A teeny tiny sample of what is likely a larger trend in the red state of Ohio:
Sipping tea from beer mugs with his coworkers, Kyle Bos listed the ways his life is changing.
Bos has two daughters, with a third due in January. At the grocery store, five items cost as much as a full cart once did. And on Wednesday, Bos and nearly 1,400 other people were laid off from their jobs at what had been the Navistar truck factory in southwestern Ohio.
The layoffs — occurring just three days before Donald Trump's rally on Saturday at a nearby high school — were large enough to basically erase an entire year of job growth in the greater Dayton, Ohio area. And they are one reason why Bos, 30, plans to spend the final weeks before the November election canvassing votes for Democrats.
Asked how many times he voted for Trump, Bos held up three tattooed fingers. But he said he's done with the president.
"Something has to change politically in this country," said Bos, a member of the United Auto Workers who identifies as a centrist... [Ed.: if voting for Trump 3 times means you're a "centrist," that word has lost all meaning! But, hey, welcome to reality.]
More:
Kelly Savage-Radich grew up in a Republican-supporting Ohio family and voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. But today the mother of three, who lives in a Montgomery county suburb of Dayton, is facing the prospect of having to sell one of her family's vehicles due to the high cost of gas. Her grocery bill has gone up about $100 a week.
She lays the blame squarely at the Trump administration's door.
"He wants his name on everything," she said. "I'm sorry, but I don't give a shit whose name is on the Kennedy Center."
That wasn't the only matter on her list of grievances – Savage-Radich also brought up the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this year. She said: "The shooting of an American citizen dead in the street, and no one was held accountable? I have two daughters, and I'm trying to teach them all the freedoms this country has, but it feels like our freedoms are being taken. [snip]
"Trump? I think he's a disaster," said a woman who declined to give her name as she stood outside a tattoo parlor in the Old North district, a working-class area north of downtown Dayton. [snip]
"To be honest, I think I'm going to vote Democrat all the way down, for everything. Because I want it not to be this way."
We're grateful for every one of these "centrists"/ Republicans who're finally (often once reality hits them personally) coming to the same conclusion the rest of us came to as we watched the Malignant Fascist descend the golden escalator at Trump Tower back in 2015: He's a disaster.
(Photo: Don Snoresalot / Reuters)
