President Trump gave a speech last week at a Royal Dutch Shell plant being built to convert natural gas into plastic. The good sign was that the company had to force employees to attend the speech and be polite, threatening them with loss of pay if they were not. It’s hard to believe that workers were so unenthusiastic about Trump’s appearance that the company had to use financial pressure to make sure the president had a decent crowd. And that no one would contest him or his policies. No resistance. This enforced attendance occurred at an unfinished plant being built in Pennsylvania. Those who went to the speech were given overtime pay by the company. The workers had to have their ID cards scanned and stand for hours waiting for The Donald to make an appearance and start speaking.
Could this be a sign that the working class is no longer as enamored with Trump as they once had been, and had to be paid to guarantee that they would show up for one of his speeches. Usually, his rallies are seen as entertaining and his working-class base used to be happy to attend any talk that Trump was giving. Could it be that they are becoming bored with The Donald and his repetitious speeches, taking credit for anything good that’s happening in America and blaming others for anything bad? Could The Donald be losing his Mojo?
Though the polls still have his approval ratings in the low 40 percents, maybe his base is just not as excited about Trump as they once were. And all the talk about a possible recession likely doesn’t help him. In reality, he hasn’t done anything to help America’s workers. The tax cut benefited the wealthy not the working class. And all the new jobs that were supposed to be generated never appeared. Companies used the extra money for stock buybacks or increased dividends to stockholders.
Some coal mines opened, but most likely temporarily, as utilities and manufacturing plants are changing to natural gas or renewable energy. Both are getting much cheaper and are not as dirty or polluting as coal. His trade war with China, which was going to be so easy to win, is still going on with no obvious winner at this point. And it has hurt workers who have to pay more for the goods Trump targeted with higher tariffs. Trump doesn’t seem to understand basic economics which shows that consumers are hurt the most by tariffs and not the countries of origin.
The Donald can keep making promises about all the things he’s going to do to help workers in America, but if he doesn’t come through with some of them, people will no longer believe him. They may like his anti-abortion stance and his conservative judicial appointments, but his base needs some material accomplishments that show he has their interests at heart and not that of his billionaire friends. He can blame all of the country’s problems on Obama and Hillary, but he’s been in office now for over two and a half years. So it’s all on him. The Donald.
Resurrecting Democracy www.robertlevinebooks.com
Political junkie, Vietnam vet, neurologist- three books on aging and dementia. Book on health care reform in 2009- Shock Therapy for the American Health Care System. Book on the need for a centrist third party- Resurrecting Democracy- A Citizen’s Call for a Centrist Third Party published in 2011. Aging Wisely, published in August 2014 by Rowman and Littlefield. Latest book- The Uninformed Voter published May 2020