While Kristi Noem capitulates to the Trumpist nihilism that equates Nazis and moral patriots, the Washington Post notices South Dakota women working against Trumpism. Susan Kroger, co-organizer of LEAD South Dakota, says her group is only getting stronger:
Most surprisingly, Kroger said, some of her newest members are disappointed Trump voters. The uncertainty over health-care policy has become a top issue driving first-time activists to join their ranks, Kroger and other grass-roots organizers said.
“The exciting thing about our events is that every time we hold one, I always ask ‘Who here is new?’ and about half the people raise their hand,” said Kroger, co-chair of LEAD South Dakota, an abbreviation for Leaders Engaged and Determined. “I’ve heard from a few women who voted for Trump and have since had a change of heart” [Rhonda Colvin, “Resistance Efforts Are Taking Root in Pro-Trump Country—and Women Are Leading the Charge,” Washington Post, 2017.08.14].
But South Dakota went 61%-plus for the Manhattan mogul’s clever if misrepresentative anti-urban crying for forgotten rural America. How can an anti-Trump movement get traction in the rural Midwest?
Kelly Sullivan, a 30-year-old restaurant server in Sioux Falls and member of LEAD, noted that rural America has long been politically diverse, but the recent surge of political activism has made it more noticeable.
“People like us in smaller places and people that are in the rural communities, we’re just the same as the big city slickers,” Sullivan said of her fellow rural activists. “The feeling that we’re not being represented, or the feeling that the current administration is doing things that we disagree with, we’re on the same page as the people who are in the big cities” [Colvin, 2017.08.14].
Colvin reports that Sullivan is one of 75 candidates with whom LEAD South Dakota is working. 75 anti-Trump candidates, just in South Dakota. Gallup polling be jiggered—plenty of South Dakotans are fed up with Trump, and LEAD SD may be fielding a whole crop of candidates who are willing to explain why.
Update 11:04 CDT: The SDGOP spin blog notices this threat to Trumpist supremacy, but only as an excuse to razz the South Dakota Democratic Party.