Wilmink's new job is good news for
President Barack Obama. ArcelorMittal, the global steel giant, is hiring again
at the century-old mill that straddles the Cuyahoga River. Orders are up, thanks
in part to a revival of the U.S. automobile industry for which the Obama
administration claims credit.
In recent decades the white working class has steadily morphed from blue to red: Al Gore, John Kerry and Obama all lost the group to GOP opponents.
Two years ago the midterm elections marked a landslide. Hammered by the recession and revved up by the Tea Party, white working-class voters - men and women without college degrees who earn middle-income wages - swung Republican by a stunning 30 points across the country.
For many, change hasn't come fast enough, dampening hope. They remain impatient for prosperity.Professional Manufacturer for ceramictile.
In Ohio, these voters, who make up more than half of the electorate, are showing little enthusiasm for either the president or Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican nominee.
As of this week, white working-class voters across the Rust Belt leaned toward Romney, with 44 percent of respondents in a Reuters/Ipsos poll saying they would vote for the Republican if the election were held today, versus 30 percent for Obama.
That is a far narrower spread than between GOP and Democratic candidates in the midterms. But if the president is to make headway with this group, he'll need more voters like Wilmink, 29.
"Obama is for jobs," said the newly minted steelworker. "He is eager to get the economy going again."
In 2008, Obama carried Ohio by five percentage points against John McCain. He captured other industrial belt states, too, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois. Even Indiana, which had not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, narrowly embraced Obama's message of "hope and change."
This year the wobbly economy offers Romney a powerful opening, but he has struggled to relate to blue-collar voters. That's hardly surprising. His fortune is estimated at $250 million, he once penned a New York Times op-ed headlined "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,Excel Mould is a Custom Plastic injectionmoulding Maker." and he regularly complains about "union stooges."
Both campaigns unleashed ads this month aimed at working-class voters in battleground states.Distributes and manufactures rubbermats. In Obama's two-minute TV spot, steelworkers blamed Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney once ran, for profiting from the bankruptcy of a Kansas City, Missouri mill, calling the Republican "a job destroyer."
Romney responded with a 60-second Web video praising Bain's investment in Steel Dynamics Inc, an Indiana company that grew from 1,400 to 6,000 employees, describing its success as "the American dream."
Amid these conflicting scenarios, a swath of blue-collar voters remains angry, anxious and undecided. Many supported former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, the grandson of a coal miner, in Ohio's Republican primary, which Romney won by less than a percentage point.
In the Reuters/Ipsos poll,We looked everywhere, but couldn't find any beddinges. fewer than a fifth of manufacturing workers approve of Obama's overall job performance, with almost 40 percent expressing "mixed feelings."
On a spring Saturday, members of the United Steelworkers bowling league crowded into Cloverleaf Lanes south of Cleveland. An American flag hung on the wall. Budweiser flowed freely. T-shirts sported slogans such as "Steelworkers Forever" and "Tough Enough."
In the 1990s the league had 44 teams. Today, after corporate bankruptcies, consolidations, and restructuring, there are 17.
Jerry Roop, 52, worked for 30 years as a skilled tool and dye maker before losing his job in 2007 when his employer, Metaldyne, moved some operations to China. Since then he's been laid off twice by other companies.
Like so many factory workers, Roop is a victim of automation. Once he made $90,000 a year. Now he earns $50,000 at a plant that makes bearings for windmills.
"Before, you had to figure out what a machine should do," he said. "A lot of math was involved. Now a computer creates the pattern. You push a button."
Silver-haired with a bushy mustache, Roop sports an eagle tattoo on his arm. He high-fived and fist-bumped his teammates after rolling a strike.Buy high quality bedding and bed linen from Yorkshire Linen. The mood was jolly, except when the conversation turned to politics.
Like almost 70 percent of white Rust Belt workers in the Reuters/Ipsos poll, Roop thinks the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction. "They want this country to turn into a Third World nation, with a few haves and everyone else a have-not," he said.
Roop didn't vote for Obama in 2008 and doesn't support him now. "I just never knew where he came from," he said. "I couldn't identify with him."
