Yes, You Can Go Home Again — If You’re a White House Correspondent From Elkhart, Indiana

As a past Hoosier, I can confirm that Elkhart has a huge backward & racist streak. The fact that Rogers mentions the Hispanic population as a panacea of sorts is, quite frankly, hilarious. Many racist communities in the Hoosier state harbor a small to sizable Latino community, as they are seen as both "the help" and <insert racist stereotype here>. It is, however, heartbreaking, yet revealing to see that these people ardently refuse to give credit where credit is due. The Obama administration did so much for Elkhart (he lowered unemployment, foreclosure and uninsured healthcare rates) & Indiana as a whole while Indiana cursed Obama's name.

Listen to your very own words, Katie: Your hometown community, albeit "struggling in real time to figure out what values they stand for", are indeed "racist, backward, and on the wrong side of history". By enabling them with your misplaced sympathy, you too are "on the wrong side of history."

It is not "that alone" that it gets them the designation of racist. That isn't out of nowhere. In the 1920s, Indiana was the heart of KKK, not the South and the Klan was strong throughout the midwest through the 1930s. Here is an interesting article about Indiana and racism: https://www.theindychannel.com/longform/the-ku-klux-klan-ran-indiana-onc... 30-40% of Hoosiers were klan members. "More than 250,000 Hoosiers swelled the Klan's ranks – some because they believed in its anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic message, others because being on good terms with the Klan was necessary for their business or political aspirations – making it the largest Klan organization in the country." Sound familiar? What Katie Rogers saw is nothing new and is one of those seeds that lies dormant until there was a little rain by the name of Trump to make it blossom again. So, been there, done that. Rogers' article is filled with longing, but she can't come right out and say why they won't give Obama credit for what he accomplished and they benefited from. She doesn't really say anything that actually reveals anything about where she is from. It's mostly that it was weird to be in her old gym with her former neighbors who are now Trumpsters - who turned on her and others when he told them to. Imagine if your skin was dark or you came from somewhere else, Katie. No one's designating them racists. They are racists. What they aren't is honest.

I grew up less than one hour from Elkhart and know it well. If I were in your shoes Ms. Rogers I would make an attempt to get the truth out to your hometown by communicating with the local news sources. Send them well researched pieces on the economy, health care and immigration, N Korea. (Krugman, Friedman, Kristoff ). Spread the truth. The truth is the only thing that will save us from this bizarre Trump world.

I too grew up in Elkhart. I went to St Thomas, right across the street from Northside Gym. My father described Elkhart as “bankrupt in everything but money”.

Considering credit for reductions in joblessness .... We former high-school band kids still have a soft place in our hearts for Elkhart. All through his tour as our president, Barack Obama's consistent message was that the awful economy was just how things were going to be, and we'd best get used to it. He averaged the worst economic growth since the Civil War, 1.3% per year. Obama was the only president in that time to never see 3% annual GDP growth, the only president to never reach that low goal. Two Republican presidents saw eight percent growth in a single year. The best Democrat in this area was Kennedy, a man FAR too patriotic, religious, and conservative to get anywhere in that party today. BUT, our writer says that her hometown improved under Obama greatly, so there it is.

"My trip home served as a personal and journalistic reminder that the reality outside a political rally is usually more complex than a reporter can hope to capture in the span of a campaign speech." Not if you are willing to write the truth and confront those in power who are trying to shape the truth to their own ends. It's not hard at all. Your fellow Elkhartians (?) are poorly educated people who have an unclear idea about cause and effect and trouble processing numbers and financial information. The paper you now write for enabled Trump and is still struggling to find a way to report on him with a degree of honesty and clear-headedness. And Elkhart, Indiana doesn't have the best pizza.

Interesting piece. Still, I cannot let the pizza boast go unnoticed. I grew up in Italy. I have spent time in Brooklyn. My son, who lives in LA, is a pizza expert. We agree that the best pizza is to be found (not that far from Elkhart) at Tomatoes Apizza in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Relating to Trump, they are much more competent at making great pizza than Trump is at being president.

