McCaskill launches rural Missouri town hall meetings in bid to stake out the middle
Source: STL Post Dispatch
"A year out from what could be the toughest election fight of her life, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., sought to burnish her centrist credentials Friday, recounting to a crowd in this small town her efforts at bipartisan legislation in Washington, slamming over-regulation by the government and stressing that she doesnt think America can afford a Bernie Sanders-style single-payer national health care system.
McCaskill will seek next year her third Senate term in a state that has moved sharply to the right since she first took office. Targeted as one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the nation, she is using the August Senate recess to visit more than two dozen mostly rural communities around the state to hammer home her long-cultivated political persona as a moderate with a personal history that started in what is now solid red rural Missouri.
Im doing these in places where Im not that popular, McCaskill told about 80 people who gathered for a town hall meeting with her at the Sullivan Senior Center in this town of about 7,000 some 65 miles southwest of St. Louis. I really think its important that I go places and hear from people who dont necessarily agree with me.
But in fact, the audience most of them older adults who showed up for the open event appeared to be, if anything, to McCaskills left on several issues particularly the issue of President Donald Trump."
Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/mccaskill-launches-rural-missouri-town-hall-meetings-in-bid-to/article_bc125322-1e94-56dc-b548-ff577bb3fb3b.html
SunSeeker
(51,696 posts)She knows not to get baited into a statement that might turn off her centrist constituents.
She also knows who comes out to vote in midterms: older and more conservative voters.
No Vested Interest
(5,167 posts)Somehow, she's been able to hold off the enemy.
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)... maybe I'm mis-remembering. Perhaps it was a different centrist Democrat in a conservative area that the far left wanted to primary.
In any case, I too, believe that she'll be fine... and I wish her all the luck in the world. I remember seeing her on the Rachel Maddow Show (back in the day) and I liked her style.
BumRushDaShow
(129,441 posts)Well then THAT is good news, being that this was in a purported red rural area.
bucolic_frolic
(43,281 posts)It will motivate any luke warm base though
SWBTATTReg
(22,166 posts)GaryCnf
(1,399 posts)I beg those of you white folks who call yourself part of the base of our party to do more than you ever thought you could to get her elected. She needs YOUR support more than you can even imagine. She needs YOUR voices more than you can imagine. More than any other race in the country, this one will be determined by whether we can actually win in the suburbs with centrist messaging.
We will not win based on huge turnouts in St. Louis and Kansas City. Yes, Senator McCaskill will get 90% and more of our votes and I look like I will be maxing out my contributions to help, but her support in our community is paper thin and turnout in urban areas will be even worse, way worse, than it was in 2016.
Claire McCaskill was a strong supporter of Robert McCulloch, the Ferguson prosecutor. She denigrated RIGHTEOUS community anger after Michael Brown's murder by calling everyone who was not "peaceful" in the face of open aggression by law enforcement an "outside agitator (no whistle there)" She refused to condemn the grand jury whitewash.
She is strong for the most part on the Democratic issues that play well in the suburbs . . . gun control, choice, voting, education, gender equality and we need to keep her in the Senate at all costs.
But it won't come on the backs of St. Louis and Kansas City.
Ferguson remembers
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)She will support most Democratic Party issues, unlike any Republican.
Hope she wins.
GaryCnf
(1,399 posts)She desperately needs white folks in the suburbs to come through and they have stabbed us in the back for decades.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)GaryCnf
(1,399 posts)I guess it's time to get to work!
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)or and Alt-Right Terrorist.
I'll take Claire any day (no left winger is going to win in the state).
So it's either the centrist McCaskill or a Neo-Nazi apologist.