EVANSVILLE, Ind.—Many political pundits are predicting that the Democrats will take back the House during this year’s midterm election, and history also doesn’t smile upon the president’s party to win.
However, this is the first midterm election since those same forecasters got it so wrong in 2016 with then-candidate Donald Trump. Suffice it to say, anything goes at this point.
Trump, with the help of his home state running mate, Mike Pence, handily cinched Indiana’s 11 electoral votes in 2016 by winning 56.9 percent of the popular vote.
The Republican Party also holds seven of the state’s nine congressional seats. However, the Senate seat up for election is held by Democrat Sen. Joe Donnelly, and Trump supporters are looking to flip it to Republican businessman Mike Braun in November.
‘Most Critical’
Dale Brown, 58, said the upcoming midterms are the most critical in his lifetime.He doesn’t think Democrats will take the House because they’re “too negative on everything.”
“They’re using the negative approach, and that don’t work,” Brown said. “They don’t have no solutions to any of their problems or anything—everything’s negative, and people get tired of that negative stuff all the time.”
Brown said he sees revitalization all over the country with his job as a truck driver: “it’s just gangbusters right now.”
He’s an owner-operator leased to freight company Landstar and hauls machinery and other goods on his flatbed.
“About three months after Trump got in there, about April, May of 2017, it started breaking loose. It broke loose and it’s just been snowballing, and just been getting better and better every month,” Brown said.
“Business has busted open, spending money, updating equipment, hiring new people—I mean, it’s unbelievable. And I run all over the United States, and I see it firsthand. It’s incredible.”
Brown is convinced that if the Democrats take the House, the economy will tank. “Business will stop dead in their tracks, they‘ll quit spending, and it’ll just be a free fall. It will be terrible.”
But, he predicts a super economy if the GOP takes more of the House and holds the Senate, especially with the new trade deals currently being inked.
“It’s like what the president says, ‘You ain’t seen anything yet,’” Brown said.
Democrats need a net gain of 23 seats to win control of the House.
Job Recovery
Allyson Hall, 53, said these midterms are more important than usual, especially for control of the House.“Laws aren’t being passed quickly, even with the Republicans having the majority, but if you get more of the Democrats in there, it’s just going to make it that much worse, and it’s going to be four years down the drain,” Hall said.
Hall’s husband, a coal miner, was set to meet Trump before the rally. The resurgence of the coal industry and job recovery are the top reasons she supports Trump.
“I love where the stock market, all that’s going. It’s making a big difference on our 401(k),” she said. “All of a sudden, we’re seeing something out of that, where it wasn’t before.”
She supports voter ID laws, which require voters to show photo identification to vote.
‘Biggest Midterm Ever’
Lynne Gilbertson was taken aback when she heard her husband say he'd vote for Trump in 2020.“Let me tell you this, I hope I vote for Trump in 2020, because if I do, that means things are going good,” Mark Gilbertson said. “I'll still wait, but as of right now, I would say yes.”
Both of the Gilbertsons voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. “I wanted a woman for president and I wanted a liberal Supreme Court,” Mark said. He sees the Nov. 6 elections as the “biggest midterm ever” and thinks the Democrats will take the House and the Senate.
Lynne is not a Trump supporter, but traveled the 150 miles from Nashville, Tennessee, to “see the office, not the man.”
She gives the presidency a “C-minus” rating thus far, and wishes Trump would ”stop the negative tweeting and all the negative pointing of fingers.”
“We need to be proper and polite to each other,” she said.
‘Haven’t Done Anything’
Andrew Weber, 42, said the most important issues to him are national security and Second Amendment rights—“which help support your First Amendment rights.”“If you start getting rid of your rights, when will it end?” he said.
Weber, a manufacturing supervisor at Futaba, a locally owned company that supplies parts for Toyota vehicles, said he doubts Democrats will take the House.
“They haven’t done anything for the people. They say a lot, but don’t do anything,” he said. He thinks more Republicans are energized to vote in these midterms.
“The same reason why Trump was voted [in]—everyone’s sick of the way the country’s been going,” he said. “The people who have been in career offices, they don’t listen, and everybody’s coming out of the woodwork and voting, and they’re changing things.”
‘Proud of Our Freedom’
Ivy Jackson, 20, is new to politics and plans to vote in the midterms. She fully supports Trump.“A lot of people are mad that he’s president because he’s rich, and he has everything he wants, but to me, that’s good,” she said. “He has everything he needs, so now he’s giving us what we need.”
Ivy’s mother, Amanda Jackson, said she lined up for hours in April 2016 when then-candidate Trump came to speak at the same venue—but she didn’t get in. This time, she is one of about 11,000 ticket holders and was excited about being guaranteed entry.
She’s a big Trump supporter and said she likes his message, which, to her is, “getting this country back to where it used to be a long time ago, when we were proud to be a country, we were proud of ourselves, we were proud of our freedom,” she said.
“Yes, we are a nation built on immigrants, but all those immigrants came over here the right way—legally. … Immigrants are great, everybody should have the opportunity to come here, just come here properly.”
Amanda said this midterm is as important as every election.
“You don’t have a voice unless you give yourself a voice, and by voting, you give yourself that voice,” she said.
She predicts the House race could go either way, but hopes Democrats don’t win control.
“We need a balance obviously, on both sides, but to me, Democrats are just too liberal now,” she said. “Everybody says Democrats are for the poor, and Republicans are for the rich, but to me, they’re all for the rich, they’re all for each other.
‘For the Best of the Country’
Coal miner Taylor Duzan laughed when asked if he voted for Trump in 2016.“Yes, ma'am. There ain’t no way I wouldn’t have,” he said.
He’s a second-generation coal miner, and says the industry has turned around under Trump.
“It got really scary there for a while. Probably at the end of Obama’s second term, things got really shaky,” Duzan said. He works for Peabody Energy, one of the largest coal companies in the United States. The company went into Chapter 11 in April 2016 and emerged a year later, two months after Trump took office.
“It was like the lights got flipped a different way, and we started hiring again, and production has been full bore,” Duzan said.
Duzan said he stopped voting Democrat in the early 2000s and fully supports Trump’s agenda. He plans to vote in the midterms and hopes Democrats don’t take the House.
‘The Silent Majority’
Greg Collins, 47, works at the local Toyota plant. He thinks predictions about Democrats taking control of the House are wrong.He thinks “the silent majority” will win out again, much like what happened in the 2016 presidential election.
Collins said he voted for Trump in the primaries and general elections, with the economy and national security at the top of his issue list.
He attended the rally with his wife, Hannah, “to show support for the president, like you’re supposed to.”
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