#RESISTANCE: Why Trump signs are mushrooming across the US a year after 2020 election.
When Drew and Marlene Proctor left their Jersey Shore, Pa., home to take their three-week trip across the back roads of the country for their honeymoon, they relished different sightings all along their journey.
But one thing remained constant no matter what state, city, town or village they passed through, Drew said, “and that was the amount of Trump signs we saw everywhere.”
“And I mean everywhere,” he added for emphasis. “They were in wealthy suburban neighborhoods, blue-collar middle class towns. You would see them in farm fields and painted on the sides of businesses. Most of them were either large flags, although plenty of them were hand-painted homemade signs too.”
In total, the couple traveled through 12 states and logged more than 5,000 miles on their sojourn. I spoke with both Proctors last month as they sat outside a diner, enjoying a burger near Mt. Rushmore in Keystone, SD. As if on cue, a motorcyclist drove by with a Trump flag billowing out the back.
Drew, 47, said people who didn’t vote for Trump and regularly fly over these states might be surprised or even shocked by the show of support for the former president who lost to Joe Biden last fall. . . .
Strategists and reporters often dismiss political signs as an unreliable way to gauge enthusiasm for a candidate. Back in 2016, as Trump signs abounded across America, experts insisted that polls predicting a Hillary Clinton victory were a better indicator of the result. And yet the Democrat lost to the unconventional Republican in a massive upset.
“Putting those signs up was their way of saying this is the new resistance,” said Youngstown State University political scientist Paul Sracic. “We saw them in places that historically supported Democrats, like here in Trumbull and Mahoning counties, two of the bluest counties in Ohio, as well as blue counties in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.”
Yep. Like the “Fuck Joe Biden” chants at college football games, these are a way for the excluded and dispossessed to make their feelings known.