Print Column: Trump Crumpled up Heitkamp’s Campaign Narrative and Threw It in the Garbage
FILE -- Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-S.D.) during a Senate hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 12, 2018. Heitkamp is one of three Democrats who are up for reelection in states President Donald Trump carried and voted to confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch. (Tom Brenner/The New York Times)
MINOT N.D. — If Senator Heidi Heitkamp could have walked out on the stage with President Donald Trump in Fargo she would have.
I can say this because I pay attention to her campaign.
Her almost ubiquitous campaign ads claim endlessly that she votes with President Trump “most of the time.”
Heitkamp’s staff was even on Twitter during the address touting an Associated Press fact check which found that claim about a pro-Trump voting record accurate.
Speaking of Twitter, the liberal commentators and activists who support Heitkamp took to social media during the address and mocked Trump and the crowd of North Dakotans who assembled to cheer him on.
Those folks, some of whom you listen to on the radio and read in the newspaper, described through a thick cloud of smug a crowd of drooling rubes working themselves into a lather over the ranting of a clown.
They don’t get it.
The simple reality is Heitkamp needs that crowd.
Heitkamp can’t win in North Dakota without Republican support.
