Ohio Trump voter admits the president is 'getting harder and harder to defend'
In today’s New York Times, Sabrina Tavernese’s article “With His Job Gone, an Autoworker Wonders, ‘What Am I as a Man?’” continues the mass media’s long-running fascination with white working-class men who voted for Trump. Tavernese focuses on laid-off Ohio auto worker Rick Marsh, who painted cars at GM’s Lordstown, Ohio plant before it recently closed, and who is currently unemployed. (Tavernese writes that Marsh’s 14-year-old daughter has cerebral palsy and is covered by Medicaid, but curiously does not mention that Trump has proposed big Medicaid cuts and has also proposed a block-grant system that would hurt Ohio children on Medicaid.)
Marsh voted for Trump in 2016 but now thinks that Trump is “getting harder and harder to defend.” Although Trump announced earlier this month that a small company would buy the closed Lordstown plant and that “THE USA IS BOOMING”, Tavernese writes:
after a few days it became clear to Mr. Marsh that the buyer — which had no experience in mass vehicle production and quarterly revenues that were less than the price of one high-end sports car — was probably not a solution.
“To me, it’s another flagrant sign that these people, they really don’t have a clue,” Mr. Marsh said of the country’s political class. “They are so out of touch with reality and real people. All of them.”
Tavernese also interviewed self-described swing voter Shawn Wodogaza, another former Lordstown plant worker who voted for Trump. Wodogaza said:
I don’t know where to go. It seems like no matter what he does or tries to do, it doesn’t work out. Well, now what? What the heck do we do?
I know what the heck you can do, Mr. Wodogaza. You can admit that you were conned in 2016. You can use your head the next time you vote. You can campaign and vote for someone who’s trying to help you rather than fool you. Trump’s policies are going to hurt a lot more people like you and me before he’s done, and the least you can do is to help repair the damage that you helped cause in 2016.
