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Democratic Rep Gets Booed and Heckled by Constituents While Announcing Impeachment Support

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If this is the sound that swing district Democrats are hearing now, they better be ready to get some really bad news come November.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a freshman Democrat who won a midterm seat in a Michigan congressional district President Donald Trump carried in 2016, stood before her constituents Monday to try to explain why she now wants to oust the same president many of them voted for.

It didn’t go well.

Of course, all members of Congress should expect to catch an earful from their constituents at public meetings — and Slotkin has certainly faced this kind of thing before. The essence of American democracy is for office-holders to be accountable to the people they represent.

But Slotkin’s experience is important to take into account. As USA Today noted, she is one of 31 Democrats in the House who were elected in districts that backed Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

It was their victories that gave Democrats control of the lower house and the power to mount the current impeachment drive. That effort is ostensibly driven by Trump’s dealings with Ukraine but is really just a partisan attack on the man who defeated Hillary Clinton three years ago.

As Michigan’s Rep. Rashida Tlaib — like Slotkin, a freshman Democrat — memorably declared on her very first day in office on Jan. 3, “we’re going to go in there and impeach the mother—er.”

Do you think Democrats like Slotkin will be punished by voters in November?

Well, impeaching is what they’re doing, and Democrats like Slotkin are stuck trying to convince voters there really is a good reason to throw out the man they chose to be president.

Clearly, as NBC News reported, quite a few who attended Slotkin’s meeting in Rochester, Michigan, on Monday weren’t ready to buy it.

And on social media, the reaction was pretty negative too.

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Democrats and the national media are likely to dismiss scenes like this. Of course, those who are discontented are more likely to show up for a meeting with a government figure than those who are happy.

And if Slotkin won an election in the first place, she must have some popularity with her voters, right?

That’s true. But midterm election turnout isn’t the same as general election turnout.

And when the 2020 vote rolls around, Democrats like Slotkin aren’t just going to be trying to win over the electorate of 2018, when liberals were energized nationwide by their loathing of Trump. They’re going to have to face many of the same voters who actually put Trump in office but might not have turned out for the 2018 midterm.

That group is not going to be happy with the party that did everything in its power to overturn the result of that 2016 vote.

Slotkin heard from those voters at that meeting on Monday. Other vulnerable Democrats will likely be hearing from them at the polls on Nov. 3 next year.

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Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
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American




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