One Wisconsin Man Not Moved by the Recent Job Numbers
Monday, June 8th, 2020 -- 9:39 AM
(AP) -At the end of one of his most turbulent weeks in office, the President was eager on Friday to boast of a better than expected jobs report to argue the country is poised for a booming recovery. Benjamin Lund was not moved.The 45-year-old Milwaukee man is a longtime Republican who was raised in a conservative family in the political battleground of Wisconsin. At the onset of 2020, he had little doubt that he would support the President’s reelection. Then the pandemic hit and Lund lost his restaurant job. A processing backlog meant he went two months without unemployment benefits. He later watched with dismay the President’s hard-line response to the police killing of George Floyd and the civil unrest that followed. Lund, who is white, now plans to vote a straight Democratic ticket and rejects any effort by the President to put a “silver lining” on the nation’s pain. “The people living the economic reality of what’s soon to be a recession, it’s a very different set of numbers,” Lund said. “It’s almost, in a sense, disrespectful to try and put a positive spin on where we are as a nation right now.” That’s a stinging warning sign for the President in a state that’s crucial to his bid to keep the White House. Though the president would rather voters focus on an unemployment situation that’s less catastrophic than some economists predicted, the President’s whipsaw ways are colliding with a pandemic and civil unrest of a scale the country has not seen since the 1960s.
With five months until the election, the President has time to solidify his standing. But some Republicans fear voters are simply worn out by the President. “People are just so disgusted with how things are,” said Republican strategist Terry Sullivan, who managed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign. “Even the most die-hard Trump supporters are exhausted. The President is leading a nation grappling with unemployment rates not seen since the Great Depression. More than 1,000 Americans are still dying each day from COVID-19. Millions have taken to the streets to fight for racial justice. And the National Guard was on the ground this week to help quell the social unrest, rioting and related violence. Just 21% of voters believe the United States is on the right track, Monmouth University found in a poll released this week that marked a seven-year low.
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