Michigan voters sent a message to both leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and incumbent President Joe Biden on Tuesday night: Don’t take the base for granted.
Michiganders rallying under the “Listen to Michigan” campaign made their voices heard in the Democratic primary, pulling Biden’s vote share to just over 80 percent — the worst performance for an incumbent Democratic president since Jimmy Carter narrowly lost the state to Sen. Ted Kennedy in 1980. That’s not a comparison Biden is eager to claim.
More frustrating for Biden is the source of progressives’ Michigan rebellion. Rep. Rashida Tlaib and house progressives have spent months taking the president to task for his continued support of Israel’s war in Gaza. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) warned Biden that his Middle East policy puts Michigan’s 15 electoral votes at risk. Tlaib even announced that she was “proud” to not vote for Biden on Tuesday afternoon. It was a stinging series of public rejections for a president who considers foreign policy his personal strength.
But yesterday’s brawl wasn’t so out of the ordinary. Then-President Barack Obama lost nearly 11 percent of Michigan Democrats to the uncommitted line tin 2012 before romping to victory in the state by nearly half a million votes later that year. And despite more than 100,000 Democrats casting uncommitted votes — about 13 percent of all votes cast — most of those angry voters were quick to say they’d still back Biden in November.
Meanwhile, Michiganders sent Trump through the political wringer.
Sure, the former president easily crushed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, by nearly two to one, but the devil is in the exit polling. Michigan is now the fourth state where over a third of Republican voters have cast ballots against their presumptive nominee. The anti-Trump numbers appear to be consistent, too, with roughly a quarter of GOP voters saying they would not vote for the former president under any circumstance.
Democrats may be angry at Biden for his stance on Israel, but nowhere near as many Democrats have ruled out voting for Biden as have Republicans with Trump. There is no recent historical equivalent to the sheer number of Republican voters who say they will never vote for Trump, including 20 percent of South Carolinians and over 30 percent of New Hampshire voters. If even a fraction of those disaffected Republican voters choose to stay home on Election Day, Trump’s path to victory evaporates.
Fortunately, Trump and Biden appear to be on diverging political paths — and only Biden’s is heading toward sunlight.
Over the weekend, Biden raised hopes of a possible ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. De-escalating tensions in the region would bring Biden both a foreign policy win and an opportunity to lower the temperature with outraged progressives on Capitol Hill. If a ceasefire sticks, the president still has plenty of time to shore up electoral weak spots like Michigan.
No such luck for Trump, who is due in a New York courtroom next month to face charges that he illegally funneled hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. After that, Trump will face two federal criminal trials, one for election subversion and another centered on his mishandling of classified documents. Oh yeah, and a state election subversion trial in Georgia.
Those cases are politically toxic for Trump, with fully half of swing-state voters saying they will not vote for Trump if he is found guilty. A guilty verdict would even pierce Trump’s considerable cult of personality — almost 30 percent of self-identified Republicans say they would abandon Trump if he’s found guilty in any one of his multiple trials.
Biden’s voters may be unhappy with him, but they are still willing to be persuaded. Trump’s voters have made clear that there’s no going back if he’s convicted.
There’s a tendency among Democrats to treat every bump in the campaign trail as a catastrophic derailment. In the history of the 2024 presidential election, the Michigan Democratic primary will be remembered as one of the campaign’s minor bumps. The road is considerably more perilous for Trump and the Republicans as the GOP continues its terminal decline.
Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.