Most people in this town will tell you they'd rather have taken a physical punch to the gut than get the news they received yesterday when Cleveland-Cliffs Steel announced it was idling its tinplate production plant, a move that directly cost 900 people their jobs.
Thirty years ago, more than 10,000 people worked here at Weirton Steel.
"It's just another scar to add on what people in power have done to our lives and our community over the past 40 years," said one employee who declined to give his name, adding, "Honestly, how many times does this story have to be told before someone in power cares about our lives."
I'm not sure if Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell does, the press does not, and the new "Very online right" is certainly not the reflection of a center-right voter in middle America.
Jeff Brauer, a political science professor at Keystone College, said Washington elites on both sides of the aisle, media elites, and now online conspiracy elites just don't get Middle America even after this recent economically and politically difficult decade.
Brad Todd, founding partner of OnMessage and co-author with me of The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics, said one thing is for certain about 2024: "We are about to read a million new stories that quote zero people who are actually going to decide the election."
"I don't think anyone fought hard enough for that from happening. We shouldn't keep having to read again, again, another story about a town dying hard and a vacancy of no one caring."
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2861849/middle-america-is-dying-hard/
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