The message from Michigan

Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump won overwhelming victories in Tuesday’s Michigan primary, but their undeniable success doesn’t answer the hard questions facing each candidate in the general election. They won’t get the answers next week on Super Tuesday, either, even though both candidates are expected to win easily.

What are those questions, on which victory in November depends? Oddly, some are the same for Biden and Trump. Can they recapture the reluctant wings of their party, the factions that have refused to vote for them so far? Can they move beyond consolidating support within their parties to win over independent voters, who outnumber both Republicans and Democrats?

Despite that similarity, there is a fundamental difference between the refusenik wings of each party. Biden’s problem lies with the most progressive faction of his party, as well as Muslim Americans, who were particularly important in Michigan. Both groups are infuriated by the president’s support for Israel in the Gaza War and showed it in a protest movement, which captured about one-eighth of the Michigan total (roughly 100,000 votes).

For Trump, the problem lies not on the populist wing of his party but among centrists, like the 26 percent who voted for Nikki Haley in Michigan. Although she has lost every primary, her vote totals are far from negligible. In states with more moderate Republican voters, the battleground on which the November election will be fought, she has won between 25-40 percent of the total.

Campaign managers for Biden and Trump cannot say, “Those reluctant voters will inevitably come back into the fold in November. What other choice do they have?” Actually, they have two other choices. They can stay home, or they can vote for a third-party candidate, such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Cornel West, the Green Party or others. Those third-party alternatives could be enough to swing the electoral outcome in the five or six states with razor-thin margins. The turnout in those states will matter, too, and that depends on the voters’ enthusiasm. Do they really like their preferred candidate, really hate the opponent or have lukewarm feelings? The whole point of negative campaigning is to heighten the hatred and increase turnout. That is likely to be the heart of both the Trump and Biden campaigns.

Biden faces three very different obstacles to reelection. The first, which concerns all voters, are worries about the president’s health, especially his cognitive ability. His campaign and the mainstream media typically call that “concerns about his age.” That’s partly true and partly false. The real problem is not his age, as such, but its obvious impact on his performance. He is no longer able to do extended, impromptu interviews because he stumbles, stops and sometimes appears confused. That’s not just his old problem with gaffes. It’s something more troubling.

These health issues raise the prospect that, if Biden is reelected, he would be unable to finish a full term and would turn the job over to his vice president, Kamala Harris. Poll after poll shows voters really, really don’t want her as president. They don’t like her and, worse, they don’t think she is qualified to hold the most powerful office on earth.

Biden’s second problem is his persistently low poll numbers. His border policies, in particular, have met with overwhelming disapproval, except from progressives. More than 7 million people have entered the country illegally since Biden took office. They have trafficked girls into sex slavery, brought vast quantities of lethal drugs onto the streets and overwhelmed social services in countless cities.

Biden and the Democrats will try — and fail — to blame that problem on the Republican refusal to accept a recent compromise border bill. That may help them a little, but not much. All the major problems occurred well before the bill was proposed. And all are directly attributable to Biden’s unilateral actions to undo Trump’s successful border policies. Biden promised those actions in the 2020 campaign and took them during his first week as president.

Now, he’s stuck with the terrible results. Democrats can’t even bring themselves to say “illegal immigration.” They call it “irregular immigration” or some other circumlocution. Nobody is fooled. The mainstream media offers their in-kind contribution to the campaign by calling even the worst criminal gangs “asylum seekers.” In fact, claiming asylum is merely the legal ploy for most illegal immigrants. Nearly all of them are turned down by a judge… if they ever show up for a court hearing.

Republicans have an opportunity to highlight these problems every time an illegal immigrant commits a violent crime, like a murder and child-rape over the past week. Those are national stories, but there are plenty of others on local news. Plus, citizens can see the problems for themselves on the streets.

The migrant gangs, their violent assaults and the deaths from the fentanyl they traffic will highlight another major Republican theme: the breakdown of law-and-order in Democratic cities.

Expect advertisements that echo the famous “Willie Horton” advertisement, which George H. W. Bush used so effectively against Michael Dukakis in 1988. Horton was a violent criminal, incarcerated in Massachusetts, then governed by Bush’s opponent, Michael Dukakis. Horton repeatedly let out on temporary parole by lenient prison authorities. During one such outing, he failed to return and went on a crime spree, including killing. Bush ran an advertisement featuring Horton to damn Dukakis as “soft on crime.” Democrats responded, ineffectively, by calling the advertisement and Bush “racist.”

Biden’s third problem, beyond his health and illegal immigration, is the disaffection of progressives (and Muslims), reflected in the Michigan protest vote. The basic problem is that the only way Biden can appeal to them is to move to the left; exactly the opposite of what he needs to do to win over Independents and moderate Republicans.

The border, Israel and green energy policies are all examples of Biden’s conundrum. The country wants tougher policies to staunch the flow of illegal immigrants. Progressives don’t. The country overwhelmingly supports Israel. Progressives don’t. The country wants to keep their gas stoves and doesn’t want to buy electric vehicles until the prices drop and range increases. Progressives are totally committed to green energy mandates.

The result is straightforward — and poses painful choices for the Biden campaign. The more they tailor policies to persuade the party’s activist progressives, the more they alienate other voters.

Trump’s problems are, in a sense, the opposite. He has completely captured his party’s activist wing. Indeed, he moved that base toward the nationalist, isolationist positions it favors today. His problem is to convince voters in the center, both in his party and the general electorate. That’s essentially a “policy problem,” and it is particularly obvious on abortion rights, a major plus for Democrats since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade.

But Trump also has a “personality problem” with many votes. True, his charisma has filled stadiums at rallies and created a powerful, enthusiastic party base for him. It has helped him make inroads among Hispanic and black males. But just as many voters are repelled by his bombast. That aversion, plus the Republicans’ social policies, are why the party has had such difficulties winning educated, suburban voters, especially women and younger voters.

Some of those problems showed up in the Michigan primary. Although Trump won that contest easily, his campaign still has to be concerned by the quarter of the vote for his final opponent, Nikki Haley, and by her 40 percent in South Carolina. Since Haley can no longer defeat Trump for the nomination, the significant vote for her is, in part, a protest against Trump.

Haley increasingly resembles the beleaguered Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. As the knight’s arms and then his legs are lopped off, he refuses to concede his loss. He keeps retorting, “’Tis but a flesh wound.” That’s been Nikki Haley’s response to her losses in every primary so far, often by twenty or thirty points or more. Michigan was no different. The race now seems pointless; her money is running out; and it is hard to see her continuing past Super Tuesday.

The question for Trump camp is whether he can win over most of those Haley voters or whether his support has a “hard cap” of anti-Trump voters that will be difficult to break through.

The answer to that question will decide Trump’s success in November. For Biden, the answer depends on his health, the economy’s continued growth and reining in progressives without alienating the far-larger numbers in the center.

The Michigan primary raised those questions. But it didn’t answer them.