Can Democrats win back the Obama-Trump voter? This race is the test.
CHESTER, ILL. -- He is a top Democratic recruit, a man party officials have eyed for years and who is now running in one of the most competitive districts in the country. And on a Thursday night in late May, he stood before a room of irate Democrats, defending Donald Trump.
“Let me say this in response a little bit: I think there’s a lot of anger in the country,” Brendan Kelly told the gaggle of grizzled attendees here in southern Illinois’ 12th congressional district, as anti-Trump barbs began to fly.
The town hall gathering, held in a fluorescent-lit, wood-paneled meeting room where a Bud Light-emblazoned clock kept the time, was supposed to be about Social Security, pensions and Medicare. And for awhile, it was. But then the Trump-bashing began from the audience: “No one is a bigger liar in the country than the President or Sarah Sanders.” Trump is “an immoral, draft-dodging punk.”
At first, Kelly, a burly Navy veteran and current state’s attorney, tried to engage, aware that the insults represented a minority viewpoint in this district that backed Trump by 15 percentage points: “I’m running in a district that voted for President Trump, and also for [Democratic Sen.] Tammy Duckworth overwhelmingly. The same people. Why do you think that is?”
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