Trump won 89 of 100 counties that suffered worst from Bill Clinton's trade deal with China on his way out the door in Oct. 2000. No candidate but Trump realized the problem existed and how brutally Americans had been treated. To this day, people like George Bush, Obama, and Jeff Flake don't see the problem or understand that trade deal abuse of American communities likely elected Trump-Washington Examiner, N. Emery

"In 1996, the Chinese government had the “China plan” and pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign. There were congressional investigations, and several fundraisers were prosecuted, but Attorney General Janet Reno rejected calls for an independent counsel. Campaigns tightened up their donor-validation procedures, and life moved on." 10/15/17, "You Can’t Buy the Presidency for $100,000," Wall St. Journal, Mark Penn, op-ed (Penn was chief strategist for Hillary's 2008 pres. campaign, her 2000 Senate campaign, and for Bill Clinton's 1996 pres. campaign)
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10/31/17, "And that's why Trump won," Washington Examiner, Noemie Emery, opinion 

"...Donald Trump understands only one thing...matters. His critics, such as George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Jeff Flake, who last week made three largely correct and inspiring speeches, seem to know everything but.

They understand politics, policy, and the uses of etiquette, but seem deaf, dumb, and blind from the central great issue that drove Trump’s election: The top tiers of the country have been flourishing nicely, while those underneath have been taking a beating. And one reason is international trade.

Like Hillary Clinton and the sixteen...candidates who lost to Trump in the primary, these...people seem unable to grasp what Roger Altman explained in the Washington Post this past weekend: that “the so-called American dream ... has ended for most of our citizens. Half of the young adults in this country will earn less over their lifetimes than their parents did. Indeed, the whole idea of rising living standards, which defined this country for so long, is a thing of the past.” 

Trump won, not because the country was racist or sexist, or because most in the country enjoyed his coarse language. He won because he was the only one who realized the problem existed. 

Trump was elected by...Obama voters in the upper Midwest whose communities had been devastated by job losses. The irony was that Bush, Flake, and Obama, while deploring Trump’s sins, still listed free trade as one of their paramount values, even though the evidence since has been more than abundant that embracing free trade beyond the limits of prudence was their founding and critical sin.

On Oct. 10, 2000, on the advice of the experts, Bill Clinton signed a now-infamous trade deal with China, calling it a ‘win-win’ solution for both of the countries that would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. It turned out the experts were wrong. It created job losses that were worse than expected. Workers didn’t ‘bounce back,’ as experts predicted, but remained unemployed. These losses fanned out in concentric circles of failure, as losses of wages led to failures of stores, restaurants, and local businesses in their localities, as entire districts fell into decline.

Along with this, and caused by it, came a radicalization of politics. “In the 2000s, congressional districts where competition from Chinese imports was rapidly increasing became more politically polarized,” the Wall Street Journal reported in August 2016. A study by four economists released late last November reported that districts represented by moderate Democrats in 2002 were likely to be represented by liberal Democrats or conservative Republicans eight years later. The moderate Democrats vanished. This foretold the rise of both Trump and of Bernie Sanders.

In the 2016 GOP primaries, Trump won 89 of the 100 counties mostly deeply affected by the Chinese invasion, his...anti-trade talk “tapping into sentiments ... largely ignored by conventional” voices. The study concluded that “if Chinese import gains had been 50 percent smaller,” Trump would have lost Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and Hillary Clinton would have been president. The bill her husband signed sixteen years earlier ended up breaking her heart.

In the primaries, the election, and now in the aftermath, Trump’s critics have been eloquent in outlining his faults without understanding the reason he beat them, which is their great failing. Is no one around who comprehends why this happened...?"
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Note from blog editor: I don't usually post anything from the above deeply Establishment author. I had to use ellipses in 7 instances. The author's interpretation and/or choice of words was either distractingly hateful or borderline comedic ("Like Hillary Clinton and the sixteen...[extremely well-qualified] candidates who lost to Trump in the primary, these...[well-meaning, cultured, intelligent] people") which made the article difficult to get through. Rush Limbaugh mentioned the article on his show on 10/31 for the China trade issue, otherwise I'd never have read it.

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Link to Rush Limbaugh transcript:

10/31/17, "Two Fascinating Election Postmortems," Rush Limbaugh

"Rush: Think back to the Trump campaign. Think back to any Trump rally or any Trump public appearance. The odds are Trump unloaded on China. He would unload on China and currency manipulation. He would be critical of China and their cheating, exporting a bunch of cheap stuff that we would buy here but not accepting any of our exports, balance of trade, the trade deficit with China. He dumped all over China. How many of you thought, “So what?"...

 I remember during the campaign we had some people saying, “Why’s he focusing on China? China’s not in the news for that. The Chinese…” Well, that’s what this piece is about. Noemie Emery: “And That’s Why Trump Won.” It has nothing to do with Russia, has nothing to do with Hillary. It has nothing to do with emails....

Trump didn’t have an animus toward China for personal reasons. It wasn’t because he had had bad experiences with them. It’s because he knew! He knew that in certain parts of the country the trade deal with China had devastated… It’s much the same thing that Salena Zito has found in her reporting from the deep-middle parts of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and West Virginia and so forth, parts of Ohio, that voters there were affected by all kinds of things that no other candidate ever mentioned....

The supposed idiot, the supposed dummkopf outsider who doesn’t know what he’s doing, was the only presidential candidate who understood that millions of Americans harbored sheer anger over a previous trade deal with China that had cost them jobs and communities."

Rush Limbaugh "Related Links" 

Breitbart: Ohio Democrat Party Warns: Stop Talking About Mueller Investigation, Stick to Real Issues 

Washington Examiner: And That's Why Trump Won - Noemie Emery
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