Clinton to white, working-class voters: I'll 'fight' for you
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Hillary Clinton and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine rolled out of their nominating convention in Philadelphia and into the majority-white, working-class enclaves of the nation’s Rust Belt that Republican Donald Trump thinks will carry him to victory in the November election.
The Democratic ticket spent the second day of a bus tour traveling across western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio on Saturday, contrasting Clinton's economic proposals — which she’s calling the biggest investment in jobs since World War II — with Trump’s business record of manufacturing his own branded products overseas.
The first stop was a steel-wire-product manufacturer in Pennsylvania’s Cambria County, where Republican Mitt Romney won 58% of the vote in 2012, despite the fact that registered Democrats outnumber Republicans.
Cambria is more than 94% white, with a median household income of about $42,000, where the unemployment rate is almost 2 percentage points higher than the national average.
Clinton highlighted her family's working-class roots, including her grandfather's job in a Scranton, Pa., lace mill, while pledging to "fight" for "places that have been left out and left behind."
Unlike Trump, "I actually have plans," she said. "Some people make fun of me for having plans. It used to hurt my feelings, it doesn’t anymore,” Clinton said at Johnstown Wire Technologies, where a majority of the 260-person workforce is represented by the United Steelworkers of America.
Clinton is calling for a new generation of jobs, including a substantial investment in infrastructure, more green-energy jobs and small-business tax advantages.
Her plan includes a $10 billion investment in manufacturing communities, including proposals to help them transition to science and technology trades.
Trump is pledging to bring back manufacturing jobs that have been lost. In a few Saturday morning tweets, Trump cited low home ownership and long-term unemployment, saying: “We will bring back the American dream!”
After heated primary battles in both parties, the general election map may quickly shrink to these struggling communities across the industrial Midwest. On Monday, Trump is scheduled to visit Harrisburg, Pa., where Clinton campaigned Friday evening, and Columbus, Ohio.
On the bus tour, Clinton highlighted companies that exemplify the successful manufacturing and technology enterprise she thinks can be replicated.
In addition to Johnstown, she visited K’NEX, a toy manufacturer in Hatfield that provides job training to its 200 employees. The campaign also told reporters that buses it contracted were manufactured in Pembina, N.D., while a company in Nashville printed and installed the campaign insignia.
By contrast, a series of speakers at the Democratic convention highlighted the fact that Trump’s ties are made in China, shirts in Bangladesh and furniture in Turkey.
"Donald Trump says he wants to make America great again, well he can start by actually making things in America,” Clinton said in Johnstown. She also said Trump has hired "union-busting" firms to avoid paying employees higher wages.
On Friday night in Harrisburg, Clinton's bus drove through a blighted neighborhood with boarded-up homes before ending at a downtown market where she cited an analysis estimating her economic proposals could create more than 10 million jobs in her first term. She later met in private with the state’s AFL-CIO president.
While polling averages show Trump and Clinton in a dead heat in Ohio, she has built a lead over him in Pennsylvania, according to recent surveys.
A Suffolk University poll released in the middle of the Democratic convention gave Clinton a 9-point lead over Trump. .