Maybe it turned out to be a bad idea for Hillary to go into Michigan and tell working-class primary voters she cared more about her wild-eyed gun control schemes than she did about good manufacturing jobs. I’m not saying that gun control is all that caused Bernie to overcome a 21 point deficit in the polls to take Michigan, but a talented politician would know you don’t go into a state that’s been hammered by the loss of manufacturing jobs and state there are some good manufacturing jobs (making firearms) that the country could do without. But as you all well know, I think Hillary’s got less political talent than your average high school class president.
Hillary’s strange obsession with the PLCAA isn’t doing her any favors. I think if Bernie backed away from more gun control, it might even help him gain. Remember, 20% of Dems own guns too.
Your analysis reminded me that if you have a hammer everything needs a hammer. It was not guns or control. It was real simple Free trade sent manufacturers to Mexico to produce cars and this is where the auto manufacturers lived. Detroit was very wealthy and lost its wealth due to NAFTA in the Clinton’s time.
Bernie may be a socialist but he also have been against the trade deals that keep screwing over American workers.
These trade deal may be good in general but not to the workers that lost jobs
What happened to Detroit goes well beyond NAFTA. Another major factor is that they’ve had Democrat mayors (and Democrat- and Union-friendly policies) for the last half of a century or so. These policies ran Detroit’s industry into the ground.
Of course, that little fact isn’t going to be brought up in a Democrat debate…
The US has had one of the most open to trade economies in the world for the last century. Most trade deals involve other countries reducing trade barriers much more than changes to US import tariffs and restrictions–if you look at the politics in other (non-western) countries you’ll often see a lot of resentment towards the US pushing its weight around on trade for this reason; also look at the collapse of the Doha round of WTO.
A significant rise of protectionism in the US would probably cause a much larger rise of protectionism around the world (speculative), and hurt US manufacturing and services (almost certain–trade almost always helps both sides).
That anti-trade populists have so much traction among the people most likely to be hurt is a huge failure of the political establishment.
What a data of un-ambiguity and preserveness of precious knowledge about unexpected feelings.