DETROIT – The hordes of Democratic presidential candidates who descended on Detroit for their debate last month are mostly gone now, off barnstorming in Iowa and New Hampshire and preparing for next month’s debate in Texas.
Except when they breeze in for fundraisers, Michigan is unlikely to see a lot of the candidates until closer to the March 10 primary, which will be held the same day as Ohio’s.
By that time, there undoubtedly will be far fewer contenders. Yet in Democratic circles, the question I’ve been hearing more than ‘who will we nominate and who should we support?’ is: “How do we make sure we don’t lose Michigan again?”
That’s not surprising.
Nor is Democratic anxiety. Possibly the biggest surprise last time – other than Donald Trump’s victory itself – was his narrow victory in Michigan, by 10,704 votes out of nearly five million cast.
Native son Mitt Romney lost the state by a humiliating 455,000 votes just four years before. But Donald Trump won Michigan.
Will he do so again?
What we know for sure is this: Mr. Trump, as every election analyst knows, won the presidency by narrowly winning three states that were supposed to be in the bag for Democrats: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, all Democratic since the 1980s.
Michigan was the closest of those three. If Democrats don’t win Michigan next year, they almost certainly can’t win the presidency.
(Ohio, ironically, is sort of a mirror image for the Republicans. No Republican has ever been elected president without winning Ohio, and there’s little chance Mr. Trump could do so, either.)
Democrats could win the election next year without Ohio, and they probably aren’t counting on it; Mr. Trump won a stunning near-landslide. Republicans, in turn, can win without Michigan.
But they very much want to repeat Mr. Trump’s success there.
However – as of now — the odds suggest Michigan is more likely than not to return to the Democratic fold.
Democratic candidates for governor and other statewide offices swept the state last year. They also held a U.S. Senate seat, made significant gains in the legislature and gained two seats in Congress.
They didn’t do nearly as well in Ohio, where they failed to capture an open seat for governor and gained little otherwise.
Midterm elections, of course, don’t necessarily predict anything; Democrats did quite well in Michigan and Ohio two years before Ronald Reagan swept them both while being reelected.
But there are other reasons to think President Trump is less likely to carry Michigan next time. “Trump can’t count on Democratic apathy in 2020,” Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University wrote recently.
That apathy may have been especially pronounced in Michigan, where Hillary Clinton ran a lackluster campaign and failed to stir enthusiasm among many traditionally Democratic groups.
For one thing, few Democrats thought Ms. Clinton could possibly lose the state. For another, many just didn’t like her.
Thousands of white, blue-collar workers, such as those in Monroe and Macomb Counties, voted twice for President Obama, but switched to Donald Trump. Few black voters switched to Mr. Trump – but tens of thousands didn’t bother to vote at all.
Whether fair or not, there is a strong perception in the black, Hispanic and Muslim communities that the President is racially biased against them – and that may be a powerful motivator to vote.
Some young voters who had been enthusiastic about Bernie Sanders apparently voted for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, who got 51,463 votes—more than enough to make the difference. Nobody expects that again. Additionally, polls show that the President has been consistently “underwater” in Michigan – meaning that more voters disapprove of his performance than approve of it.
Yet despite all that — could Donald Trump win the state again?
Never say never. Nobody thought he could last time. And no election is a done deal till the votes are in.
While the Green Party candidate was thought to have mainly hurt the Democrats, what about the 172,136 Michigan voters who chose the Libertarians? What will they do? What about the roughly 75,000 who voted – but refused to pick any candidate for President?
Mr. Trump may have some things going for him next year:
For one thing, the election won’t be about whether voters want him or not. It will be about whether they want Mr. Trump — or another flesh-and-blood Democrat who is bound to have flaws.
The President has proven a master at dominating the media and skewering his opponents. He already is lampooning Joe Biden, the Democratic front runner, virtually calling him senile.
Will younger and more left-wing voters stay with the Democrats if Mr. Biden is the nominee? Will older, more conservative ones bolt again, if a candidate on the left like Elizabeth Warren is chosen?
Will women punish the Democrats if a woman isn’t at the top if the ticket? Will black voters lose enthusiasm if there isn’t a black nominee? Would some more conventional voters have a problem with the fast-rising Pete Buttigieg because he is gay? (Interestingly, his husband, Chastain is from Traverse City, Michigan.)
Nobody knows the answer to any of these questions – yet. Looking at history, demography and the dynamics, the odds seem to be against President Trump winning the state again.
But everyone thought they were the first time, too.
Photo By Ali Zifan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48101409
