Granderson: Democratic victories in Michigan show the way to 2024
By Bob Guzzi
29 November 2016
On Wednesday, Michigan voters will settle the question of whether they will send Michigander Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump to the White House. It is an important election to the Democratic party because of the role it will play in the final days of the Trump presidency.
Clinton’s path to victory is now more daunting than ever before. She has failed to win a single state, including Michigan, and the Democratic Party as a whole can only hope that these results will inspire the electorate to vote for a candidate who represents their interests more than the other candidate.
Clinton’s defeat is the result of a broad-based backlash for the policies of the Trump administration and the Republican Party at both the state and national level. Trump’s decision to abandon the Paris climate accord and his proposal to put the US on a path towards the elimination of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are popular in the Rust Belt states that voted for him, while Clinton’s decision to adopt the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement with 11 countries that would have eliminated the country’s manufacturing base and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) to make Medicare healthcare more expensive for the working class drew a much more widespread, and much more severe, reaction in the working class districts that voted for Trump and opposed Clinton.
Although Trump’s campaign rhetoric revolved around hatred of the media and the establishment, it was Clinton who used the phrase “Crooked Hillary” to describe her opponent. She refused to release her tax returns to expose the “shady” character of the Clintons and their tax avoidance. More recently, she suggested that the “fringe” of the party had to be pushed outside of the party to “make room” for her to be elected.
The Democratic Party leadership has not been able to use the campaign to prepare itself for the presidential election. Democratic Party officials such as the chair of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has been a key defender of Clinton in the Democratic primaries, have refused to back up the party’s pro-Clinton line at