IF TRUMP DOES BETTER AT THE POLLS THAN IN THE POLLS, THIS FROM OHIO IS WHY:

Many of my family, friends, former teachers, coaches, classmates and church congregates — and all their friends — in this county of 30,000 people are Trump supporters, and I didn’t want to put them out there, by name, for the trolls to feast on.

I love my hometown and its people too much.

These folks already get made fun of enough for being from Appalachia. They’re good, respectful people who are focused on taking care of their families. They want to be left alone. They don’t care about stupid Twitter wars, and I don’t want to be responsible for thrusting them into the vicious rhetorical crossfire between leftist activists and Trump sycophants.

I quickly came to the realization that this was going to be a challenge soon after arriving for my 2½-day stay in early September. I found that a lot of folks didn’t want to talk about Trump. They didn’t want to put themselves out there for fear of being verbally bludgeoned on Facebook and Twitter or in the grocery store or even at church.

And those who did want to talk, well, they seemed to speak for those who wanted to remain silent: They’re tired of certain cable news networks and the leftist political class stereotyping them as a bunch of toothless, racist, backwoods rubes.

“I don’t want to talk about it because you can’t have an opinion unless it’s their opinion,” an African American Trump supporter said about the left. “Either you believe the way they believe, or you’re a racist or a homophobe. The reason I’m working is because of what Trump’s done. I just want to put my hard hat on and go to work every day.”

The man, who added he’s a registered Democrat, talked to Enquirer photographer Albert Cesare and me for nearly an hour on his front porch on a hot evening. He said a lady at his church had given him grief for supporting “racist” Trump, but the man said he’s seen no hard evidence that’s true.

The man then abruptly said he wanted no part of the story, stepped inside his house and closed the front door, leaving us sitting on the porch dumbfounded.

I didn’t blame him one bit.

So yeah, sure, he’s going to tell a stranger on the phone how he plans to vote.