They gave it away the same way they gave away the south a few generations ago... by spitting in the face of American values and working class ethics.
Reality is the rust belt should have flipped 20+ years ago... it has only been family loyalty to past union members that have kept it D this long. That was one of the most striking things I realized when I moved to the rust belt 30some odd years ago. For the most part these people were as republican as anyone I had ever met growing up in the south... with the exception of a loyalty to unions handed down from several generations of working in the mills and mines...
As those industries collapsed and the D party went further and further whackadoo... these voters refused to vote republican out of historical family allegences to democrats... but they didn’t got democrat either... the nuttier the d’s got the more they just disengaged...
Had republicans made any honest effort to win these voters they could have had them at least 10-20 years ago... had they abandoned “free” trade and open borders... but they were being funded by schlubs who wanted this crap so they offered in no meaningful way a reason for these voters to switch..
Trump made an appeal to them and won, and if republicans are smart they will learn from it, and the upper midwest will be as solidly red as the south. But if they keep the GOPe/uniparty crap going on these people will just go back to disengagement. They won’t vote D. But they won’t vote R by default either.
The GOPe better wake up...
Excellent analysis.