Trump and the Republicans: Deer in the Headlights?

"Trump’s Keynesianism was mostly defense spending and tax cuts, but it included a huge infrastructure push — soon nicknamed “TrumpWorks” — that doubled as a jobs program for his core constituency, blue-collar men. The assumption that the economy had hit full employment in the later Obama years proved to be an artifact of work-force dropouts and increasing illegal . With TrumpWorks hiring, a wall rising (albeit haphazardly) on the southern border and millennials’ entry into the housing market sparking a sudden construction boom, both wages and the work-force participation rate began to sharply climb."
--Ross Douthat, on Trump in 2020, an anti apocalyptic vision Articles appearing from living rooms in the Rust Belt are quoting voters who really, actually believe Donald Trump can and will stop factories from closing and moving to Mexico and China.
If President Trump can do this, then maybe they weren't as stupid as we here in the East think. 
Factories with 3000 robots and 300 employees won't do. He's talking about making air conditioners with the same people whose  jobs are going to Mexico, no robots.

Riding the elevated subway around New York City, I see construction booming, workers everywhere, the visible signs of a thrumming economy. 

Here in the East we don't see the empty factories and the boarded up Main Street. 

Out there, in Ohio. Michigan, Wisconsin, rural Pennsylvania, it's different. 

Hillary spoke of "retraining."  I'm guessing that held no appeal to workers who really do not believe they can be retrained or if they can that will mean jobs. They want the job first and the training later.

Anyone who watched, "Making of a Murderer," saw rural Wisconsin, and likely rural Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.  The people you saw there looked no different from people in Alabama, Tennessee or West Virginia. 

If President Trump can find jobs for these people, he'll do better than Hillary could have done with a Republican Congress and Supreme Court.  

It will be interesting to watch.