Nate Silver of The New Republic offers a comprehensive list of reasons why Obama is struggling in our beloved Michigan, and he is delivering his points from the perspective of an ex-Michiganian. Let’s consider what he has to say: Late Start. The Obama campaign presently has 32 field offices in Michigan, and should eventually more than double the Kerry-Edwards campaign’s ground operations there. But to some extent, it is making up for lost time. In conversations with friends and family during the Democratic primaries (I am originally from East Lansing), I did not sense much frustration with Obama in particular for his decision to withdraw his name from the state’s primary ballot after Michigan moved ahead of the DNC’s February 5 cut-off date and had its delegates revoked. But I did sense aggravation and dampened enthusiasm for the Democratic Party in general. And whether or not those frustrations linger, Obama simply has not spent as much time in Michigan as he has in other parts of the industrial Midwest, having recused himself from campaigning there during the primaries. According to The Washington Post’s candidate tracker, Obama has held 18 campaign events in Michigan since he launched his campaign last February, half the number he has held in Ohio (36), and less than half the number he has held in Pennsylvania (42). Neighboring states like Indiana and Wisconsin–less essential to the electoral map–have also gotten more Obama face time. Unpopular Governor. Unlike in many other states, where the failures of the economy fall squarely on the shoulders of the Republicans, George W. Bush gets to share the blame with incumbent Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm, whose approval rating was a tepid 37 percent in a recent poll conducted by the Detroit Free Press. That is a particularly poor result for a governor who had just been re-elected with 56 percent of the vote in 2006. There was the sense that Granholm had been given a mulligan in 2006, charged with bringing jobs back to the state. As the unemployment rate has risen, trust for Granholm and her party has eroded. Unpopular Mayor. A more serious problem, however, may be Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick of Detroit, who finally announced his resignation last Thursday after pleading guilty to a pair of felony charge for obstruction of justice. Already, there has been an advertising effort by a 527 group called Freedom’s Defense Fund to tie Obama to Kilpatrick, full-on with a Willie Hortonesque mug shot as Kilpatrick’s criminal charges are scrolled in front of the viewer. Moreover, the whirlwind of scandals surrounding Kilpatrick has distracted Detroit’s City Hall from its usual role in building Democratic Get Out The Vote efforts, as Kilpatrick’s cronies and enemies have fought amongst themselves. The Obama campaign has reversed its policy from the primary campaign and will pay street money to operatives of the local political machine in Philadelphia for their assistance in turning out the vote on Election Day. They will very likely need to follow suit in Detroit. Organized Republican Party. Michigan is one of the few remaining refuges of the moderate Republican. Nine of the 15 members of its congressional delegation are Republicans, but most are reasonably popular and have built some distance from Bush, with none ranking higher than the 90th most conservative member of the House. Maverick, the Prequel. Although he was eventually defeated by Mitt Romney, son of former Michigan governor George Romney, in this year’s Republican primary, John McCain and Michigan share an important bit of history. In 2000, McCain defeated Bush by 7 points in the state’s Republican primary, thanks to heavy crossover voting from Democrats and independents in the state’s open primary, who saw him as a palatably moderate alternative. As such, it remains harder to tie McCain to Bush in Michigan than it might be in another state. Race. Lastly, stemming back to the Detroit Riots of 1967, which triggered massive white flight into the city’s wealthy suburbs (Detroit, at 82 percent African-American, remains the country’s blackest major city), Michigan is not devoid of racial politics. Just one African American, former Secretary of State Richard H. Austin, has ever held statewide office in Michigan. And the area around Howell in Livingston County is a former Ku Klux Klan hotbed. The racial tensions aren’t as overt as they once were, but nevertheless, the de facto segregation between Detroit and the suburbs creates little interaction between the state’s black and white communities, and the combination of Kilpatrick and the difficult economic situation may evoke some latent prejudice. Although I am generally not a believer in the Bradley Effect, Michigan is one state where it might be worth keeping an eye out for. The more remarkable feat may not be that John McCain remains close in Michigan, but that in spite of all these obstacles, Obama has kept slightly ahead. The other piece of good news is that Michigan is not, strictly speaking, a must-win for Obama. If Obama wins Florida, for instance, he will probably not need either Michigan or Ohio, and he could tie the electoral map at 269-269 by winning Virginia, Iowa, Colorado and New Mexico, plus the remaining Kerry states. But banking on one of those scenarios is like banking on the Lions making the playoffs–entirely possible mathematically, but just not very plausible to any experienced observer. Obama will need to redouble his efforts in Michigan, emphasizing his jobs programs and his middle class tax cuts, and familiarizing himself with the byways of Macomb County. And now I know Silver still has a little bit of Michigan left in him just from his Lions reference. My analysis: Obama’s presence in Michigan should be much bigger. There is no doubt, however, that his momentum is picking up rapidly in the state, with Obama making several stops around Michigan in the last couple weeks and Joe Biden meeting with voters as well. I know that the