Michigan is everything
The Democratic primary there was a referendum on laissez-faire globalization—and reflects a new media landscape
Editor’s note: this was written on Facebook the night of the 2016 Michigan primaries, and is being republished here on Medium to provide context for other articles
All of it. The free trade deals that promised us increased prosperity. The outsourcing that sent jobs to Mexico for a fraction of the cost, and then the deals that let companies send their products back tariff-free. The promises to protect labor and the environment. The Flint autoworkers retrained to work at Taco Bell. The lead pipes that are the new symbol of American decay, alongside former Detroit factories, theaters, hotels, and train stations.
Michigan voters have been around. They have survived. They have heard politicians come to their state and promise changes on trade, only to be forgotten once the election was won. They took a look at the records of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, and they made a decision. Clinton’s jab at Bernie for voting against the Wall Street bailout that contained auto funds may have influenced that decision — a specious argument that may not have withstood ire with Wall Street largesse. And did not pass the smell test for truth.
I don’t normally spike the football after a politician wins, but I am doing it tonight because of the false narrative generated by the media
I don’t normally spike the football after a politician wins, but I am doing it tonight because of the false narrative generated by the media over last Super Tuesday’s gains made by Hillary, inflated by her superdelegate lead. It essentially ignored the input of the people, especially in other early voting states that had not yet weighed in (half as many states voted in this year’s Super Tuesday as in 2008, and mostly in Blue Dog states that favored Clinton). I hear a lot about “delegate math,” but the great thing about elections is that they are decided at the ballot box — not in ledger books or the interviews made by pollsters.
At long last, Michigan is proof of this: the voters have the final say. And for once (and maybe just this once) I can tell all those statistics-loving, Nate Silver-reading, poll-reading horse-race politicos to go shove it. Politics is not a sport, much as we might like to make it one. It’s about issues, and the peoples’ voice on those issues. Until they have spoken, all the prognosticating in the world is worth the paper it’s written on — or the energy of the increasingly fleeting pixels they take up online as we start to value the volume of information over its quality. And maybe we confuse our political process for the sports that are supposed to distract us from our reality, not define it. (ESPN owns FiveThirtyEight, by the way, for what it’s worth. And ESPN is Disney.)
I’m prepared for the fact that Sanders’ message of economic populism and a stronger social safety net might be too far left for Democratic voters to go this season
I’m prepared for the fact that Sanders’ message of economic populism and a stronger social safety net might be too far left for Democratic voters to go this season. But I’ve been disappointed to see my friends in the center left be so eager to extinguish the possibility of this election going the other way. Tonight they got a reminder that this is not a coronation. No one is entitled to the presidency. The voters put someone in the Oval Office to represent them — ideally, only them.
Tonight democracy worked, in my view. And it’s a portent for how things go in November if we keep clinging to a 1990s view of politics that says TV ads, sound bites, and polish matter more than substance. We have social media now. And Google. Voters can tell when they are being lied to. And we have a greater say in things than we did in 2004, a year Facebook didn’t exist yet for most of America.
All of it — the lies, the lost jobs, the baseless attacks. Tonight Michigan voters said, “nevertheless.”
