Free Republic

I work in the former industrial heartland of America in operations management for an iconic American brand owned now by a multinational, European-headquartered company. About a year ago, we were informed that our plant and city would host the yearly operations conference and achievement awards for the division to which we belong. Three hundred executive-level guests from all over the world, Asia, South America, and Europe would descend upon the aging brownfield facility we had turned into a state-of-the-art manufacturing showplace. I am proud of this place, and was thrilled at the news. Just five years ago, I was down...

Tuesday’s election results sent shock waves across the globe after voters selected President-elect Donald Trump as the 45th president — but the results may not have been as surprising to America’s rust belt. Trump’s message on jobs, trade and the economy resonated in battleground states that turned red for the first time in decades. Trump was able to take in a good number of rank and file union members who usually vote Democrat, even though many union leaders threw support behind former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton still beat Trump by eight points among union households, but that number...

Wisconsin is such a solidly blue state that Hillary Clinton didn't feel the need to campaign there in her general-election battle against Donald Trump. That turned out to be a mistake. No recent Wisconsin polls showed the Republican presidential nominee ahead of his Democratic counterpart in the Badger State. The RealClearPolitics polling average, which took into account four recent Wisconsin polls, put Clinton ahead by 6.5 percentage points. But in the early-morning hours after Election Day, Trump was ahead by several points. With 95% of precincts reporting, he was at 47.9% to Clinton's 46.9%. Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson took 3.6%...

Silver’s analysis shows Trump has gained 6 points over Romney in Ohio and Iowa, and has closed the gap with Hillary Clinton down to almost error-margin levels in crucial Michigan and Pennsylvania. That midwestern success is what gives Trump a one-third chance of winning the election, said Silver. “Clinton underperforming Obama’s 2012 forecast by *4 points* in the Midwest. That’s a major liability,” he tweeted. On Sunday night, according to RealClearPolitics’s average of polls, Clinton was ahead of Trump in Pennsylvania by just 2.4 points (46 percent to 43.6 percent), and ahead in Michigan by 4.7 points (44.7 percent to...

A video excerpt from liberal Michael Moore is taking the internet by storm. But it’s not Moore’s loyal fans singing his praises for a passionate political confession – it’s Donald Trump’s supporters who are doing the cheering. In the speech that was given before an audience in Ohio, reportedly for the film “Trumpland,” Moore delves deep into the mindset of Trump’s appeal. But first, he shockingly starts out by defending Trump supporters. “They’re not racists or rednecks, they’re actually pretty decent people. So, after talking to a number of them, I sort of wanted to sort of write this.” Moore...

Clinton took his legendary campaign skills on a tour this week through Mahoning Valley, hustling for small bunches of votes in tiny towns heavily populated with white Ohioans with relatively low levels of education and modest incomes. In other words, in this election, Donald Trump country. These are the voters Clinton won in 1992 and 1996, but who voted Republican in later years. As his bus rolled down two-lane roads and through towns with just a few stoplights but plenty of Trump signs, the trip was one part nostalgia tour, one part policy lecture, one part desperate bid to get...

Life-long Democrat turned Trump supporter Christian Rickers, the Virginia-based executive director of the Trumpocrats PAC, told Breitbart’s Washington Political Editor Matthew Boyle that “Hillary Clinton is not representing any of the working people.” “She’s not trustworthy on almost every single issue,” Rickers said on Wednesday’s Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM.

CAMBRIA COUNTY, Pa.—Donald Trump’s road to the White House begins here: on a four-lane highway, just east of Pittsburgh, past the roadside taverns, burned-out gas stations, and parking lots choked with weeds, up into the dark fingers of the Allegheny Mountains, and then down into the valley that was once home to steelworkers, coal miners and party-line Democrats. Regis Karlheim once counted himself among that third group. A farmer’s son, Karlheim grew up doing two things: voting Democratic and growing potatoes. “It was a lot of good years in potatoes,” he said. “Everybody and their brother grew potatoes in Cambria...

A Friday piece in Politico Magazine warns that a Hillary Clinton “fumble on trade” could give Donald Trump wins in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan in a general election contest. In a piece entitled, “How Hillary Loses,” David S. Bernstein writes that the new polls showing Trump ahead of Clinton represent a “terrifying moment for Democrats.” While Bernstein says one should not read too much into the early polls, he argues that the polling numbers reveal that “there is now a clear path for her to lose” the election. In particular, Bernstein explains that trade could win Trump Ohio, Wisconsin, and...

<p>Facing the unpredictable candidacy of Republican Donald Trump, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is preparing to dispatch resources to vote-rich industrial states that have been safely Democratic for a generation.</p> <p>Clinton’s plans include an early, aggressive attempt to defend Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — reflecting a growing recognition inside her campaign of the threat that Trump’s unconventional bid for president may pose in unexpected places, particularly in economically struggling states that have been hit hard by global free-trade agreements.</p>

CLEVELAND/NEW YORK - Bracing for a general election fight with Donald Trump, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and her allies are putting resources into industrial states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania to try to block Trump from making inroads with working-class voters there. Labor leaders, progressive groups and Democratic operatives told Reuters in interviews that they took seriously Trump's appeal with white working-class voters and were studying how to respond to his promises to create jobs and negotiate better trade deals. The desire to stop the presumptive Republican presidential nominee from wresting away the support of unionized workers has even...

