A look at the numbers shows the appeal of Trump’s pitch
Looking back, it shouldn’t have been surprising that a populist pitch would work this year. I went to the hometown of House Speaker Paul Ryan for a Donald Trump rally last week and found that Janesville is a good place to go if you want to see an economy stuck in place.
John Fuller, 48, of Monroe, was there, among the thousands of other people who came to see Trump that afternoon. “I like the idea that he wants to bring jobs back to the country,” said Fuller, a truck driver for 22 years as we stood together in the warm sunshine outside the Holiday Inn Express. “The trucking business isn’t what it once was.”
Which is true for many industries in Wisconsin.
Gov. Scott Walker can boast of a headline unemployment rate of 4.6%. But that’s an illusion. The “real” rate of unemployment is nearly double that when you count people who want to work but aren’t officially in the labor force and people who would work full time but can only find part-time employment. The jobless rate among minorities soars far higher.
In 1993, the first year of Bill Clinton’s presidency, manufacturing accounted for 34% of all jobs in Rock County. There were more than 18,000 manufacturing jobs in the county at that time.
By 2013, federal statistics show, the number of manufacturing jobs had been cut in half due in large part to the closing of the General Motors plant in 2008.
More alarming: Median household income, adjusted for inflation, fell 15% from 1989 to 2014, according to Census data. (My thanks to Marc Levine, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for his help in crunching these numbers).
Good jobs in manufacturing seem to have been replaced by jobs that aren’t as good.
While Trump’s message is being muted in Wisconsin by an aggressive effort from a coalition of conservatives, his rhetoric connects with people worried about the economy. Trump supporters have told me that jobs, immigration and national security concern them most. Immigration often gets tied up with jobs.
“I like his stance on the immigration problem,” Peggy Lambert, of Winthrop Harbor, Ill., told me as she stood in line outside Nathan Hale High School in West Allis on Sunday before Trump’s rally. “It is causing a lot of issues with our own country’s residents being able to find jobs. Jobs are being taken away.”
There are signs of populist angst in the latest Marquette University Law School Poll. Respondents were asked which of two statements came closest to their views:
The United States is a place where if “you work hard and follow the rules you can provide for your family” or “hard work and following the rules are no longer enough to provide a decent life.” Of those who chose the latter — that hard work and following the rules aren’t enough — 46% went for Donald Trump compared with 35% for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Respondents were asked if they thought businesses share their profits through “fair wages” or “squeeze wages unfairly.” Of those who believe that businesses “squeeze wages,” 40% supported Trump compared with 29% for Cruz.
Poll director Charles Franklin notes that in every instance Trump’s support is higher among those with “populist” leanings. They are minorities of the overall GOP electorate, to be sure, and the reasons for Trump’s rise are complicated and multilayered. His campaign is a political scientist’s dream.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, cautions that “many factors are intertwined, and it’s difficult to know what the real underlying motives are. ‘Make America Great Again’ is only slightly removed from ‘take our country back.’ Back from whom? . . . Trump backers are angry and dissatisfied,” he wrote in an email. “The candidate’s anger, bluster, and political incorrectness says as much as the topics he chooses to discuss.”
Consider just a few more numbers:
Median household income in Milwaukee County was $38,100 in 1999. By 2014, it had risen to $43,385, which sounds decent until you consider that just to keep pace with inflation, that number should have been $54,139.
That helps to explain why a blustering billionaire from New York can connect with blue-collar voters.
Trump supporters
cite jobs, immigration, national security