Feelings apparently matter more than facts. Many people are scared by changes and seeking a cohesive narrative to explain them. Sadly they are turning to Fox News, the echo chamber of Trump. Even more tragic, they don't understand President Obama's record that made possible the quality of life they now enjoy. It's documented here with citations and very impressive: http://pleasecutthecrap.com/

Katie: I've spent 80% of my life in Goshen, the neighboring town, and appreciate your story. Will soon be leaving for more temperate climate..........not just weather but thinking. These 'good' people are just too insular and uneducated re national issues;they just don't know how economics works.

Nice story. I wish T and the Trumpets could realize as you that reality exists outside of the rally, that the circumstances are so much more complex.

The voice inside me is screaming: "Why can't these people see Trump for what he is?" Why would any rational person cheer a man who so blatantly lies, surrounds himself with corrupt sycophants, reverses every possible environmental protection and rewards his wealthy friends with an enormous tax gift. Remember that Obama left office with unemployment nearing five percent and the deficit one third what it was when he entered office. I hope that someday soon these people from the heartland realize what is really going on.

Thanks. An avid NYT reader, I grew up near Elkhart. It astonishes me that good people can be so politically blind.

Consider this as a common element: both DJT and BHO as "entertainers" .. who are attuned to crowd emotions, if not the facts, data, and reality. And of course, the (D) lost 900+ elective offices nationwide between 2010 and 2016. Very big gap of time there. Executives disliked the 100000000000s of new regulations with BHO, and hunkered down. And DJT ended them. And the economy has been boosted. IMHO, Americans prefer good jobs to new bureaucrats.

The Hispanic population at 15% and rising is probably why they are being more demonstrably racist and cheering on Mr. Trump. Instead of rationalizing the disappointing behavior of those we like, and dumping all blame on Liberals because they will not lash back at us, how about everyone taking responsibility for their own selves? Many who support Mr. Trump's nativism are acting on their racist impulses. Own it because it is all yours. If you do not like it, don't do it. Overcome the impulse and see the better side of the issue and of your own nature. Else own it because we want no part of it anyway. And please spare ourselves the baloney that these "good folks" would not have voted for Trump if only Liberals had been nicer to them. Everyone who voted was at least 18 years of age and had free agency. They voted, they own the vote. The Liberals did not make anyone do anything they did not want to. One could argue the Conservatives have tried to stifle the vote, create havoc in the process by reducing the time available on voting day, etc... But no one forced anyone to vote for Trump, and sure as heck no Liberal or Democrat forced anyone to go to a Trump rally and scream like a Nazi-wannabe. If that's your thing, own it. If it is not then stop doing it. You are free citizens in a Free Republic. No excuses.

"Some...discount the community as racist, backward..." How does this stand up to NYT's 10/5/17 article in which the following quote by John C. Austin, director of the Michigan Economic Center, is found? "Immigration has become an unambiguous factor in this racially charged Midwestern landscape" and, more explicitly, "[T]hey are mostly white, working class blue collar workers or retirees, many, sadly, who fled their small cities to escape blacks. They are anxious about the economic prospects for their future, their aging communities (the kids have fled), making folks mad. And now all these immigrants come and are changing the society!!"

Nice piece, of particular interest to this South Bend, Indiana native, now 30 year Ohio resident. NYT journalists are the best.

Everyone by now knows Elkhart, Indiana doesn't really give credit to Obama. Should it? and if not, why? Is it just because everyone there is "ultraconservative"? How then did he win there in 2008? No answers here. In Indiana outside of Indianapolis, people are afraid to speak ill of Trump. That's not a good thing for our democracy but in such a climate it's hard to round up tens of protesters and it's far fetched for the author to claim there were hundreds protesting outside. And Donald Trump was a liberal democrat for most of his life. Support for second amendment and strong borders is NOT ultraconservative ideology.

