RUST BELT BLUES
ON A STORMY MORNING in June, about a dozen union leaders dutifully filed into the back of the Yankee Kitchen restaurant, a homestyle diner outside Youngstown, Ohio, to come up with a strategy for defeating Donald Trump.
“You all know what happened in the primary, and that’s why I’ve called you all together,” David Betras, the local Democratic Party chairman, said as the men (and a couple of women) seated around several tables nodded. In March, Trump had lost the Ohio Republican primary to Gov. John Kasich, but here in Mahoning County he’d won by double digits. More than 6,000 Democrats and 21,000 independents had cast ballots in the Republican primary, which meant they were now all registered Republicans under Ohio’s election laws. Among the deserters were 18 local Democratic Party officials.
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