Routine Maintenance.

Routine Maintenance is what keeps things running. It is what prevents more expensive problems, further on down the line.

The Democratic Party has forgotten that principle, especially when it comes the lives and the livelihoods of the blue collar workers, so callously discarded in a seemingly never-ending series of Trade Deals (designed for the top one percent) ...

Donald Trump won the presidency by turning the Rust Belt red.

On Tuesday night, he swept Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin — states that voted twice for Barack Obama and that rank near the top in manufacturing jobs. Although his promise to restore the glory days of building cars and pouring steel sometimes made him sound like a guy who learned about past-their-prime factory towns by watching “Roger & Me” and listening to “Born in the U.S.A.,” he tapped into a still-strong nostalgia for a time when a young man could go straight from high school to an industrial job that paid enough to support a family.
[...]

Clinton, on the other hand, seemed to take the Upper Midwest for granted, never campaigning in Wisconsin and finally making a panicky visit to Detroit on the Friday before the election. In the 1980s, Michigan was the forging ground of the Reagan Democrats: hawkish, socially conservative, suburban, blue-collar workers who ignored the United Auto Workers’ entreaties to vote for Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.
[...]

Trump promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was signed by Bill Clinton in 1993 over the objection of organized labor and has since been blamed for the loss of manufacturing jobs to Third World countries with lower wage and labor standards. Nowhere is that a sorer point than in Flint. In 1980, GM employed 80,000 in the Flint area; today, it employs 7,200. Flint’s decline began a decade before NAFTA, but the trade deal was seen as just another kick at the auto industry. In 1999, GM closed Buick City, a Flint assembly plant that once provided a living to 28,000 workers. Since its demolition, the site has gone the way of all Flint, with poplars and yarrow pushing through cracks in the asphalt.

The Rust Belt was turning red already. Donald Trump just pushed it along.
by Edward McClelland -- November 9, 2016

Dems, by callously pursuing the promises of The Job Exporter and Chief, to enact yet another Trade Policy (the TPP), written by corporate lawyers, in secret -- perhaps sealed their own fate, and precipitated their own "undoing", in the ripple-like crumbling of their infamous Blue Wall of the upper Midwest.

Nobody likes to be taken for granted; least of all hardworking folks cast aside for the sake of quick and easy profits for CEO and Stockholders, far removed from the craftsmanship and toil of the daily grind.

Union-made label loses its appeal, if that "Union" is that of ultra-cheap labor of unregulated sweatshops, springing up like greed-laden Money-trees, in so many far off-distant lands.

[...]
Instead, those who did vote stampeded to Trump in insurmountable numbers. In particular, Trump beat Clinton among white voters without a college education by an astonishing 39 percentage points — a margin larger than Ronald Reagan’s against Walter Mondale in his 1984 landslide. Trump not only beat her by nearly 50 points among blue-collar white men, but by almost 30 points among non-college-educated white women. (Trump is president largely because white working-class women gave him double-digit margins in key states — a development that may occupy gender studies scholars for years.) Similarly, Trump captured more than three-fifths of rural voters nationwide; in the decisive Rustbelt states — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and possibly Michigan [... and Ohio ...]

By dislodging Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and possibly Michigan, Trump shattered the blue wall — the 18 states (plus the District of Columbia) with 242 Electoral College votes that had voted Democratic in at least each election since 1992. If Clinton had defended the blue wall through the Rustbelt, she would have won, because the four diverse Sunbelt battlegrounds (Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada) that she captured would have pushed her past an Electoral College majority. Yet even with her wins in those four states, Clinton ultimately stumbled between the party’s past and future: While Trump toppled heavily blue-collar Rustbelt states that stand as the last monuments to the Democrats’ earlier working-class-based coalition, Tuesday made clear the party’s new coalition of minorities and white-collar whites has not yet grown large enough to reliably hold behemoth Sunbelt battlegrounds such as Florida and North Carolina (much less Arizona or Georgia), especially against a Republican surge in those states’ own substantial blue-collar and non-urban populations.

The result is a genuine hinge point in American history, as consequential as it was unanticipated. [...]

How the Rustbelt Paved Trump's Road to Victory
by Ronald Brownstein, theatlantic.com -- Nov 10, 2016

This time the long-suffering, long-neglected Blue-collar workers (of the Blue Wall) made their Voices heard. They Voted, en-mass. And they believed the "promises" of the Candidate who at least recognized their Downsizing Plight. Their on-going lost of economic hope ...

They turned away from the Candidate who couldn't even be bother to "show up" in there, in foundation-bare towns and burbs.

Nobody likes being "taken for granted." Eventually everyone reaches their breaking point -- and SO the Dem's once-solid wall of Labor-party principles, crumbles.   Like so many politician promises, never kept.  Or worse yet, betrayed.

Is this a permanent realignment, or merely flirting with the celebrity?   Time will tell.

Many of these blue-collar working stiffs were willing to vote for Bernie Sanders (anyone recall the Michigan Primary?) ... too bad the DNC pawn-brokers failed to read the signs, that were blaring in their faces.

Too bad they just took, the Midwestern Blue Wall for granted.  THAT was the true cause of their undoing.  They let that essential "tune-up" lapse, just one year too many.

They let their think-tank-driven Electoral sedan, break-down on the side of the road, like the over-used Jalopy it really was ... Maybe someone in the DNC should have paid attention to that early "Engine Warning" light. And not put that signal on hold for "some other day, 'after they Win'."  Maybe next time the Dems will actually put forward a Candidate, who put the Voices of the Workers miles ahead, of the knowing nods of the deep-pocket Bankers ...?

Live and learn they say.  The principle of Routine Maintenance is definitely one worth following, in Life and in Politics -- the alternative of waiting for the "inevitable breakdown", can really hinder one's forward progress.   Indeed, Everyone's forward progress.

====== Personal aside =========

Being from that Midwest rusty region myself, it is truly sad to see the Democratic Party so pragmatically, so blithely, cast aside the "Made in America" Union label.  For so many pieces of Lobbyist's Gold.

They are NOT the same Party that I grew up with, that I defended, ever since I cast my first Vote for Carter (so many toil-filled decades ago).  Having two voices, two opinions -- one for private negotiations and one for public consumption -- is NOT what the Democratic Party, used to stand for.

IOW, the DNC hacks only have themselves to blame ... though they probably never will ... (they have fallen too far for that, to ever admit fault.)  Greed is not a substitute for Votes, however.  Having reliable steadfast Values, is ...

Keeping your word, fulfilling your promises AFTER the Election, is ...

Duplicity -- is NOT the Answer ...

to any serious question a Blue Collar Worker ever asked.