Michigan Meh
The Uncommitted movement fell flat and Trump's rich/poor divide is becoming a real problem.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.
If money is tight or you’re already up to eyeballs in subscriptions, here’s another idea — share this article. Email it to a friend (or even an enemy). Post it on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Text or email it to your wife, husband, mother, father, brother, sister, or even your creepy second cousin in Kalamazoo. Word of mouth is often the best way to build support for a creative endeavor, so if everyone here sends it to just one person … it would be much appreciated!
I’ve been traveling yesterday and today, so this will be a quick post, but I wanted to offer a few thoughts on what happened last night in the Michigan primary.
For the last several weeks, a grass-roots movement in Michigan tried to persuade Democrats to vote uncommitted in the state’s presidential primary to show displeasure with President Biden’s refusal to call for a cease-fire in Gaza and his support for Israel’s military offensive there.
Let me say at the outset that Democratic voters — particularly Arab-American voters — casting a ballot for uncommitted was a healthy and productive way to communicate their displeasure with Biden. There is no serious political downside to voting for uncommitted in a nominating contest that Biden isn’t going to lose. It’s a creative form of political protest.
Having said that, 13.3 percent of the vote went to wncommitted, which is only 2.6 points higher than the number of uncommitted voters in 2012 when Barack Obama ran unopposed for a second term. The Uncommitted movement represented an opportunity for Michigan voters to express displeasure with Biden’s policy in Gaza, with no long-term consequence — and overwhelmingly, they didn’t take the bait. Even if all 13% of uncommitted voters were protest votes, which is undoubtedly not the case, it suggests that anger over Biden’s support for Israel is an outlier position in the Democratic party.
I fully recognize this will be a minority view, but I don’t see any other way to see this than as an embarrassingly bad outcome for those protesting Biden.
If there were widespread opposition to Biden’s policy in Gaza, this 13 percent would be much higher. Again, this is a consequence-free vote. Everyone knows that Biden will win the Democratic nomination. If anything, we should perhaps be making more of the fact that more than 600,000 Michigan voters came out in meaningless primary suggests to show support for Biden and opposition to the Uncommitted movement.
Since this was basically a free protest vote, it also tells us very little about what these voters will do in November when Trump is on the ballot and the Gaza war, likely and hopefully, will be over. Assuming the war is over by the Fall, I remain highly skeptical that any of this will matter in the November election.
Bottom line: this is largely a nothing burger that suggests there is some frustration and discord in Democratic ranks, but it’s a decidedly minority view.
Trump Wins Big … But
On the GOP side, Michigan was Trump’s best primary victory so far - and in a state where he barely campaigned. He is at 68 percent, 9 points higher than he got in South Carlina and significantly larger than his vote tally in Iowa and New Hampshire. Nikki Haley getting under 27 percent is a poor outcome and suggests that she has no chance of beating Trump and is mainly staying in the race in case something happens to him (which is a completely reasonable calculation on her part).
But there are two important caveats — and one obvious sign of weakness for Trump. First, Michigan was always going to be a bad state for Haley because the quintessential Haley voter, a moderate Republican voter who lives in the suburbs, has increasingly joined the Democratic Party. The Michigan Republican Party has fallen off the the MAGA tree and hit every branch on the way down, which means it’s a good state for Trump and a bad state for a reasonably sane GOP candidate.
The other issue — and let’s call it a major red flag for Trump — is the places where Trump underperformed. Here’s a selected list of Trump’s margin of victory in a few Michigan counties.
Kent (Grand Rapids): 59-34
Oakland County (Detroit): 62-33
Wayne Counry (Detroit): 68-26
Washnetaw County (Ann Arbor): 50-44
Ottawa County (Grand Rapids): 61-33
Ingham County (Lansing): 59-35
Kalamazoo (Kalamazoo): 58-36
Clinton (Lansing): 63-31
What do all these places have in common? They are suburban/urban counties. Indeed, the only major suburban county where Trump broke 70 percent was Macomb County, which abuts Detroit — but in Oakland County, which used to be a GOP stronghold he received only 62 percent of the vote.
Here’s another interesting data point.
This is a list of Michigan’s wealthiest counties, matched with Trump and Haley’s share of the vote.
