[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

The people who've been dumped are mostly guys who are well into their forties. If they don't catch on somewhere right away, they are finished. Hardly anyone in his forties who has been unemployed for over six months will ever get a real job again.

Whether the industries come back or not, those people are screwed. They are also angry. These are votes that should have been guaranteed for the pubbies. At best, they will stay home.

If the dems are smart enough to nominate a percieved moderate who addresses this issue, they will win, no matter how awful their "plan" is.

[DugwayDuke]

"The people who've been dumped are mostly guys who are well into their forties. If they don't catch on somewhere right away, they are finished. Hardly anyone in his forties who has been unemployed for over six months will ever get a real job again."

Hogwash! I was "dumped" in 1994 at the age of 48. I was unemployed for over seven months. I took a job 2000 miles away at 75 percent the pay. I've been propmoted twice and I'm making fifty percent more now than I was before I was "dumped". BTW, I also moved back to the area where I lived before too.

[Dane]

Whether the industries come back or not, those people are screwed. They are also angry. These are votes that should have been guaranteed for the pubbies. At best, they will stay home

I don't know about that. A lot of these jobs are being outsourced in Gore states, CA, NJ, NY, IL, WA, etc. so a lot of these people probably voted for Gore anyway, for such touchy feely issues as enivro wackoism.

Also the estimates I see is that 500,000 will be outsourced so that means %0.5 of the total 2000 electorate effected and we don't how many have moved on and started their own business or went into other postions.

So you see you just can't use blanket statements like you did in the above italicized passage. It's makes for fiery rhetoric but not good analysis, but that may be your goal on FR anyway.

[LS]

"Hardly anyone in his forties who has been unemployed for over six months will ever get a real job again."

Baloney. America's most successful and famous entrepreneurs almost ALL started after they were middle-aged failuers: Ray Kroc didn't come across McDonald's until he was in his late 40s selling Dixie Cups; C. W. Post was a failure at everything and in a health asylum, broke, when he invented Postum and Grape Nuts; Mary Kay Ash had two kids and no husband when she started her own cosmetics company at age 50; P. T. Barnum didn't create his famous circus until age 70!!!; the guys who invented Home Depot were both in middle age and not particularly successful as I recall.

This is an EXCUSE! But age never stopped any strong-willed entrepreneur from getting a job or starting a business.