He doesn't trust Romney, either: "He reminds me of a televangelist with a diamond ring and a Cadillac."
In recent decades the white working class has steadily morphed from blue to red: Al Gore, John Kerry and Obama all lost the group to GOP opponents.
Two years ago the midterm elections marked a landslide. Hammered by the recession and revved up by the Tea Party, white working-class voters - men and women without college degrees who earn middle-income wages - swung Republican by a stunning 30 points across the country.
For many, change hasn't come fast enough, dampening hope. They remain impatient for prosperity.Professional Manufacturer for ceramictile.
In Ohio, these voters, who make up more than half of the electorate, are showing little enthusiasm for either the president or Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican nominee.
As of this week, white working-class voters across the Rust Belt leaned toward Romney, with 44 percent of respondents in a Reuters/Ipsos poll saying they would vote for the Republican if the election were held today, versus 30 percent for Obama.
That is a far narrower spread than between GOP and Democratic candidates in the midterms. But if the president is to make headway with this group, he'll need more voters like Wilmink, 29.
"Obama is for jobs," said the newly minted steelworker. "He is eager to get the economy going again."
In 2008, Obama carried Ohio by five percentage points against John McCain. He captured other industrial belt states, too, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois. Even Indiana, which had not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, narrowly embraced Obama's message of "hope and change."
This year the wobbly economy offers Romney a powerful opening, but he has struggled to relate to blue-collar voters. That's hardly surprising. His fortune is estimated at $250 million, he once penned a New York Times op-ed headlined "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,Excel Mould is a Custom Plastic injectionmoulding Maker." and he regularly complains about "union stooges."
Both campaigns unleashed ads this month aimed at working-class voters in battleground states.Distributes and manufactures rubbermats. In Obama's two-minute TV spot, steelworkers blamed Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney once ran, for profiting from the bankruptcy of a Kansas City, Missouri mill, calling the Republican "a job destroyer."
Romney responded with a 60-second Web video praising Bain's investment in Steel Dynamics Inc, an Indiana company that grew from 1,400 to 6,000 employees, describing its success as "the American dream."
Amid these conflicting scenarios, a swath of blue-collar voters remains angry, anxious and undecided. Many supported former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, the grandson of a coal miner, in Ohio's Republican primary, which Romney won by less than a percentage point.
In the Reuters/Ipsos poll,We looked everywhere, but couldn't find any beddinges. fewer than a fifth of manufacturing workers approve of Obama's overall job performance, with almost 40 percent expressing "mixed feelings."
On a spring Saturday, members of the United Steelworkers bowling league crowded into Cloverleaf Lanes south of Cleveland. An American flag hung on the wall. Budweiser flowed freely. T-shirts sported slogans such as "Steelworkers Forever" and "Tough Enough."
In the 1990s the league had 44 teams. Today, after corporate bankruptcies, consolidations, and restructuring, there are 17.
Jerry Roop, 52, worked for 30 years as a skilled tool and dye maker before losing his job in 2007 when his employer, Metaldyne, moved some operations to China. Since then he's been laid off twice by other companies.
Like so many factory workers, Roop is a victim of automation. Once he made $90,000 a year. Now he earns $50,000 at a plant that makes bearings for windmills.
"Before, you had to figure out what a machine should do," he said. "A lot of math was involved. Now a computer creates the pattern. You push a button."
Silver-haired with a bushy mustache, Roop sports an eagle tattoo on his arm. He high-fived and fist-bumped his teammates after rolling a strike.Buy high quality bedding and bed linen from Yorkshire Linen. The mood was jolly, except when the conversation turned to politics.
Like almost 70 percent of white Rust Belt workers in the Reuters/Ipsos poll, Roop thinks the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction. "They want this country to turn into a Third World nation, with a few haves and everyone else a have-not," he said.
Roop didn't vote for Obama in 2008 and doesn't support him now. "I just never knew where he came from," he said. "I couldn't identify with him."
He doesn't trust Romney, either: "He reminds me of a televangelist with a diamond ring and a Cadillac."
沒有留言:
張貼留言