And well they should. Four years ago, Hillary Clinton lost Michigan by largely taking it for granted, even though union leaders sent up warning flares that the race was getting much tighter than their data analysis showed. But at least the Clinton campaign had some infrastructure in the former blue-wall state, and had a ground game of sorts.
Four years later, Joe Biden doesn’t have anything on the ground in Michigan — and people are starting to notice it, Time Magazine reports:
Even more to the point, Democrats aren’t doing much of the retail politicking down-ballot either, because they didn’t build the resources for it. The RNC kept that in-house and deploys it strategically for its House and Senate candidates, whose campaigns participate in it while doing their own GOTV efforts. Democrats have to rely on their candidates to do it, but usually that starts at the top with a presidential candidate who soaks up most of the resources that get poured into the election. All Biden’s doing with the money is running 30,000-foot national-messaging ads rather than tie his agenda to specific regional and local issues in an organized manner.
Finally, add in the impact of the riots and crime waves sweeping urban areas, and it’s fair to say that no one really has an idea of how to build a likely-voter model that will produce predictive polling. Even more to the point, without any ground organization, Team Biden has no way of knowing where they stand in Michigan or anywhere else, whether their message is resonating, or how to adjust to get better enthusiasm. And all of that might well produce Democratic déjà vu after Election Day — and not just in Michigan, and not just in the presidential election.