Sanders' message of economic
populism transcended demographics in Michigan
As pollsters,
pundits,
and the Hillary Clinton campaign
continue to reel from Bernie Sanders' stunning
upset in Michigan on Tuesday, observers are now breaking down what went
right for the once-longshot candidate and what it could mean moving forward in
the Democratic primary.
Sanders' presidential campaign
has been defined by his focus on economic populism, which has been ridiculed by
Clinton for being "single issue." However, in a state like Michigan,
that has been hit particularly hard by economic recession, the Vermont
senator's steadfast messaging—which includes a critique of corporate power,
Wall Street, and trade deals that have crippled the nation's working class—was
arguably his greatest asset.
International Business Times
(IBT) senior editor David Sirota,
reporting on Michigan exit polling, notes that "58 percent of those
who voted in Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary said that trade with
other countries takes away American jobs—and of those, 58 percent voted for
Sanders." The final tally had Sanders with 49.8 percent of the vote,
compared with Clinton's 48.3 percent.
During Sunday night's
Democratic debate, both candidates seemed to recognize that the failure of
international trade agreements would be a significant issue for Michigan
voters. Sanders highlighted the fact that Clinton had historically supported
pacts such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Permanent
Normal Trade Relations with China, and was late to come out against the pending
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), saying that he's "very glad" that
Clinton had finally "discovered religion on this issue."
The former Secretary of
State's turnaround, however, did not appear to convince voters in Michigan. As
Sirota quipped late Tuesday:
"Those are trade
positions Sanders has long held," wrote
the Guardian's Lucia Graves, "and Clinton’s slowness to adopt them
gave him another chance to paint her as politically opportunistic. Clinton
thought she had finessed the trade issue, by focusing on other problems in
Michigan, like Flint’s lead-poisoned water, and by skewering Sanders over his
vote against the auto bailout (his campaign said it was part of a bigger vote
against a bailout for Wall Street). But clearly she hadn’t."
What's more, in Michigan,
those priorities transcended demographics. As Robert Borosage, co-director of
Campaign for America's Future, notes:
Clinton won African-American
voters again, but by much lower margins than she enjoyed in the South, with
Sanders faring well among younger African-Americans. Sanders won the young vote
once more by commanding margin—81 percent to 18 percent for voters under 29,
won independents 71 percent to 28 percent and won white voters 57 percent to 41
percent (white men by virtually two to one). The gender gap was less in
evidence. Sanders won unmarried women and men, married men while losing married
women.
"After all the weeks of
commentary about Bernie Sanders’ problem with black voters," Borosage
continued, "the spotlight after Michigan will turn to Hillary Clinton’s
problem with white male voters, young voters and independents."
Another notable takeaway from
Tuesday evening was Sanders' popularity among Michigan's sizable Muslim
population. The Detroit suburb of Dearborn, which has a population that is 40
percent Arab, voted for Sanders 59 to 39 percent over Clinton.
And while network pundits couldn't
fathom that the Muslim community would back a Jewish candidate for
president, as Khaled Beydoun, an assistant professor of law at the Barry
University Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law, wrote
on Twitter that "standing against Islamophobia resonated strongly with
Muslim American voters in Michigan primary."
"Indeed," wrote IBT
reporter Ismat Sarah Mangla, "the Sanders campaign has focused on courting
the Arab population in Dearborn, especially in the last week. He met with
Arab-American leaders in the city, released an Arab-language radio ad in the
Dearborn market, and reiterated at a Dearborn campaign rally that 'we’re going
to end bigotry in this country once and for all.' It’s hardly a new theme in
Sanders’ campaign—he has spoken out against anti-Muslim rhetoric for months,
likening such prejudice to the conditions his Jewish parents faced preceding
the Holocaust."
And as The Intercept's Zaid
Jilani noted,
"Team Intersectional Hillary" did not make similar efforts to reach
out to the Muslim community.
Sanders supporters are hopeful
that his campaign will achieve similar resonance going forward. "[S]ome of
the states that have been hardest hit by trade-related job losses include Ohio,
Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin," wrote Borosage, who noted that those
"delegate-rich states," are scheduled to soon hold primaries that
"could tip" the Democratic contest.
Illinois and Ohio are holding
primaries on March 15th, along with Florida, Missouri, and North Carolina.
Wisconsin votes on April 5th and Indiana voters head to the polls on May 3rd.
"In narrowly winning the
first big industrial state to vote, Sanders demonstrated that his economic
message reverberates in the Rust Belt and, for the first time, proved he could
win in a racially diverse state," wrote
Politico's Annie Karni.
Or as Sanders himself said
following Tuesday's win: "Not only is Michigan the gateway to the rest of
the industrial Midwest, the results there show that we are a national campaign.
We already have won in the Midwest, New England, and the Great Plains and as
more people get to know more about who we are and what our views are we’re
going to do very well."
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