Two years ago, Michigan was one of three states that everyone was certain would be blue that flipped to red, making Donald Trump President. The mitten state was on the cusp of the national mood.
But that, sadly (or not) was an exception. There are a few states that rarely miss being with the winner — Ohio has never picked a loser since 1960, when it was oddly enthusiastic for Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy. Michigan voters are different.
Had it been up to them, John Kerry and Al Gore would both have been President. You can’t blame them too much for choosing hometown hero Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter.
However, our state also would have given us Wendell Willkie, not Franklin D. Roosevelt, as our President on the eve of World War II, and thrown out the plucky Harry Truman in favor of Thomas Dewey (okay, he was born in Owosso) in 1948.
Other forgotten contenders we would have installed in the White House include James G. Blaine, aka the “continental liar from the state of Maine,” John C. Fremont and Charles Evans Hughes.
Plus Lewis Cass, our early political godfather, whose corpulent shape inspired Abraham Lincoln to dub him “the great Michigander.”
Michigan did have one uncanny decade in which it did vote closer to the national average than any other state – the 1980s, when it turned in victory percentages for Ronald Reagan (twice) and George H.W. Bush that closely mirrored the country’s.
Being wrong isn’t always a bad thing, however. Half a century ago, Michigan voters chose Hubert Humphrey over Nixon by a near-landslide. Sometimes, there’s a bit of glory in being on the losing team.