Obama youth support in Southeastern Michigan is huge, and if Oakland County will really become a swing county in a swing state, then that monstrous, concentrated youth backing could definitely have some influence on the entire election. The youth momentum seems to still be picking up, with Obama campaign offices continued to be set up around the area. Youth support for McCain in these parts is rather weak. Well, perhaps the number of voters who might end up signing the ballot for him isn’t too low (due to the relatively high average wealth of Oakland County residents), but the youth election momentum is definitely not going how McCain would like it to in Southeastern Michigan. In these parts, demonstrative support for McCain outside of lawn sign support is feeble, but that might not be the case in the Western or Northern parts of the state. I know that rural support for McCain-Palin is still a very powerful force and that the Republican Party could capture more overall votes due to the disappointment the Democratic Party has been in our state–Granholm and the economy, Mayor Kilpatrick resigning, etc. However, if there is anyone to persuade Michiganians that it was not the Democratic Party that failed our state’s economic revival and that it was our dear Governor Granholm that brought the mess (rather, could not address it effectively during her two terms), it is Barack Obama. His calls for job programs, lowered health care costs and middle-class tax relief come with adequate plans. They are not superb in any case, with numerous flaws that I will cover in future articles, but they hit home in economically-scarred Michigan. Even more beneficial is his focus on alternative energy–a new sector in Michigan that has grown gradually out of fears of the auto industry completely dissipating any instant. While Granholm has damaged the reputation of the Democratic Party by failing to deliver her promises of job growth and economic stability, Obama can infuse some legitimacy back into the Party by empathizing with the struggles of lower- and middle-class Michiganians and delivering point-by-point a personalized economic policy. To be fair, the hurdles Granholm had to clear were just ridiculous well–national housing market trauma spilling into our state’s housing market, auto industry declining at a rate beyond saving, people moving out of the state at light-speed. Obama will have to deal with the same issues on an even greater level, with a greater amount of skepticism from Michigan voters. But I don’t think that McCain can deliver the same assuring policies Obama can (his dearth of economic knowledge and age definitely don’t help), so Obama has a greater chance of convincing voters that 1. He cares more than McCain and 2. He brings stronger economic policies and expertise. Kwame Kilpatrick’s resignation’s implications will be widespread in Michigan, especially since Obama wasn’t exactly distancing himself from him during the time before his hearing. This mixes in with the race politics analysis of Nate as well: the voter population could simply connect the two by their color and their Party. I am not saying that Michigan is a completely racist state (I would much rather be here as a minority than in the South no doubt), but Nate is right. Michigan has had its history of racial antagonisms, and our lethargic city and state politics are still burdened by the weight of its history. For example, much of the Detroit problem stems from racial divides and resentments, but of course, that problem has other complexities unheard of anywhere else around the nation and can hardly be explained without a lengthy 10-page article. The future of the Democratic Party in Michigan isn’t looking too badly. In fact, the portrayals of Republican cynicism, apathy and elitism on the national level have swept into our local politics, storming up a huge story online (and in result, a huge story for the media due to the power of blogging nowadays). MLIve sums it up: “…a Republican county chairman [...] said he planned to keep homeowners on foreclosure lists from voting…” More coverage from USA Today: A lawsuit has been filed to challenge what Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign says is an attempt to keep people facing foreclosure from voting. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in federal district court in Detroit by Obama for America, the Democratic National Committee and several Macomb County voters. It asks for an injunction prohibiting the Macomb County GOP, the Michigan Republican Party and the Republican National Committee or anyone connected with them from challenging Michigan voters whose homes are on foreclosure lists. Macomb County Republican Party Chairman James Carabelli denied last week that he had told a writer for liberal website MichiganMessenger.com that he planned to make sure no one on a list of foreclosed homes voted in his county. “The story is not true, and I never said those things,” he said. He demanded a retraction, but the writer stuck by her story. Apparently, the Mason County Republican Party Chairman in question, James Carabelli, has even threatened suing for libel against Michigan Messenger. But his defense comes a little late, especially since the website is still defending every word it said and that Democrats have filed a national lawsuit. It’s a clever campaign strategy on the part of the Democrats–exploding a localized example of Republican cynicism to the national-level, making a powerful dent on the Republican campaign. Even if this news does not completely change the political landscape of Michigan, it shows that the standstill is vulnerable, that the Republicans can falter. But at the same time, Democrats can too. Right now, it’s just Obama that has the stronger momentum–the upper hand– but it’s true that is safe bet to say it might not last until November. To win Michigan, he will seriously have to push with all his and his supporters’ might combined. CROSS-POSTED FROM MICHIGAN YOUTH POLITICAL ALLIANCE |
