by Meshawn Maddock
Democrats are running scared in Michigan, judging from their recent behavior.
Media pundits are still projecting confidence of a Biden victory in the Wolverine State, pointing to the same sort of polls that showed Hillary Clinton running away with Michigan in 2016. They very much want you to believe the race here is over and done, but there’s a distinct and growing edge of desperation in their voices.
If Joe Biden thought Michigan was safely in his column, then why is he making any of his extremely limited campaign appearances in this state? Furthermore, why are those left-leaning pundits and Biden campaign surrogates steadfastly ignoring or dismissing the one major poll that called Michigan’s 2016 correctly?
Even more telling are Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s continued and increasingly direct efforts to exert her influence on the former vice president’s behalf.
Following her attempt to falsely blame Donald Trump for the bizarre anarchist “kidnapping plot” against her, Whitmer has taken on an even more prominent role in the campaign’s final days. Now she’s trying to downplay the fact that when Donald Trump comes to Michigan, thousands of people come out to cheer him, whereas Biden can’t get more than a few Trump supporters honking and jeering at him from their cars.
When the President announced yet another high-energy campaign event in Lansing, Whitmer claimed it was “a recipe for disaster” and flat-out told Michiganders, “don’t attend events like this.” She even resorted to fear mongering with a made-up claim that “we have seen COVID outbreaks as a result of these rallies.”
Whitmer has never cited evidence for this talking point, but that doesn’t stop her from using it. There is, on the other hand, strong evidence of outbreaks from the nursing homes she mismanaged before and appears to be mismanaging again.
Whitmer is no stranger to politically exploiting the pandemic. She never once voiced objection to months of “peaceful protests” that were both larger and less scrupulous than any outdoor Trump rally, even when they began smashing store windows, lighting cars on fire, and attacking police officers.
She did, however, think that much smaller but genuinely peaceful rallies protesting her own policies were “not appropriate in a global pandemic.” Declaring that peacefully objecting to her unconstitutional edicts was “not an exercise of democratic principles,” she described such protests as “calls to violence,” “racist,” and “misogynistic.”
So why is Whitmer stepping it up now? Does that seem like the behavior of a politician who is supremely confident that her state is in the bag for her party’s nominee?
Of course not. This is the behavior of a governor trying to snub out the palpable energy of a Trump campaign that is just hitting its stride in Michigan. She’s not alone. Democrats everywhere, Joe Biden included, are starting to get flashbacks to 2016. Their strategy is not to convince voters, but to get us to stay home — to keep us away from the rallies and, more importantly, from the voting booth on November 3.
Biden and Whitmer want to project confidence that Michigan is in the bag for the Democrats. It’s not. If it were, they wouldn’t be so desperate to convince us of it.
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Meshawn Maddock was a Michigan delegate for Donald Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention. She is also the Co-founder of Michigan Trump Republicans and the wife of Michigan State Representative Matt Maddock.
Photo “Donald Trump” by Photo “Donald Trump” by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. CC BY 2.0. Background Photo “Trump Michigan Rally” by Dan Scavino.
