{UAH} MR 70 POINTS AHEAD, GET THE F....... OUT OF MICHIGAN

Democratic voters in Michigan swing county of Macomb aren’t sold on Biden

By Ebony Bowden

October 1, 2020 | 3:24pm 

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REUTERS/Mike Segar

 

DETROIT, Mich. — One of the first campaign stops Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden made after spending six months sequestered in his home during the coronavirus pandemic was in the Michigan suburb of Warren.

The small city sits on the edge of the blighted remains of Detroit in now-infamous Macomb County, an area which broke for Donald Trump in 2016 and was credited with handing him the traditionally Democratic state by just 10,704 ballots in a shocking upset of Hillary Clinton.

The road to the White House in 2020 will again run through rural, blue-collar communities like Macomb County in the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan.

Biden has increasingly leaned into his working-class roots and pro-union chops in a bid to wrestle these voters back from Trump, and the former veep consistently leads in polls in these must-win states.

But, speaking to voters in Warren this week, The Post found a different story on the ground: a number of Clinton supporters on the fence about Biden or who had switched camps to Trump.

“I am a Donald Trump supporter but I can’t tell any of my friends,” said Kathy Connolly, 72, a semi-retired real estate agent who voted for Clinton four years ago.

Connolly said she didn’t approve of Trump’s handling of the pandemic or his “name calling,” but for her, the biggest issue was the economy after she was widowed.

“[Trump] made my life easier with the stock market. I have a lot of money in the stock market and I actually have more money now than when my husband died eight years ago,” the Macomb County woman said.

“As far as his morals, I don’t like them. As far as his policies, I like them,” she added.

When asked what she thought of the 77-year-old Biden, Connolly believed he was “too old to be president” and questioned his mind. “That’s what scares me about him,” she said. Trump is 74.

Lifelong Democratic voter Barbara, 57, who only gave her first name, also voted for Clinton four years ago and was shocked when Trump flipped Macomb County from blue to red with 48,348 votes.

“I was surprised but I think he’s going to win again. A lot of people believe in him and stand behind him,” the thrift store employee said of the commander-in-chief.

Trump smashed the Democratic Party’s blue wall in 2016, turning Rust Belt states red that hadn’t been won by a GOP presidential candidate in decades.

His promise to return manufacturing jobs to the US and bust bad trade deals endeared him to working-class Americans living in communities that had been hollowed out by the loss of tens of thousands of well-paying jobs.

Macomb in particular is the county to watch because it has sided with the winner in all but three of the last 20 elections for governor or president.

When asked if Trump had kept his word to the people of Macomb, Barbara said he hadn’t.

She is currently collecting unemployment and doesn’t want to return to work until there is a COVID-19 vaccine.

“I think it’s gotten worse. I just think economically, everything — he’s just not good for the county, he’s not a good leader,” she said.

But the Michigander said she wasn’t thrilled about Biden either, citing his shifting stances on issues like climate change and policing.

“Biden is OK, I guess, but people just say stuff about him and some of his policies I don’t agree with,” she said.

Warren Mayor Jim Fouts backed Bernie Sanders in 2016 and said he believed the “highly ethical” nominee was right on many issues and would have been the party’s candidate if he had dropped his socialist label.

“I do think there are some Sanders people struggling with, ‘Should I vote for Joe Biden, or should I vote for Donald Trump, or should I stay home?'” he said of November’s looming election.

The independent senator from Vermont narrowly bested Clinton in the Wolverine State in a staggering primary victory before the former secretary of state won the party’s nomination.

Fouts said the president’s promises to return jobs to communities like Warren were slowly being realized with auto manufacturers reopening or redeveloping their Motor City plants.

Chrysler executives last year announced they were investing $1.6 billion to reopen a shuttered engine factory, while General Motors is pouring $2.2 billion into its Detroit plant to build electric trucks — both projects adding thousands of jobs.

“From that aspect, I think people are happy,” Fouts said. “I have heard people say the economy was great and I’m happy with President Trump for that. However, COVID-19 has cut into the optimism over the economy.”

The main concern for Warren locals now is how the pandemic and a likely second wave this winter will affect their own livelihoods and accelerate the millions of job losses the nation has experienced, local officials said.

“Joe Biden is someone that he doesn’t inspire, but he doesn’t anger,” Fouts said. “I often hear people say, ‘Well, Joe Biden isn’t my first choice, but he’s a good man, I can tell he has compassion, he cares about people,’ and I think there would be some stability with him.”

Democrats are hopeful about their chances in Michigan, noting that they flipped the governor’s mansion in 2018 when Gretchen Whitmer replaced GOP Gov. Rick Snyder.

Voter turnout in the 2018 midterms also soared to a 56-year high after Clinton failed to get voters to the polls in Democratic bulwarks like Wayne County in 2016, and received 43,000 fewer ballots in Detroit than Barack Obama in 2012.

“I see a great deal of enthusiasm for people to vote that is very different from four years ago,” said Macomb County Democratic Party chairman Ed Bruley, echoing Fouts’ claim that the pandemic was people’s chief concern.

Bruley told The Post that turning out Michiganders who didn’t vote in 2016, not winning back Obama-Trump voters, was the party’s best strategy.

“That whole illusion of the Obama-Trump voter, I think, is more illusion than substance. I think our problem last time was that we did not have the support of the people who we had had in the two Obama elections. And I think that’s turned around quite a bit.”

Bruley said he believed Scranton-born Biden could connect with voters in the Midwest in a way Clinton didn’t.

“I think that Joe Biden has more of a life story similar to theirs than Clinton offered,” he said. “Clinton came with a different kind of life story and I think Joe Biden’s is much more comfortable for people out here and in these times.”

At a rally in Michigan last month, Trump tore apart Biden’s job creation record and support for free trade deals like NAFTA, and blamed the Obama-Biden administration for killing the auto industry, omitting their $80 billion bailout.

At a campaign stop in Michigan just days before Trump’s visit, Biden presented his own Made in America plan, and in Pennsylvania on Wednesday night, he sought to make up for Clinton’s mistakes.

“A lot of white working-class Democrats thought we forgot them and didn’t pay attention,” he said. “I want them to know, I mean sincerely, that I’m going to be your president. I hear them. I listen to them. I get it. I get their sense of being left behind.”

EM         -> { Trump for 2020 }

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