"Is all this worker angst the real deal or an ephemeral phenomenon???"
I'm in Ohio, a state largely destroyed by GOP leadership. But here in Ohio, the worker angst is very, very real. Jobs are scarce here.
Maybe that's because Ohio doesn't offer enough incentives, or has too high taxes to encourage business to want to set up shop there.
Ohio is far from destroyed. And what of Ohio's economy was "destroyed" was largely through trade unionism making Ohio labor uncompetitive on the world market. Ohio has been behind the curve on the economic recovery as versus the rest of the nation, but it's hardly because of conservatism. The loss of steel jobs has been one of the biggest factors, something that's been going on for decades.