In Part 2 of this review I said that the Great Revolt is divided into a number of chapters, each named after a particular group of Trump voters that because of their circumstances either flipped from the Democrats to Trump or stayed with Trump despite an ideological conflict with him.<\/p>\n
For each of these categories there are several individuals who exemplify the profile but live in a different location.\u00a0 These locations are rural, or towns and cities located in the ten counties in question in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.<\/p>\n
In each of these categories and in each of these locations we are shown how the Democrats started out as the natural or default political party but ended up becoming the reason to vote for the unlikely personage of Donald J. Trump.\u00a0 Although the list includes some individuals who are affluent and highly educated they all reside in areas of the country that have been taken for granted and at the same time abandoned by the Democratic Elite.\u00a0 The people interviewed range from pillars of the community and entrepreneurs to folks who have barely survived hard economic times that coincided with personal tragedy and challenge.\u00a0 But they all look to Donald Trump to correct problems.\u00a0 Economic problems, cultural problems, moral problems.\u00a0 Not all of these people are conservatives or even moderates.\u00a0 Some are demonstrably old school Democrats.\u00a0 But what they all are is self-described Americans.\u00a0 None of them think of themselves as citizens of the world.\u00a0 None of them have bought into the globalist perspective and many of them are obviously mourning for the death of their homes.\u00a0 Places like Erie and Freeland Pennsylvania are for all intents and purposes dead.\u00a0 There aren\u2019t any growing industries and even the few employers left are slowly moving out to the sunbelt.\u00a0 Young adults leave for opportunities elsewhere.\u00a0 Parents and grandparents stay because they can\u2019t sell their houses.\u00a0 Who would buy them?\u00a0 All they are left with is memories of happier times when they were part of a thriving community with a future and the dignity of earning a living and raising their families.\u00a0 In these places voting for Donald Trump is almost a reflex.\u00a0 A final self-defensive movement.<\/p>\n
But other examples show communities that are still viable and even thriving but even in these places the inhabitants recognize that the Democrats don\u2019t pretend to share the values that these communities still believe in.\u00a0 Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio.\u00a0 These are all places that are seeing themselves ignored because they are the areas where remnant blue collar communities are supposed to disappear and be replaced by the new constituencies that are earmarked for inclusion in the \u201ccoalition of the ascendant.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, speaking in broad generalities, who are the Trump voters that handed him Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa?\u00a0 For the most part, they are the union guys who stopped voting for Republicans after Ronald Reagan.\u00a0 If we start in the worst hit spot in the Rust Belt we\u2019re in Pennsylvania.\u00a0 Places like Erie and Wilkes Barre have been deconstructed to the point that it\u2019s remarkable anyone at all is left.\u00a0 After all the industries from yesteryear shut down and off-shored to China Obama finished it off by outlawing coal.\u00a0 Places like Wisconsin are comparatively healthy.\u00a0 Many of the largest manufacturers are gone but entrepreneurial types have stepped in and started smaller companies in emerging industries that still employ many people and keep the areas as viable communities for families and young adults to remain in.\u00a0 In between these extremes is the rest of the gradient.\u00a0 What they all share was a dependence on large scale union employment in heavy industry.\u00a0 And because of this history they typically voted Democrat.\u00a0 And they thought of the Republicans as their class enemies.\u00a0 What they didn\u2019t see happening was the Democrats moving on from needing them or more specifically pretending to care about their votes.\u00a0 Once the Democrats had built up the \u201cCoalition of the Ascendant,\u201d these mid-west white union workers were an embarrassment to the rest of the coalition.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t college educated and they didn\u2019t eat the right foods or care about the right causes and they might even believe in God.\u00a0 So, the best thing to do was quietly stop talking about them and wait until they dropped dead so they could be replaced with some Central Americans or Middle Easterners.\u00a0 But somehow, they are still there so they are looking for a new political home.\u00a0 Donald Trump provided that.\u00a0 He was the first Republican since Ronald Reagan to acknowledge their plight and actually come up with a plan for helping them.\u00a0 Finally, let\u2019s sum it up.<\/p>\n
Bottom Line<\/strong><\/p>\n Boiling down all the cases and places it comes down to this.\u00a0 Donald Trump was elected president by the Rust Belt blue collar working areas because he was willing to promise to save them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the last part of this review I\u2019ll give my thoughts on where we go from here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Part 2 of this review I said that the Great Revolt is divided into a number of chapters, each named after a particular group<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,5,237,6],"tags":[1353,1348,1354,1355,1347,1346,16],"class_list":["post-4423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-current-events","category-reviews","category-trump","tag-book-reviews","tag-brad-todd","tag-current-events","tag-reviews","tag-salena-zito","tag-salena-zito-and-brad-todd","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\n