Leelannu County: 61-34
Washnetaw: 50-44
Livingston: 69-26
Oakland: 62-33
Grand Traverse: 63-32
Ottawa: 61-33
Emmet: 64-30
Benzie: 68-27
Kent: 59-34
Clinton: 63-31
Now here re the 14 poorest counties in Michigan and Trump’s percentage of the vote in each:
Lake - 77%
Iosco - 74%
Montmorency -79%
Clare County - 79%
Gogebic - 75%
Ontonagon - 79%
Oscoda County - 77%
Alpena County - 75%
Roscommon County - 76%
Ogemaw County - 80%
Baraga County - 81%
Isabella County - 70%
Osceola County - 77%
Genesee County - 74%
So Trump underperformed in affluent, suburban communities and overperformed in poorer, rural, and sparsely populated counties. This speaks to the earlier point that the GOP — and Trump, in particular — are bleeding affluent, suburban voters and have become far to reliant on poor, rural voters. While one can’t assume that Haley voters will sit out November or vote for Biden, we’ve seen plenty of exit polling so far that shows a substantial percentage of Haley’s voters are saying they won’t vote for Trump in November.
If Trump gets swamped in Michigan’s suburbs — which used to be GOP strongholds — and Democrats continue to rack up votes in Detroit and other urban areas, it will be very difficult for him to win back the state in 2024. And don’t think this problem is restricted to Michigan. We’ve seen similar GOP dropoffs in Wisconsin’s WOW counties, which surround Milwaukee, in the counties around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the bedroom communities around Atlanta. The GOP’s path to victory in swing states is basically historic, unprecedented turnout in rural communities while stanching the bleeding in suburbia. If Michigan is any indication, they have a lot of work to do on the latter.
One More Thing …
The other hope for Trump is that Democrats see a similar dropoff in support among Black voters that caused them to lose Michigan in 2016. But last night, there was little evidence of Biden underperforming among Black voters. Indeed, as one Michigan Democrat mentioned to me, the president overperformed in Southfield, a city in Oaklad County with a 70 percent Black population, with 91 percent of the vote.
The uncommitted vote was strongest around Dearborn in Wayne County, which has a large Arab population and Ann Arbor, Washnetaw County, which is home to the University of Michigan. But in the Black communities of Michigan Biden cleaned up.
Musical Interlude
I am not a Democrat, so far be it for me to tell Democrats how to feel.
But...it irks the living heck out of me how so many Progressives act aggrieved. They constantly whine how they want to vote for someone that they 'really' believe in who matches their political views. I, a conservative, have never voted for someone who fully matches my views and I feel I make genuine compromises on my beliefs on every vote. But more importantly for this conversation: I support Israel and their right to destroy a genocidal organization like Hamas which has shown and stated its intent to keep performing 10/7 style attacks on Jews until they leave.
Jayapal and her ilk are making demands for their votes, to which I reply: should I make the same demands of Biden? If he caves to their demands then, using their logic, I then should revoke my support. If 10-15% of Progressive voters decline to support Biden, that could cost him. Well, it could ALSO cost him if more voters like me abandon Biden too (especially if other conservatives actually cross the aisle and vote for Trump).
I feel like the whole "Arab-Americans in Michigan are going to abandon Biden because he didn't wave his wand and fix Gaza" narrative has largely been fabricated by a media desperate for conflict and suspense. What these alleged "soured on Biden" Arab-Americans want he can't do and if he were to give it to them, then would Jews — a much more reliable Democrat base — abandon him? I wonder if the media isn't pulling another "white blue-collar man in a rural diner" stunt, beating the bushes for a few people (possible Arab-Americans who were already on the right, as some are) to validate the story they wanted to tell. It just seems to me far-fetched that a significant number of Arab-Americans would sit on the sideline pouting, knowing it helps the candidate who has said he'll keep all Palestinians out of the country, who has expressed Islamophobia in many of his actions, and who would basically give Netanyahu the green light to level Gaza AND the West Bank. I think the media is making this more of a story than is there because in their world everything is bas for Biden and everything Trump does is genius. Speaking of which, oh lookie in the NYTImes newsletter just a few hours ago "Trump’s delay strategy seems to be working.
The schedules for Donald Trump’s criminal trials are still coming into focus, but one thing seems clear: His strategy of seeking delays is paying off."
Official NY Times take. Trump: genius. Biden: hopelessly flawed bumbler. (Whether Trump's
"strategy" is "paying off" is deeply unclear at this point, except to the adoring NY Times.)