Michigan voters' message to America is troubling

Michigan primary voters have echoed the country’s divisions back at us

Michigan primary voters have echoed the country’s divisions back at us, but everyone who has ears to hear has abandoned any responsibility to do something about it.

In the last four years, scores of Republicans have left politics rather than face the wrath of Trump supporters and political schemers. But Trump, because of his own nature, remains unique, without historical analog, weak among former incumbents. Teddy Roosevelt won his second term in a landslide in 1904, but lost when he returned as the Bull Moose candidate. Trump simply bulled the GOP into his own MAGA party, and still can’t garner more than 70% of his own party’s votes.

Photo by Rob Curran on Unsplash

Democrats have stuck with “stay up late” Joe Biden, who has been treated like Bruno from Disney’s “Encanto” in more than one way. Democrats spend a lot of time singing about how Biden’s age is taboo, and how they don’t talk about it. So the president stayed up late for a 4:00 p.m. taping of “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”

“Take a look at the other guy,” Biden said. “He’s about as old as I am." At both their ages, the difference between 77 and 81 can be small, or they can be a chasm, because any health issue has the potential to be “a scare.” Pointing out Trump’s age and incapacity is not the way to assure voters.

While Trump’s deficiencies are built-in, the nation’s issues generally play against Biden. In Michigan, a large Arab population voiced its discontent over Biden’s support of Israel in the current conflict with Hamas. Unopposed, Biden won 81.1% of Michigan Democratic voters, with “Uncommitted” taking 13.3%, well over 100,000 votes. Trump won 68.2%, with Nikki Haley capturing over 294,000 Republican votes. That fact that people against both likely nominees cared enough to go out to the polls and register their votes sends a troubling message to the parties, and the nation.

I mean, listen, if you want to divide a room full of people, walk in and speak the name “Donald Trump.” You’ll see as good a representation of social mitosis as you could see in a petrie dish, as people spontaneously divide into their pro- and against- groups, with some sad outliers finding no home at all. The Michigan poll demonstrates the country’s division, urged on by the fact that both parties have become in many ways nothing more than cheerleaders against whatever the other party is doing (right now, the Republicans are more guilty of this, but when Trump was in office, Democrats did the same thing).

The border, Ukraine, Russia, NATO, inflation, energy policy (and green hegemony), and crime are issues Trump is going to use to bring people to his side. Biden’s age and mental ability weaken the president’s support.

And the Democrats going full hammer-and-tongs against Trump on the legal front seems to transmit their fear of him being able to beat Biden at the polls. The simplest way to keep Trump out of the White House, after all, is to beat him at the ballot box, then you have plenty of time for the legal consequences to play out.

Letitia James went after Trump’s money. Unbecoming of a state attorney general, she crowed on X/Twitter about the $464,576,230.62 judgement handed down—which is stupid because he funds his legal bills from political donors (this is legal, because his “leadership PAC” is set up to allow payments for anything other than presidential campaigns). Trump has already begun the process to appeal the penalty.

Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis had a pretty good case against Trump for some kind of state election interference, but decided to go after the entire GOP on a racketeering case, in order to make Trump’s charges more serious. She was so stupid as to hire the guy she was sleeping with (who was married at the time), and pay him over $600,000 of the people’s money, while she took cruises and trips with him. Her case is about to crash.

Federal special prosecutor Jack Smith is going after Trump, not for insurrection, but for fraud against the United States because Trump told supporters the election in 2020 was stolen. It’s a novel approach which will involve the Supreme Court. And there’s the case in Miami where Trump kept classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and refused to return them to the National Archives. Of course, there’s classified stuff all over the place in presidential libraries, and there was classified in the garage of Joe Biden’s Delaware home. But in a political torpedo, special prosecutor Robert Hurr wrote that Biden was too mentally incapable of being tried for it.

The likelihood that Trump will be in prison before the November election is vanishingly small. The likelihood that the cases will blow up politically before November is increasing daily. The gag orders imposed on Trump have First Amendment considerations, and along with voter perception of the economy, immigration, crime and the Biden administration’s priorities, only feed Trump’s claims he’s being silenced.

Of course, nothing silences Trump, and some of his supporters resort to threats of violence and intimidation (which is why Trump now controls the GOP). But on the left, the fringe is just as awful. Cornel West cheered a U.S. airman’s suicide by self-immolation outside the Israeli embassy as “extraordinary courage and commitment.” If only the courage and commitment of the innocent hostages taken by Hamas had that kind of pretzeled moral equivalence among the left’s Jew-haters.

I have more tolerance for the voters in Michigan who believe Biden has misplaced his trust in Israel’s government, which spent decades trying to shelve Gaza and now has unleashed hell upon them. The issue is genuinely divisive, though I tend to agree with Noah Rothman—Hamas is the death cult and is now getting what it wished for all along.

Michigan voters have sent a message to the political parties: You’re both losers. Trump can’t win in November because he can’t even take 70% of his own party’s votes from a candidate who has no chance of winning the nomination. Biden can’t win in November because he’s old, many times he’s incoherent in public, and the issues facing the nation make confidence in his ability to address them seem very weak.

In Michigan, the latest head-to-head polls RCP average has Trump ahead by 5.1 points. In Arizona, Trump leads by 4.7%; in Nevada, 8.4%; in Wisconsin, 1.2%; in Pennsylvania, Biden has a 0.6% razor-thin advantage; in North Carolina, Trump leads by 5%; in Georgia, 5.8%. Biden has a losing problem that seems bigger than Trump’s, and I’m afraid this is as good as it gets for Joe Biden. Can you imagine a head to head debate between these two?

The sane thing would be for both political parties to stand up and force these two candidates to step aside. But we seem to be way past sanity. So we have Michigan, and soon 16 states on Super Tuesday, screaming into the void how divisive and bad things are. And nobody on the other end—at least not anyone who can or will do anything about it—is listening.