welcome to usaapay.com

2020-

2020-10-26 d
ELECTION COUNTDOWN - IV

The big Trump rallies you don't see

WASHINGTON, Pennsylvania — "I can't believe there aren't any newspeople here," said Linda of Greene County, Pennsylvania, as she stood among hundreds of cars and pickup trucks idling in long parallel lines in a vast big-box-store parking lot Saturday, waiting to join the Interstate 70 Trump Train. Indeed, although there were carloads of Trump supporters as far as one could see, and many more on the way from Ohio and West Virginia, and this enormous political event was happening less than two weeks before the presidential election, as far as I could tell, I was the only newsperson there.

It was the biggest political rally no one saw. And gatherings like it have been happening for months in some of the places President Trump needs most to win if he is to be reelected. And, remarkably, the rallies are not the work of the Trump campaign. The road rally in Washington, Pennsylvania, was organized and staged by local Trump supporters, linked together largely by Facebook, who want to show that enthusiasm for the president in western Pennsylvania and surrounding areas is not just strong but stronger than it was when Trump eked out a victory in Pennsylvania in 2016. If Trump wins this critical state, it will owe in significant part to this organic movement and the energetic organizers who have nothing to do with his campaign.

Saturday's rally started in St. Clairsville, Ohio, in the parking lot of a store called Oil & Gas Safety Supply. After hundreds of cars, probably the majority were pickup trucks, lined up there, they became a rolling rally headed east on I-70 to Wheeling, West Virginia, about 12 miles away. There, hundreds more cars were waiting to join, and the much bigger rally returned to the freeway for the 30-mile drive to Washington. That's where Linda and several hundred more people were waiting in the parking lot of the other branch of Oil & Gas Safety Supply. The cars from Ohio and West Virginia exited off the interstate, rolled past the Home Depot, then past Oil & Gas, and then, when the last car had passed, the Washington cars joined it, making one massive line of vehicles heading back to St. Clairsville.

There were so many cars — organizers estimated the number to be 2,000, many of them with whole families inside — that it took a very long time to pass through the lot. As that happened, people honked and waved American flags, and Trump flags, too, and talked about why they think it is critical for the president to be reelected.

"We're here because we believe he is the only way we're going to have an economy in the future," said Sherri from Claysville. "You can have a pandemic and distance and be safe and not shut the economy down." The car rallies themselves are an answer to the problem of campaigning amid a coronavirus pandemic — what could be safer than thousands of people gathered, but all inside their cars?

Maria, from Washington, described herself as a lifelong Democrat who turned Republican when Trump ran in 2016. She and a lot of her family members voted for Barack Obama twice, she said. Now, looking around, she marveled that "the enthusiasm for Trump is unreal." But one person wasn't there — Maria's husband, who was at work in a coal mine in Waynesburg, where he has been a miner for 20 years.

It was no surprise that a crowd in Washington, located in the massive Marcellus Shale oil and gas range, would include a lot of people involved in the energy industry. "We're a big oil and gas family," said Kristie from Washington. "We're living the American dream because of the oil and gas industry." "Born and raised in it," added her husband Zane, whose ancestors had drilled some of the first oil wells in McKean County, Pennsylvania. Now, Kristie added, "We're all about fracking."

"Check out my license plate," said one man out his window as I walked by. I looked at the back of his car, and the plate said FRAC-IT. "All in, buddy," he shouted.

Several other people said they either worked directly in the energy industry or one of the many businesses that support and benefit from it. When I asked if people were connected to the energy industry, my favorite answer came from Dan from Greene County, who said, "Yes, I am connected to the energy industry, because I've got electricity and gas in my house." Point made. We all have a connection to the energy industry. It's just more obvious to the people living in western Pennsylvania.

They feel so strongly about Trump because they know he has supported their industry while Obama and his vice president, Joe Biden, wanted to cripple and ultimately eliminate it. They know Trump has not miraculously saved the energy industry in Pennsylvania. They didn't expect that he would. Their calculus was much more basic: In 2016, they voted for the candidate who would stop trying to kill the industry that supports 322,000 jobs in Pennsylvania, according to an energy industry estimate. (read more)

______________________

Permission is hereby granted to any and all to copy and paste any entry on this page and convey it electronically along with its URL,
______________________