Amazing how media is still making comparisons to how ‘Murica shifted from Obama to Trump – PB/TK
How the Obama phenomenon and Trump earthquake happened –
By Reid Wilson / June 14 2017
In Swift County, hope dimmed when the Prairie Correctional Facility closed in 2010. More than 350 people lost their jobs, in a county of about 9,700. The unemployment rate jumped more than 2 percentage points virtually overnight, to almost 10 percent. But the community believed that an economic recovery would lift them once again.
“A number of people, quite a significant number of former employees out there, were holding on as long as they could before they eventually moved away, hoping that facility would open,” said Gary Hendrickx, a Swift County commissioner.
But Mark Dayton, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, threatened to veto legislation to reopen the prison. And the Obama administration said the federal government would cut back its use of private prisons. People left Swift County, the poverty rate grew and farmers felt the pinch when corn, wheat and soybean prices cratered along with the global commodity market.
At the same time, Hennepin County, the state’s largest and home to Minneapolis, is booming. The Twin Cities are attracting a new generation of migrants, both from places like Swift County and from overseas. Hennepin County has 2,000 more manufacturing jobs than it did five years ago. In that time, the annual median income has increased some $4,500.
Where Swift County shifted toward Trump, Hennepin turned a deeper shade of blue. Hillary Clinton took more votes, and a higher percentage of the vote, than Obama did in 2012. Trump scored 50,000 fewer votes there than Mitt Romney did four years ago.
The election that sent Trump to the White House is replete with juxtaposing examples like those of Swift and Hennepin counties. Those glimpses of a changing America are evidence of a series of countervailing demographic, political and economic forces that have long exerted themselves on the nation — and now define the quadrennial struggle between two sides of the political aisle that are deeply polarized along race, class, economic and educational lines.
Continue to thehill.com article: http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/337694-investigation-how-the-obama-phenomenon-and-trump-earthquake-happened
