Trump, Anger and the Rust Belt

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Trump won the Rust Belt, huh?

Big Red Car here on a day in which I am still feeling the glow of our new President-elect Donald J Trump. I voted for him though I admit it was by the process of elimination in that the other candidate was not a possibility.

I was not amazed that he won. For months, I have been saying that everybody has missed the anger which was demonstrated by the Republican sweep of the 2014 mid-term elections. It did not go away but it did fester.

America, in 2014, was so angry they gave the Republicans the Senate, a larger majority in the House, many Governors’ mansions, and many statehouses. It was the largest repudiation of a sitting President and his party since the 1920s.

President Obama chose to ignore it, instead whipping out his pen and cell phone resulting in a great number of Executive Orders which are slowly being dismantled by the courts and which will be put in their grave by the Trump administration (first time I have used those words together).

So, how, Big Red Car, did President-elect Trump pull this surprise off?

Trump and the Anger

President-elect Trump tapped into the working man’s anger at the declining quality and safety of his life. It was out there and other candidates saw it but they were not effective in pursuing it. It took a blue collar billionaire to get the message.

After the 2014 mid-terms, President Obama threw fuel on the fire by trying to simply ignore it, by engaging in a series of Executive Orders that exacerbated the anger, and by his imperious manner. Then, of course, there was the anger generated by the incredible Obamacare premium increases. That was a cruel blow to folks who were already hurting.

HRC never tried to make a connection. She couldn’t figure out how to do it.

Trump and the Rust Belt

Nobody thought Trump had a chance in the Rust Belt. But, he was more inciteful and smarter than all the navel gazing political strategists.

He saw the Rust Belt as the place where the disaffected, the angry, the deplorables lived and he went into Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and came out a winner. Nobody ever conceived of this but not a lot of people thought DJT would get the nomination either.

Trump won West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin. The only place he didn’t win was Illinois.

The Great Lakes states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana all ended up in the Trump sack with, again, only Illinois going to the Dems.

Organize your states by the Rust Belt or the Great Lakes but these are states that have not been in the Republican column for forty years.

Who got beat, Big Red Car?

The Trump victory was a blow to the elites, the illuminati, the cognoscenti, the GOPe, the DEMe, the Dems, the HRC campaign, the pundits, the pollsters, and liberals. Mitt Romney and the Bushes look pretty stupid today, no?

This was a big league performance and Trump knew it all the way. His curious campaign stops during the last two weeks of the campaign are now brought into clear focus. This was a triumph of energy and focus.

Well played.

But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car.cropped-LTFD-illust_300.png

15 thoughts on “Trump, Anger and the Rust Belt”

  1. Obama was never intended to be a good POTUS. We knew who he was, his background, his friends and mentors. It looked like he hated the US, and he did.

    But for some reason the mainstream media (MSM) fell totally in love with Obama. It seemed that the MSM somehow believed that if we could only have a Black POTUS, then all the Blacks would enter the middle or upper classes and all the tension between the races would disappear. Nope. At least not with Obama who hated the US.

    Good medicine for tough problems is usually tough to come by. Snake oil was not good medicine, either.

    Typically, good solutions to tough problems require a lot of good work. If ObamaCare had been a tall building, it would have fallen over in the first high wind; a long bridge, collapsed with the first traffic; an airplane, crashed and burned during takeoff.

    ObamaCare was never expected to work.

    AFAIK:

    Obama — Enjoyed sticking US health care in the gut.

    Nancy Pelosi — Enjoyed exercising girl power!

    Barney Frank — wanted a step to the public option and then to single payer.

    The Health Insurance Companies — were hoping to get some nice subsidies.

    Republicans — smart enough to see silly, dirty, bad politics and put a time out data on it (IIRC), timed to die just after Obama left office.

    Hillary? Baggage enough to sink an aircraft carrier. Good grief, the woman belongs in court and then jail for massive violation of section (f) of the US Espionage Act. That fact seemed to be of relatively little concern to a lot of voters. Amazing.

    It looks like the MSM was doing their thing again — pushing for an affirmative action POTUS, this time for women instead of the Blacks.

    So, this time, the MSM fell totally in love with Hillary. It seemed that the MSM somehow believed that if we could only have a woman POTUS, no matter what her baggage, then all the women would no longer feel frustrated in their lives balancing education, love, marriage, motherhood, cellulite, and career and become welcome in the NFL, NBA, MLB, etc.

    Hillary came awfully close, close enough to scare me.

    Now with Trump, we can get back to actually doing good work to do good things in and for our country.

    So, an annual trade deficit of $700+ billion is a bummer. So, turn that around.

    95 million people in the US able to work but not in the labor force is a bummer. So, turn that around.

    We have long standing laws, policies, and procedures on immigration that we have set aside — bummer. So, return to what we used to have plus some.

    Long wars in shit pit countries are dumb. So, don’t do that anymore.

