Trump backers applaud Warren in heart of MAGA country

[riversedge]

Link to tweet

Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks at the Kermit Fire & Rescue Headquarters Station on Friday in Kermit, West Virginia. | Craig

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



Trump backers applaud Warren in heart of MAGA country
The liberal firebrand draws nods and even a few cheers on a trip through rural West Virginia.

By ALEX THOMPSON

05/11/2019 04:46 PM EDT

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.

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But Warren didn’t come to rural West Virginia primarily in search of votes. The tiny state likely won’t decide the nomination, and is all but certain to back Trump in the general election.

Instead, Warren was here to try to send a message that she’s serious about tackling the problems of remote communities like this one.

The “opioid war” is a medical problem rather than a behavioral or law enforcement one, Warren argued. Her plan is modeled on the government’s response in 1990 to the HIV/AIDS crisis, as she explained in a Medium post earlier this week................................

[Demit]

1. She really connects with people.

They can tell she's genuine.

[ms liberty]

2. This should be in the Democratic Primaries forum

But I am very happy to see it....she is currently my 1st choice. She has the ideas and plans, and the experience and knowledge to make things happen.

[ancianita]

5. Agree. This shows real outreach.

[malaise]

3. The Con will regret the day he made her a national figure

[tblue37]

4. Go girl! nt

[notinkansas]

6. This is really heartening

So often we feel that we can't reach trump supporters with logic and reason and facts. Warren shows that at least some of them are reachable.

I think we all needed that.

[Honeycombe8]

7. Really? Well, that's news.

But I wonder about rallying in a place that won't vote for her, when she's running for President. ???

Still, it shows that people may be looking for an outlier. Something different.

[left-of-center2012]

8. She needs to win the Democratic primaries

Do Trump voters vote in Democratic primaries?

[fescuerescue]

9. That's kinda weird that they are still wearing their Trump gear

But Im glad that they are listening.

[pdsimdars]

10. Everyone wants the same things. When you talk about those things it unites. Powerful.

[Ponietz]

11. Good on Politico for the focus and framing of the article

Looks like her unequivocal support for impeachment wasn’t an issue with those voters.

[FakeNoose]

12. This is the kind of outreach that all of us Democrats need to do

Elizabeth Warren is an amazing speaker who can get in touch with people where they live. It's not all about money and numbers, these people need help the old-fashioned way. We Democrats used to know how to do that, starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt. We used to be good at reaching out to people, because nobody else was willing.

Many people mistook Chump as somebody who cared and who was coming to help them. Well they're finding out the sad and disappointing truth now. Chump won't help anybody and he's only interested in saving his own butt.

Good on you, Elizabeth Warren!

[catbyte]

13. I'd like to know just how they think the orange asshole "revitalized the area economically."

[Mersky]

14. Kermit, not the frog, received 9 million opioid pills for its 400 residents

Over two years... That's 30 pills a day, per person, everyday, for two years at one pharmacy. That is insane.

Even if you more than double the number of people shopping at that one store to 1,000 people, that comes to roughly 12 pills per person daily for two years. Bananas for numbers.

Was floored when I first heard of this on Chris Hayes, then later watched an episode of Vice regarding the flood of opioids into West Virginia.

I think it's real brilliance that Warren went there, because from what I've seen, people in rural areas hold a lot of resentment towards feeling left out of all the excitement and options that cities provide going into the modern era. In this case, government at all levels has failed the people of West Virginia. Including them in the conversation of how democrat ideas apply to them is part of how to diffuse the power of the vacuum of real ideas that is trumpism. I'm betting this can be done without compromising egalitarian, economic, and environmental principles. Is just my perspective from being blue in a purple family in Texas.

https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/9-million-painkillers-shipped-to-tiny-west-virginia-town