T-rump backers applaud Elizabeth Warren in heart of MAGA country

[DesertRat]

KERMIT, W. Va. — It was a startling spectacle in the heart of Trump country: At least a dozen supporters of the president — some wearing MAGA stickers — nodding their heads, at times even clapping, for liberal firebrand Elizabeth Warren.

The sighting alone of a Democratic presidential candidate in this town of fewer than 400 people — in a county where more than four in five voters cast their ballot for Trump in 2016 — was unusual. Warren’s team was apprehensive about how she’d be received.

About 150 people gathered at the Kermit Fire & Rescue Headquarters Station to hear the Massachusetts senator and former Harvard professor talk about what she wants to do to fight the opioid epidemic. Trump-supporting college students in baggy t-shirts, housewives in pearls, and the fire chief dressed in uniform joined liberal retirees wearing rainbow “Persist” shirts and teachers with six-figure student loan debt.

Kermit is one of the epicenters of the opioid addiction epidemic. The toll is visible. The community center is shuttered. Fire trucks are decades old. When Warren asked people at the beginning of the event to raise their hands if they knew somebody who’s been “caught in the grips of addiction,” most hands went up.

“That’s why I’m here today,” she said.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/11/warren-west-virginia-2020-1317611

[MaryMagdaline]

1. Kudos to Warren for going into the lion's den

[robbedvoter]

2. That's how you do it. Not legitimize 🦊 at ad buy time

and in exchange, they pack the audience with your supporters only.

[left-of-center2012]

3. Not sure Trump voters support Warren is a good thing

[Autumn]

5. It was a good thing when some of them supported Obama. nt

[crazytown]

6. She didn't get votes.

She went down to find out for herself what the opioid crisis looked like on the frontlines frontlines. Kermit is a town of 400 people, and nine million OxyContin prescriptions.

[DENVERPOPS]

15. In a just country

In a just country, they would sentence the Dr.'s that handed out the scripts to prison sentences. Say 15-20 years, and make them be Dr.s in the prison infirmaries........

Most of the time, they suspend his/her license in the state he/she was found guilty and don't give them any prison time. The Dr's just uproot and go to a different state, get licensed in the new state, and it is as if they never did anything wrong......

[milestogo]

7. Any voter supporting Elizabeth Warren is a good thing.

There couldn't be anyone more opposite to Trump than Warren. If people have seen the error of their ways, that's a good thing.

[DesertRat]

11. +1

[Indygram]

8. By showing up, a candidate shows they actually care

That is often all it takes to open minds to a better option. Don't adjust the message, don't cater to or pander...just show up, say what you stand for and answer questions. It won't change every mind, but it WILL win over enough to make a difference. This is especially true in states that are close enough to flip. It's how Beto came so close to beating Cruz. If that were a nationwide race he would have won. The gerrymandering is so bad that it's a miracle he came as close as he did.

[ancianita]

9. Exactly. Just showing up and liking who they talk to works.

[mopinko]

14. you cant gerrymander a statewide race. but

you are right about how well it works to show up.
the world is run by the people who show up.- howard dean.

[crazytown]

4. "A lot of people told me,'You're in the reddest of the red here,'

Last edited Sun May 12, 2019, 12:33 PM - Edit history (1)

Warren said ‘But I like being here’

[Ohiogal]

10. She is awesome, IMO

She dares to go where Trump supporters are in the vast majority. She doesn't sit there and knock Trump nor does she pander or talk down to those folks. She listens to their problems and talks to them about her policies. Sometimes I think when candidates rent a huge arena and talk to thousands of people at one time, it's just not personal and you can't relate to that. I love what Liz Warren is doing here with her small town small group visits.

[appalachiablue]

16. Mother Warren is the real McCoy. Mingo has been voting extreme rt. crazy

but has a progressive and Dem. history along with adjacent Logan County and much of WV in the modern past. Because of the mining industry in Mingo and SW WV, union organizing began there in the early 1900s and became 'Bloody' with the largest ever US labor uprising, 'The Battle of Blair Mt.' in 1921 followed by the Matewan Massacre of pro-union Sheriff Sid Hatfield. Warren kicked off her 2020 campaign in Lawrence, Mass., location of one of the most important labor strikes in American history, the 1912 Bread & Roses textile workers movement.

Wiki, Mingo County Politics. The youngest of West Virginia’s 55 counties, Mingo was created entirely from powerfully secessionist Logan County. Consequently, for the 110 years following its creation, Mingo County was powerfully Democratic, voting for Walter Mondale – who came within 3,819 votes of losing all 50 states – by a two-to-one margin in 1984, and voting Republican only for William Howard Taft in 1908, Herbert Hoover in 1928 due to powerful anti-Catholic sentiment against Al Smith, and Richard Nixon against the left-wing George McGovern in 1972.

Like all of West Virginia, since 2000 a combination of declining unionization and differences with the Democratic Party’s liberal views on social issues has produced a dramatic swing to the Republican Party. In 2016, this historically heavily Democratic county voted only eight percentage points less Republican than historically Unionist and rock-ribbed GOP Grant County. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mingo_County,_West_Virginia

[crazytown]

17. The Battle of Blair Mountain

That’s when America found out what Harding’s ‘Return to Normalcy’ meant: US Aircraft in the shy, and Federal Troops on the ground: the solidarity of the dollar.

For reasons that don’t make much sense, I’ve always felt some connection between the defeats in Appalachia, and the defeated in ‘the valley of ashes’ in Gatsby

[appalachiablue]

18. A wild, intense decade filled with pleasure, then pain for plenty.

New technologies, the Jazz Age, motion pictures, radio, airplanes, motorcars, Prohibition, stock speculation, building boom, Bolshevism with the First Red Scare and all that it involved.

What a complex period. The Gatsby ashes is quite apt, very close to episodes in central Appalachia.

[monmouth4]

12. I liked when she read some of the notes people pressed into her hands as they were leaving. I

feel badly for these people but hope they are starting to wake up. Elizabeth is wonderful and in my top 3.

[ananda]

13. Good!

I like Warren.