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There’s a fifth notch in Donald Trump’s belt today. The former president roared to an easy win in Tuesday’s Michigan GOP presidential primary.
This was a victory even freshmen poli-sci majors at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor saw coming. Polls had predicted a blowout win for the former president for weeks, and Republicans delivered it at the ballot box. With nearly 94 percent of precincts reporting, Trump had drawn 755,909 votes – or 68.2 percent of all GOP ballots cast.
Michigan marked Trump’s fifth consecutive victory, with the 45th president having previously won the New Hampshire and South Carolina Republican primaries (and the Iowa and Nevada caucuses).
For Nikki Haley, his sole remaining Republican challenger, her dismal 26.5 percent showing means an uphill climb is rapidly turning into a bid to scale Mount Everest – or the north face of K2. Haley has yet to win a single state, and the longer she stays in the race, the more she undermines whatever future she may have left within the Republican party.
After the humiliation of being badly smoked in her home state last Saturday, Haley had a rebound of sorts. Her campaign said she brought in $2 million in donations in the first 48 hours after the loss. But this success was short-lived – and was followed by a much bigger blow: The political action wing of the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity organization pulled its deep-pocket financial support of Haley, choosing instead to devote its immense resources to competitive House and Senate campaigns.
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In her trademark bravado style, Haley gamely said she would “absolutely” soldier on to next week’s Super Tuesday primaries – where one-third of all Republican delegates will be selected. Polling shows a bleak forecast for her in most of them, however.
So, why continue with her Quixotic quest? Haley is increasing at risk of being labeled a spoiler – forcing Trump to spend money that could be used going after Joe Biden instead.
Most likely, she’s looking beyond the moment and thinking about 2028. Should Trump lose in November, having stayed in the race until the last possible moment would position her to say the morning after Election Day, “See? I told you so. Ya’ll should have listened to me.” Still, that hardly seems a compelling argument to GOP primary voters, though, who would more likely be inclined to blame Haley than embrace her theory of electability (which, incidentally, didn’t pan out so well for her establishment mentor Mitt Romney).
Over on the Democratic side, it was a bruising night for Biden. Usually, winning an election with 81.1 percent of the vote (and sweeping all of his party’s 86 delegates) should merit popping the cork on a bottle of champagne. This time, though, it doused a bucket of ice-cold water on the incumbent’s candidacy.
Biden’s win was never in doubt. The challenge from retiring Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips (who managed a meager 2.8 percent) was never serious. Yet the threat posed by the “Listen to Michigan” campaign materialized. Progressive Democrats, who make up the party’s radical far-left wing, pushed the effort to showcase their frustration over Biden’s support of Israel in its war with Hamas and to demand an immediate ceasefire to the fighting in Gaza.
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They set a goal of getting at least 10,000 Democrats to vote for “uncommitted” instead of Biden in the primary. That was a symbolic figure since Trump eked out a Michigan victory in 2016 by roughly 10,700 votes.
In the end, they got ten times that number, with approximately 100,000 voting “uncommitted.” Michigan’s large Arab-American population, whose public face is outspoken Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a member of the so-called “Squad” of radical progressives who had championed the campaign.
Such a significant result exposes Biden’s soft political underbelly. His supporters are already downplaying that; pointing to the state’s large Arab and Muslim population and noting that few states list an “uncommitted” slot on their ballots as Michigan did. But rather than a one-off flash in the pan, the result does indicate additional trouble for Biden.
The 13.3 percent “uncommitted” vote itself isn’t the story. Rather, it provides a huge gust of wind in progressive sails. It encourages a bolder, more aggressive approach from the Democrats’ left flank. Already straddled with an unpopular octogenarian incumbent with increasingly alarming cognitive issues, the last thing the party needs is a messy intramural spat heading into the national convention in Chicago in August. Imagine TV coverage juxtaposing shots of delegates chanting “Four more years” with shots of Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and the whole gang yelling, “We’re not woke enough!”
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“Long the backbone of the Democratic Party, blue-collar workers aren’t voting blue anymore.”
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However, the problems run deeper than that. Biden has paid slavish attention to Big Labor throughout his administration, cutting it in on a slice of the action at every turn. He even went so far as to become the first sitting president to visit a picket line during a strike last year. What did he get in return? Exit polling showed union members voted for Trump en masse Tuesday.
Long the backbone of the Democratic Party, blue-collar workers aren’t voting blue anymore.
Even worse for Biden were the raw turnout numbers. As of this writing, an estimated 761,934 people voted in the Democratic primary on Tuesday. Compare that to the 1,108,910 who cast a Republican ballot. Even if most of those “uncommitted” voters come back to Biden in November, he’s still facing a massive deficit.
The primary may be over. But Biden’s Michigan misery will likely linger, as home state rocker Kid Rock put it, “All Summer Long.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.
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3 comments
Best news from all this. 40% of NH Republicans will not vote for Donald Trump. 40% of South Carolina Republicans will not vote for Donald Trump, and 30% of Michigan Republicans will not vote for Donald Trump. He has underperformed every poll when it came time to put in the votes.
As for the uncommitted vote, we all know that is comprised largely of Muslim voters upset over Gaza. Biden needs to deal with this, but does anyone think they are going to vote for a man who has called for a Muslim registry? We will see, but I don’t think the Don, should hope those voters will offset the Republicans who will not vote for him.
Do you want to see how dumb some South Carolinians are? Hank believes that 40% of Haley’s votes in the SC primary were from Republicans and not crossover Democrats… who by the way had what, a 13% turnout in their primary? Those who refused to vote in the Democratic primary did so so they could vote for Haley in the Republican primary. Just when I think South Carolinians can’t be more ignorant someone like Hank comes along and changes that.
In another universe, Donnie boy didn’t win the nepobaby lottery and was just a “buy here pay here” used car salesman trying to scam poor people with junkers.