Ms. MAYNARD: Well, the Manufacturing Belt has taken really a difficult hit.
Conservatism in Indiana stretches from the south, which has a rural and religious character similar to nearby Kentucky's, to the northern manufacturing belt, full of blue-collar workers who take a leftish stance on trade and workplace issues but tend to be socially conservative.
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This is great news for website designers, Internet entrepreneurs, registered nurses, and masseuses in California, but grim tidings for traditional metal bashers in the rust belt manufacturing states like Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio.
Ohioans have long had a soft spot for heavy metal, which became more popular when the U.S. Rust Belt lost its manufacturing clout in the 1980s, scholars say.
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And the glad tidings in manufacturing have not touched all the Rust Belt cities: Camden, N.
In the Rust Belt, the loss of manufacturing jobs has slowed economic growth and with it the housing market.
Despite conventional wisdom, some small Rust Belt cities, centered around manufacturing, are actually weathering the anemic recovery fairly well.
Earlier this week, Obama released a spot about the closing of a Pennsylvania factory, the latest in a series of ads blaming McCain for the loss of "Rust Belt" jobs by pointing to the disappearing manufacturing base in that state, Ohio and Michigan.
The demise of domestic manufacturing looms large in the American consciousness, with lost jobs and emptying Rust Belt towns a frequent political sawhorse.
An example is e-Chemicals, which brokers 55-gallon drums of manufacturing chemicals between suppliers like DuPont and those thousands of heavy manufacturers dotting the Rust Belt. n Connecting "wide-thin" markets.
Whatever the practical challenges of trying to renegotiate Nafta, or, indeed, the truth of its negative impact on the US economy, criticism of free trade seems to strike a particular chord in blue collar, Rust Belt states, such as Pennsylvania and Ohio, which have been shedding manufacturing jobs over the past few years.
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