Harris' Michigan loss highlights Democrats' many weaknesses

Democrat Kamala Harris lost Michigan by more than 80,000 votes amid a national swing toward Republicans, as union workers, black voters, Arab Americans and Muslims failed to show up to the polls or did not vote for Donald Trump.

It's a bracing loss, given that the state is led by a prominent Democratic governor who expanded voting rights, and had only supported a Republican president once before over the past 22 years – Mr. Trump in 2016, then by fewer than 11,000 people. votes.

What happened in Michigan highlights problems plaguing the Democratic Party nationally, community leaders, voters and political experts say. Working-class voters, people of color and immigrants voted in fewer numbers or joined Mr. Trump, high food and housing prices were prevalent, and national party leaders ignored organizers local.

Exit polls gave a glimpse of the challenges Ms. Harris faced during her three-month campaign.

The economy is the main issue in Michigan, as it is across the country, said Ameshia Cross, a Democratic strategist, but the Arab American and Muslim vote, immigration issues and a high concentration of black voters also played a role important.

“You can only do so much in 107 days,” Ms. Cross said, referring to the time Ms. Harris’s campaign had after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. “However, I think more time should have been spent in Michigan.”

Ms Harris has visited the state 11 times and prominent Democrats have campaigned there, including Barack and Michelle Obama.

Ms. Cross criticized the Democratic Party's “consulting class” for relying too much on polls rather than grassroots organizers.

“It will always be more vital to listen to people on the ground than the modeling and projections we have seen,” she said.

Local opposition to U.S. support for Israel's wars in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon also weighed on the campaign.

Team Harris said the vice president held closed-door meetings with some Arab American and Muslim leaders and highlighted outreach efforts in Michigan that included a broad presence on the ground with 52 offices and more than 375 employees.

Trump wins Muslims

Michigan is home to at least 300,000 Arab Americans and Muslims, who overwhelmingly supported Mr Biden in 2020.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Mr. Trump spent significant time in Dearborn, the largest U.S. city with a majority Arab population. Mrs. Harris never came.

Ms. Harris met privately in August outside the city with Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, a Democrat who later declined to endorse a candidate, as well as select community leaders who supported her.

Dearborn supported Mr. Trump 42 percent, compared to 40 percent for Harris, while Ms. Stein received more than 15 percent, according to city data. In 2020, Mr. Biden won 69% of the vote in the city, compared to 30% for Trump.

The problems may also have repercussions in other states. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, America's largest Muslim advocacy group, said Ms. Stein won 53 percent of the vote in an exit poll of 1,575 verified Muslim voters. Mr. Trump won 21 percent and Ms. Harris 20 percent.

Mr. Trump's campaign has sent text messages and mailers to a list of 100,000 mostly Democratic-leaning Arab-Americans in Michigan in recent months, describing Mr. Trump as a “president of peace” and linking Ms Harris to wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

They seized Ms. Harris' town halls with former Rep. Liz Cheney, whose father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, played a significant role in planning America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they sent a mobile billboard truck with the words “Stop Kamala, Stop the Wars” driving around Dearborn.

Ms. Harris did not meet with the “uncommitted” organizers who mobilized 101,000 votes in the Democratic primaries, and Democrats did not allow a Palestinian speaker at the party's convention in August, angering those groups and progressives.

“We have failed at leadership. It's exhausting, it's intimidating, it's frustrating, because it didn't have to be this way,” said Lexis Zeidan, a Democrat and co-founder of the National No Movement. engaged, to journalists in Dearborn.

Beg for road signs

In Detroit, the largest majority-black city in the United States, where the Harris campaign had hoped to offset expected losses among Arab and Muslim voters, city data showed turnout fell to 47 percent. up from just under 50 percent in 2020, despite new laws on early voting and mail-in voting.

Hazen Turner, a 24-year-old black auto worker who canvassed for Ms. Harris in Detroit, said many of his friends and colleagues felt defeated by rising costs and their inability to move forward. .

“A lot of black youth don’t really have faith in the system,” he said. “The more we work, the more we really have nothing to show.”

Sherry Gay-Dagnogo, a Detroit school board member and former Democratic member of the Michigan House of Representatives, said officials with the party's coordinated campaign were dismissive of her concerns. She said she had to beg for signs in yards to help energize voters in the city who were less likely to vote.

“I tell them we get 20 to 30 letters a day from Trump and we haven’t heard from Harris,” she said. “And then you see on TV they raise a billion dollars. Like, what's going on?”

Michigan voters without a college degree make up 62 percent of the state's total and remain skeptical of Democrats.

The campaign also failed to address concerns, particularly about electric vehicles, raised by many United Auto Workers, a growing number of whom have supported Mr. Trump, even as Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris have supported their strike last year against General Motors.

Isaiah Goddard, 24, a white UAW member, said he met Mr. Trump while visiting a nonunion store during the strike. He said he trusted her to protect his job and keep illegal immigrants out.

“We were better off when President Trump was president,” said Mr. Goddard, who attended two rallies with Mr. Trump and his running mate JD Vance before the election.