Donald Trump Will (Almost Certainly) Never Be Elected President. Here’s Why. By Greg Sargent March 21 With Donald Trump steamrolling towards the GOP nomination, the political chatter is increasingly focused on whether Trump could win a general election by making surprise inroads into states in the industrial Midwest. Many Democrats and nonpartisan observers see this as probably the only plausible (if that’s even the right word for it) path for Trump, who might do this mainly by running up huge numbers among white voters — particularly blue collar whites. But a new examination of the demographics and projected voting patterns...

A lifelong Democrat, Ed Toth describes himself politically as an independent. The 60-year-old health-food store owner voted twice for Barack Obama, but he also voted in 1984 for Ronald Reagan. This year, fed up with both parties, the North Whitehall Township resident is all in for Donald Trump, switching his registration from Democrat to Republican so he could vote in the primary. "He's been successful," Toth said. "He says he wants to make America great again. I'm all for that." If Trump is the Republican nominee, he could benefit in Pennsylvania from a sizable contingent of independent-minded, white, working-class voters....

Ohio lost 112,500 jobs in 2015 resulting from the United States' trade deficit with countries that are part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. That places Ohio sixth, in terms of the percentage of jobs lost to trade with TPP countries, among the 50 states and the District of Columbia ranked in the report released Thursday by the liberal Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The lost jobs represent nearly 2.2 percent of employment in Ohio, according to the analysis. The total number of lost jobs includes those directly and indirectly impacted by the...

Almost every time Donald Trump mentioned free trade or protecting American workers from low-paid foreign competition this weekend in Illinois and Ohio, he was interrupted by protesters. Last week, following Bernie Sanders' victory over Hillary Clinton in the Michigan Democratic primaries, CNN analyst Jan Jones said that, "an anti-free trade message is breaking through in the rust belt," and that it is "not good" for Hillary Clinton. Trump also won the Michigan primary with a strong anti-NAFTA message. "Right here [in Cleveland]," Trump said Saturday. "We've got on the left, you have Ford, the Ford Foundry," Trump said. "And...

Donald Trump came out in full force against Ohio Gov. John Kasich in his home state on Saturday, accusing him of destroying the coal industry, knocking his involvement in Lehman Bros. and saying he is weak on immigration, among a slew of other criticisms. He also denounced Kasich for supporting the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The Geography of Trumpism NEIL IRWIN and JOSH KATZ MARCH 12, 2016 When the Census Bureau asks Americans about their ancestors, some respondents don’t give a standard answer like “English” or “German.” Instead, they simply answer “American.” The places with high concentrations of these self-described Americans turn out to be the places Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has performed the strongest. This connection and others emerged in an analysis of the geography of Trumpism. To see what conditions prime a place to support Mr. Trump for the presidency, we compared hundreds of demographic and economic variables from census data, along with...

Trump is no Romney. He is running an unsubtle, racist campaign that has particularly targeted Latinos. His chances of winning swing states with significant Latino populations -- Florida, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico -- are extremely low. But he doesn't need them to win. All he has to do is carry the Rust Belt -- a region perfectly attuned to Trump's fiery denunciations of American trade policy and his angry condemnation of Washington corruption. While Romney hailed free trade, globalization and "creative destruction," Trump rails against the North American Free Trade Agreement and promises to bring jobs back home.

Waist-high weeds and a crumbling old Chevy mark the entrance to a rust-colored factory complex on the edge of town here, seemingly another monument to the passing of the golden age of American industry. But deep inside the 14-acre site, the thwack-thwack-thwack sound of metal on metal tells a different story. “We’re holding our own,” said Greg Hess, who is looking to hire draftsmen and machine operators at the company he runs, Youngstown Bending and Rolling. “I feel good that we saved this place from the wrecking ball.” The turnaround is part of a transformation spreading across the heartland of...

Top 10 States Americans Are Fleeing #1: New York New York has led the nation in domestic out-migration since the late 1990s. The New York Post reported in 2011 that "62 percent of New Yorkers planning to leave cited economic factors — including cost of living (30 percent), taxes (19 percent) and the job environment (10 percent) — as the main reasons." 2012-2013 state-to-state net domestic migration: -104,470 2. Illinois http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/illinois.html 3. California http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/california.html4. New Jersey http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/new_jersey.html 5. Pennsylvania http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/pennsylvania.html 6. Michigan http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/michigan.html 7. Ohio http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/ohio.html8. Connecticut http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/connecticut.html9. Kansas http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/kansas.html10. New Mexico http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/new_mexico.html