Think of this as Volume 16, Number 49 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.
Following any political realignment there is often a re-evaluation of a major sector in American business. It's not the heart of the losing side that's attacked, it's usually something on the periphery that represents something larger.
In the 1970s this was Detroit. GM and Chrysler and Ford were all symbols of the manufacturing era, the post-War boom in which factories were where wealth came from. The attacks that began with Ralph Nader in the 1960s accelerated during this period until the industry became symbolic of what was obsolete about America. The movement of production, first to Japan, then to Korea, and eventually back to the American South, was also symbolic of the “Rust Belt – Sun Belt” attitude that was so much a part of the Nixon era.