    Lots more good stuff that is obvious.

    For the MSM news, I don’t know any solution except just to let it die out.

  2. “The Deplorables,” “The Swamp full of Crazy”, and “those who cling to guns and religion” ruled the day. The political and cultural elite failed once more. Great Article.

      • You’re a great manager. A manager must go to the people and find out what they need to be better. I believe Trump will do that. What can I do to help you?

      • Change? He crucified Hillary for giving speeches to Goldman Sachs, saying GS destroyed the working class; now he’s hiring them for his cabinet. He said he was gonna drain the swamp of lobbyists, now he’s filling his staff with lobbyists and D.C. insiders. He promised to appoint a special prosecutor to lock Hillary up and now he’s not interested in pursuing that. Now we are going to spend $25 billion of our own money to build this utterly pointless wall with the hope that maybe we can get another sovereign nation to pay for it. But wait, he said parts of it could be a fence. Who knows what this man really believes.

        • .
          Anthony, fair play on GS but more form than function.

          Complete whiff on his Cabinet. Former CEO of Exxon, Mad Dog — not insiders. High marks on appointees.

          Hold tight on HRC. Politically the right move. He used that rhetoric to win. He won. She is so yesterday.

          He will get the WALL built and get Mexico to pay through tariffs.

          It is not hard to know what the man believes in. Now, the challenge is to see what he can get done.

          I think we are all going to be surprised. Favorably.

          Stay warm.

          BRC
          https://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com

          • CEOs are not politicians. Do you really think billionaire CEOs have working class interests at heart? They represent their corporations, and that’s IT. This is basically the same as being a lobbyist except now they’ve got the keys to the kingdom. They didn’t give a damn about the working class as CEOs and they sure as hell won’t give a damn as wannabe politicians. This is why a government should NEVER be run like a business; they exist for totally different reasons. It makes no sense to elect a billionaire to hire other billionaires to fix the system that made them billionaires.

            HRC is so yesterday? Tell that to the thousands of Trump supporters who screamed “Lock her up”. He said he would, now all of a sudden he can just dismiss the idea. Conservatives painted Hillary as being a criminal, a clear and present threat to our nation. Is THIS how he plans to deal with such threats? Forget about them as soon as they aren’t expedient for him? He’s either a bald-faced liar, or a weak leader. Which is it?

            I’ve never seen such a thin-skinned crybaby in office. Every time someone criticizes him, he gets into a Twitter war. OUR PRESIDENT acts like a teenage girl. With all the mud slung at Obama the last 8 years, he never once took to Twitter to whine and get into personal grudge matches. Trump just can’t let any criticism go without a Twitter fight over it, whether it’s with a gold star parent or a beauty pageant contestant. This man is no president.

            Now he’s sitting out important security briefings. SECURITY briefings. What would he rather do? Have a photo op with Kanye West. THIS is what his priorities are vs. what they should be. If Obama had done such a thing, right wingers would have crucified him.

            Funny how “fiscally conservative” Republicans balk at any mention of spending money on education (a REAL investment in our future) but think it’s a good idea to borrow $25 billion from taxpayers with the hope that some day Mexico will pay it back. Trump said he would get Mexico to make a one time payment of $5-10 billion to keep it legal to wire money there. Oops, didn’t work out that way, now WE have to front the cash for this utterly pointless, ridiculous wall. Cash that could be spent on our lagging infrastructure.

            Working class Americans are already suffering under Trump. He gave Carrier $7 million in corporate welfare at the expense of the taxpayers, all to save less than half the jobs that were leaving.

            THESE are the kinds of “great deals” Trump is making, and it’s just the beginning. It will be you who are surprised, and probably sooner than we think.

          • “She’s so yesterday” so we can forget about prosecuting her? I thought she was a dangerous threat to our nation. Is Trump going to have this attitude with all threats to our nation?

  4. It seems to me that ultimately this election was about repudiating the National Committees. The R’s flatly denied the establishment candidates from the beginning and picked an outsider. Reince may think he’s a genius but he just got lucky. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as we now know, picked her candidate early and did everything she could to tilt the primary her way, ultimately choosing to pull the rug out from under the only candidate that had a movement and ideas. When things didn’t go as well as she hoped, they co-opted his platform to provide some actual ideas to HRC’s campaign in the hopes of keeping Bernie’s momentum. America chose the anti-establishment from the beginning. Now, will this cause any change at the National Committee level? Americans spoke very loudly this time and said they will pick their own winner. High time we had real choices. The National Committees are far too cynical to accomplish anything useful. There has to be more to governance than winning elections. We don’t need a third party, we need at least four. Blow up both parties and start over. The Republican party is trying to make their tent so big that it’s structurally unsound. There’s no room for moderates, so how can they possibly attract fiscally conservative Dem’s? There is no place for purple in either current party and that’s where a lot of us live.

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