371

To pass the test to get into a trade school to learn a skilled blue collar trade one probably needs an IQ of at least 80. That is the cut off point to get into the military. Trump cannot solve the problems of those people below 80. He does articulate their anger and gives them people to hate.

View attachment 1065373
1736892876051.png
 
It’s the same thing: those with a college degree in a marketable field are more valuable to employers and hence earn more.
Generic Suitcoats

Then why are the employers replacing them with lower-salaried H-1Bs? American grads merely learn how to do a job. Compare that to the fact that most American boys learn how to play football but can't even make their high school team.
 
Generic Suitcoats

Then why are the employers replacing them with lower-salaried H-1Bs? American grads merely learn how to do a job. Compare that to the fact that most American boys learn how to play football but can't even make their high school team.
That speaks to the lower caliber of education in America.
 
Kamala Harris claims to have a law degree and can’t formulate a sentence that isn’t a mish-mosh of world salad.
Narrow-Minded Conformity Is All It Takes

Her retarded thinking process is typical of the no-talent class-climbers turned out by the Eweniversities. It is wise to accept people's claims about their education and even grades, no matter how stupidly they speak.

The most common Affirmative Action Is admitting young people who are willing to accept years without a job because they are afraid to grow up. Education only proves how easily the graduate can be bossed around.
 
That speaks to the lower caliber of education in America.
We have most of the best universities in the world.

Nevertheless, I have read on several occasions that as many as two thirds of colleges and universities accept any applicant with a high school degree and tuition money. Someone who goes to a school like that and who majors in the liberal arts or social sciences has probably wasted time and money. Those who love the liberal arts and social sciences, like I do, should learn them on their own. They should not expect hiring managers will care about what they have learned about them.

I have found that broad, general knowledge can be a professional liability. I will want to talk about why the Eastern Roman Empire lasted a thousand years longer than the Western Roman Empire. My co workers will be talking about last night's ball game. My boss will want to talk about his golf score.
 
Yep. The democrat party has become the party of the wealthy, insulated elite and the republican party now represents working people.
The Republican Party has learned how to appeal to white blue collar workers. Nevertheless, it is the Republican Party that cuts taxes for the rich, and which uses the resulting increases in the national debt to cut domestic spending programs that benefit white, blue collar workers.
 
The Trump nightmare is going to begin. Trump's tariffs will cause greater inflation than we experienced under President Biden. Elon Musk's efforts to cut nearly one third of the federal budget will cut or eliminate domestic spending programs most Americans, and many Republicans will want to keep.


View attachment 1065527
/—-/ Why didn’t Joe repeal the tariffs to lower inflation? He added two more.
Don’t you libtards get tired of getting smacked across the forehead with facts?
Don’t you ever learn?
 
Well educated people are better able to see through Trump's unachievable promises. They are more likely to be offended by Trump's low class personality and his fourth grade vocabulary.
No, it illustrates what your OP article was all about. Blue collar voters have fled the democrat party. Those percentages were reversed only a few elections past.

College educated liberals still vote democrat, and college educated conservatives still vote republican.

The blue-collar voters are the reason for the shift. The "blue wall" has come down.
 
Last edited:
/—-/ Why didn’t Joe repeal the tariffs to lower inflation? He added two more.
Don’t you libtards get tired of getting smacked across the forehead with facts?
Don’t you ever learn?
Wait and see what Trump's tariffs will do. Nearly everything you can buy in a department store is made in China. Trump intends to put a 70% tariff on Chinese goods.
 
Wait and see what Trump's tariffs will do. Nearly everything you can buy in a department store is made in China. Trump intends to put a 70% tariff on Chinese goods.
/—-/ It’s a negotiating tactic. You can play your part by not buying cheap Chinese crap.
 
The Guardian

Many in Youngstown, Ohio, believe the president-elect will tackle the town’s decline this time. Others are worried about his character flaws. Their concerns help explain how he returned to power – and how his second term might play out

Andrew Gumbel
Sat 11 Jan 2025 07.00 EST
Share


The last time Donald Trump was president, he travelled to Youngstown, Ohio, among the most depressed of America’s rust belt cities, and promised voters the impossible. The high-paying steel, railroad and car industry jobs that once made Youngstown a hard-living, hard-drinking blue-collar boom town were coming back, he said. “Don’t move. Don’t sell your house,” he crowed to a rapturous crowd in 2017. “We’re going to fill up those factories – or rip ”em down and build brand new ones”.

None of that happened. Indeed, within 18 months, General Motors (GM) announced that it was suspending operations at its one remaining manufacturing plant outside Youngstown, throwing 5,000 jobs into jeopardy in a community with little else to cling to. Trump’s reaction was to say the closure didn’t matter, because the jobs would be replaced “in, like, two minutes”.

That, too, did not happen. People moved away, marriages broke down, depression soared and, locals say, a handful of people took their own lives.

Ordinarily, politicians who promise the moon and fail to deliver get punished at the ballot box. But that did not happen to Trump either. Instead, he has steadily built up his popularity in Youngstown, a city that was once a well-oiled Democratic party machine but has now turned into one of his most remarkable bases of working-class support.

“Does [Trump] understand at all what you’re going through?” Joe Biden asked Ohio voters during the 2020 presidential campaign, referring directly to the GM closure. “Does he see you where you are and where you want to be? Does he care?”

To which the answer, in Youngstown, has been an astonishing and vigorous “yes”...

Anyone seeking to understand the earthquake that has shaken US politics – to the point where a convicted felon, serial liar and twice-impeached former president can return to the White House in triumph, as Trump will do on 20 January – might learn a lot from the disillusioned working-class voters of north-east Ohio.

They tell blunt, profanity-laden stories of watching their city slump ever deeper into decline and express a real bleakness about the future. They see a political class corrupted by big-money donors who, they say, don’t care about communities like theirs. White voters point to conversations about justice – for racial minorities, for the children of immigrants, for women worried about losing their reproductive rights, for transgender teenagers – and question why nobody ever talks about justice for them.

Few expect Trump to fix everything or believe him when he says he will. What they do believe is that the system is broken and corrupt, just as Trump says it is, and that a candidate who promises to tear it down and start again might just be on to something.

“We just want a change, a change in the weather,” a retired aluminium worker wanting to go just by his first name, Paul, said as he sat with a group of friends in a cigarette shop in Struthers, a down-at-heel overwhelmingly white Youngstown suburb once known for its thick clusters of bars, pizza parlours, strip clubs and illegal gambling joints.

Paul and his friends come to the shop most days not to smoke – smoking is not allowed – but to scratch away at lottery tickets and reminisce about the old days, when a single factory salary could support a whole family and the main drag in Struthers was packed every Friday night with working men flush with their weekly pay packet...

The high-paying factory jobs started disappearing in the late 1970s with the closure of Youngstown Sheet & Tube, based in Struthers, and the bars and other businesses followed soon after...

“We feel left behind,” said another cigarette shop patron, a former railroad worker who wanted to be known just as Joe. “People who’ve lived here all their lives are working two or three jobs just to pay their bills.”


-------------

When Henry Ford started his first assembly line in 1913 he said, "It will be a haven for those without the brains to do anything else." For four generations it was. Now that haven is coming to an end.

View attachment 1065371

To pass the test to get into a trade school to learn a skilled blue collar trade one probably needs an IQ of at least 80. That is the cut off point to get into the military. Trump cannot solve the problems of those people below 80. He does articulate their anger and gives them people to hate.

View attachment 1065373
Trump gives less than nothing about the subject of this thread.
 

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