As a native Hoosier, currently visiting family in NW Indiana (though these days we prefer to be called "Chicagoland"), I can share the author's sense of Bizarroworld nostalgia. My own family of lifelong (old-style) Republicans is fine, thank goodness, and appropriately appalled by the current state of shennaniganry, but much else about the place feels the same. I flew in through South Bend, and as I waited in the airport for my train, got an earful from an older gentleman who insisted that Trump was originally supposed to speak there, but got wind that his reception wouldn't have been so friendly in union country. I reminded him of the protests when Obama came to speak at Notre Dame, and he insisted that these were all the work of outsiders. We may only hope. I also met some of my nephew's high school classmates, who faithfully parroted what they had heard at home about how they would vote for "anyone but Hillary." Of course they couldn't explain why any better than their parents could, but they did feel quite strongly about it. People here, and in most places I suspect, are single-issue voters, and fairly confused ones at that. For some the issue is party loyalty. For others it's abortion, or jobs, or trade, or guns. All complex issues that few are willing to invest the time to do real research, or come to anything other than a kneejerk opinion, and once that opinion gets formed, it sticks.

You can lead (some) people to the facts, but you can't make them think. And this is especially true for those who have been taught to imbibe muddy lies and find the taste, ummm, bracing?

[[As midterm elections approach, the Trump administration’s ultraconservative agenda is attractive to many people in my hometown and state. For some across the country, that alone is grounds to discount the community as racist, backward or on the wrong side of history.]] Beyond being anti-abortion and anti-immigrant, what about Trump's agenda is "ultraconservative"? And what do "ultraconservatives" make of the allegations of constant womanizing, money laundering http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/robert-mueller-probing-trum... and influence peddling https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a20645915/cohen-influence-peddling... http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-att-slush-20180509...? I mean, why don't the good people of Elkhart see the disconnect between Trump's slogans and his actions? Why do they accept that "making America great" means retreating from decades long relationships around the world?

Thank-you Katie for the report from your hometown. I am somewhat familiar with Elkhart, Indiana, with their RV ads here in Columbus, Ohio. I would have liked to read more of Daniel Holtz's observations of Elkhart's political climate. You wrote that voters were still struggling to find the values on which they stand. What events inform or challenge their values; 19 years of mass killing of school children? Increase of gun sales owned by a decreasing number of gun owners? Concern about the possibility of tariffs causing $30,000 fluctuations in the price of their crops? Concern about the opioid crisis and the rise of HIV and Hepatitis infections? In Elkhart, what are the religious leaders concerns? What are the needs of Elkhart that the religious and volunteer organizations are addressing? Three areas in Columbus, Ohio, that I am aware of: 1) Citizens in many neighborhoods are exercising greater ownership of their neighborhoods by cleaning up trash, raising abandoned houses, neighborhood night time walks to promote public safety and make vagrants uncomfortable. 2) Food pantries are expanding and more homeless are finding homes. 3) Increased awareness about the cost of gun violence; e.g. children accidently shooting children with Dad's pistol.

Though I haven't lived there for years, I continue to think of Indiana, particularly the Bloomington area, as home, and I frequently drop in. The tone in small towns hasn't changed much; diners are still friendly, as are the man or woman you stop on a downtown street for directions. The meanness on exhibit in the Elkhart rally should be of concern beyond the confines of the gym and beyond state lines. It's something new in this country, to have KKK-style ugliness institutionalized, and Trump, a pasteboard man aided by individuals who would fit nicely into SS uniforms, has a unique capacity to encourage that meanness. Trumpism, like Naziism, is a social virus; and, as Germany in the 20s showed itself incapable of self-government and opened the door to Hitler, we as a country have allowed the framework of our social structure to collapse and opened the door to an authoritarianism that is terrifying to much of the rest of the world and to many of us who used to look at the flag with pride.

Good article, Katie. You've described not only Elkhart, IN but much of the Midwest where I live. It's not hard to understand why bright young people like you leave the Midwest to start your adult life.