Democrats go all out to rebuild ‘blue wall’ in Michigan

DETROIT — National and state Democratic leaders in Michigan are mounting an aggressive effort to deprive President Trump of a second victory in Michigan in 2020.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has dispatched nearly four dozen field organizers across Detroit and its suburbs, and the state Democratic Party has put another 10 staffers on the ground as part of a campaign that began in 2018 to expand the party’s statewide organizing efforts.

{mosads}The Michigan Democratic Party has also hired a full-time digital organizer charged with bridging the gap between disparate online and field operations and a voting rights director to oversee education initiatives, particularly in communities of color and economically disadvantaged areas.

The goal, according to national and state Democratic officials, is to build out something of a permanent political juggernaut for the party’s eventual presidential nominee.

But the early efforts are also an acknowledgement of a reality that Democrats have grappled with since Hillary Clinton’s stunning loss in 2016: Michigan, among other key Midwestern states, cannot be taken for granted.

“From the party’s perspective, we know that in 2016 we were not on the ground early enough; we were not on the ground in enough places and we were not on the ground talking to voters often enough,” Lavora Barnes, the chairwoman of the Michigan Democratic Party, said.

“We made the mistake of waiting for a national campaign to set up shop.”

This cycle, however, the national campaigns are showing up early. Several candidates have made early campaign stops in Michigan, and most of the primary field is canvassing the state this week amid the second round of presidential debates, which are set to take place in Detroit on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Barnes, who ran former President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign in Michigan, said she has been in touch with most of her party’s presidential candidates and that several campaigns have called regularly to check in.

The Democratic strategy in Michigan is two-fold, officials say, focused on winning back some of the white working-class voters who helped send Trump to Washington and turning out black voters after a sharp drop-off in turnout in 2016.

Among the 45 organizers dispatched by the DNC as part of its “Organizing Corps,” more than half identify as people of color, according to the committee, and all of them are either from or attend school in Michigan.

The DNC has also given the state party a six-figure grant to fund community organizing efforts in African-American neighborhoods in Detroit and Flint, two Democratic strongholds where voter turnout lagged in 2016.

Of the so-called blue wall states that fell to Trump in 2016, Michigan was perhaps the most crushing for Democrats. After all, a Republican presidential candidate hadn’t won the state since 1988, and Trump’s victory there was decided by fewer than 11,000 votes. 

But Democrats are convinced the state is trending in their direction, pointing to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s victory in 2018 and their successful effort to flip two Republican-held House seats. Ramsey Reid, the DNC’s battleground states director, said that the midterm wins were encouraging for Democrats, but insisted that the party wasn’t taking anything for granted in 2020.

“We’re very pleased with the progress we made in 2018,” he said. “But we are making investments in communities of color, we’re making sure everybody knows about Trump’s record of broken promises in 83 counties, we’re registering voters.”

Trump campaigned aggressively in the Midwest in 2016, capitalizing on his status as a political outsider while vowing to renegotiate or blow up international trade agreements that he blamed for industrial decline in states like Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. 

Now, national Democrats are convinced that their most powerful argument in Michigan may be that Trump has failed to uphold his pledge. 

Speaking in front of a soon-to-be-shuttered General Motors plant in Warren, Mich., just north of Detroit on Tuesday, DNC Chairman Tom Perez seized on that message. Trump, he said, had promised that no more plants would close down under his tenure in the White House. 

“The number of job losses in the auto industry is at its highest point since the Great Recession,” Perez said. “Manufacturing jobs in Michigan have gone down under this president. The trail of broken promises runs far and deep.”

But it isn’t enough for Democrats to campaign on an anti-Trump message alone, Barnes said, noting that if they hope to make gains among the same voters that helped send Trump to the White House in 2016, the party’s presidential hopefuls will have to hone their messages on kitchen-table issues, like health care and jobs. 

“It’s important that we remind voters of how Donald Trump failed them,” she said. “But our candidates also need to speak to the issues that are important to people in Michigan.”

{mossecondads}Still, there may be a limit to Democrats’ ability to win over some of those voters, she said, and the party has to focus on expanding the electorate as much as it does persuading reliable voters.

“We have to remember that some of these voters who, after all that Donald Trump has done, if they’re still on Donald Trump’s side, we’re not going to get them,” Barnes said. “There are plenty of other voters that we can get, that we can move.”

To be sure, Democrats don’t have their sights set on Michigan alone. But they see their ground game in the state as crucial to their success across the broader Midwest, which is expected to play a significant role in deciding the 2020 election.

“Our focus right now is creating multiple pathways to 270 for the nominee,” Reid said. “And that includes Michigan and Ohio and other states.”