Question 1): Where did Michigan Democrats’ messaging go wrong in the 2024 election?
Answer 1): Messaging? There’s a lot more to it than that. And which Democrats are we talking about, anyway? The various campaigns — from presidential on down — weren’t monolithic, although Democrats in general seemed oblivious to the struggles of average voters. There was a disconnect between the Democrats’ economic messaging and what people were feeling. While the Democrats — with a major assist from the ‘legacy’ mainstream media — were highlighting macroeconomic achievements on job creation and public sector investments, voters were feeling economically insecure due to increased costs of everyday items.
The most lasting mistake was trying to tell voters that the U.S. economy was strong, and their lived experiences weren’t real. Exit polls showed that 45% of Michigan voters said their financial situation was worse today than it was four years ago. In an election campaign like the one we just experienced, if your message was not focused on the anger voters were feeling about price increases on groceries and housing, then your messaging was all wrong. The Trump campaign, on the other hand, clearly recognized voters’ anger and told them they would solve their problems.
Also, the Democrats’ messaging focused way too much on women’s concerns over reproductive rights when an MRG poll several weeks before the election showed that 81% of Michigan’s voters thought that the issue had been settled with the passage of Proposal 3 two years ago. The Democrats thought they could keep pounding away with a 2022 playbook and make the Republicans keep paying. It didn’t work, nor did their constant reminders of how awful Donald Trump was.
Finally, there is always way too much emphasis by election losers on ‘messaging’ itself, which is a way for losers to avoid admitting to themselves that their POLICIES proved to be unpopular with voters. Instead, the losers argue that they just didn’t successfully ‘communicate’ the obvious benefits of their policies that should make voters realize how great those policies were. Hey! Maybe they should realize there is no way to ‘message’ or communicate bad policies.
And those unpopular policies weren’t all about inflation-fueling government spending and immigration, either. For example, majority Democrats in the state House went way too far with a progressive agenda in 2003-24 that forced their members in marginal districts to cast a number of dangerous votes — the one wiping out local control over green energy sitings is a good example — that cost them on Nov. 5. Republican Rep.-elect Karl Bohnak of Negaunee scored an historic upset in the 109th District on a theme of “Peninsula Over Party” after incumbent Dem Jenn Hill cast a series of votes more emblematic of a legislator from Detroit or Ann Arbor than the U.P., which proved fatal to her re-election chances. Right now, at least one House Democrat who lost is urging his Dem colleagues not to force him to vote on any more far-left liberal bills in the current lame duck session, because he plans to try to get his seat back in 2026 and doesn’t want any votes now to be used against him, as they were this fall..
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Question 2):. With regard to the election in Michigan, what was the Democrats’ biggest waste of money?
Answer 2): This was the most colossal failure by a political party in recent Michigan history. The Michigan House Democratic caucus spent an all-time record of $37 million trying to hold on to their majority, yet managed to become the ONLY legislative chamber anywhere in the country to lose complete control to the opposition. Aided by controversial out-of-state ActBlue funding, they outspent the House Republicans by nearly 4-1, yet failed to knock off a single GOP incumbent while losing four seats themselves. In the 109th District, Jenn Hill tried to demonize Republican Karl Bohnak, a well-liked media personality who had been a TV meteorologist for three decades. Her relentless TV and online attack lines depicting Bohnak as a kook backfired.
Out-of-touch, know-it-all Democratic consultants and campaign ‘gurus’ in the Lansing ‘bubble’ squandered millions on nationalized messages that failed to connect with and inform moderate and frustrated Democratic voters, or even low-information independent voters. Too much of their funding went toward solidifying already likely voters, and not engaging with those who wanted real plans for addressing their personal struggles and current policies.
One legislator who survived the blunderbuss, one-size-fits-all propaganda from the Lansing doofuses was freshman Betsy Coffia of Traverse City, who in 2022 became the first Democrat in more than a century to win what is now the 103rd District. She largely ignored the flawed advice from the poohbahs, raised much of her own money (she was one of the top House Democratic spenders at $1 million+), and fended off a stiff challenge from a strong Republican nominee who actually ran ahead of Donald Trump in the enclave.
Meanwhile, Republicans had success in addressing the financial fears that cut across racial, economic and gender lines. They realized that niche messaging may do well with like-minded individuals, but it is not the kind of strategy that will help win competitive races where you need to appeal to the entire local electorate.
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Nice commentary.
You needed to mention USMC vet Ron Robinson beat longtime Democratic liberal Nate Shannon, a former schoolteacher in my home 58th Michigan House District BY SIX PERCENTAGE points in a district that has not gone GOP since the 1990s. Robinson received significant PAC monies and pounded a conservative agenda to Sterling Heights voters.
22-year-old ultraconservative Rylee Linting from Grosse Ile Downriver Wayne County easily knocked off a Dem incumbent and becomes the youngest female ever elected to the Michigan Legislature. She was the MIGOP Youth Vice-Chair and had organized previously several successful campaigns, including that of John James.
GOP State Rep. Donni Steele fended off a challenge from Dem nominee Shadia Martini of Bloomfield Hills in a closely-watched race that saw several hundred thousand dollars expended in campaign funding.
Tom Barrett defeated Curtis Hertel in a closely watched race. Hertel ran one of the most ineffectual and uninspiring campaigns in Michigan history. Veterans and protectionist interests lambasted Hertel.
Massive deficit spending and inflation doomed Democrats nationally and in Michigan as retirees saw their savings shrink in real dollars. The Michigan Democratic Party leadership – who had previously reveled in the turmoil caused by the election of Kristina Karamo – saw their state convention and campaign activities roiled by pro-Gaza activists. It will be interesting to see who will replace Lavora Barnes.
The post-mortems ignore the pervasive role of racism, sexism and zenophobia among various publics. Hard to believe that young black men swung to Trump because they cared about the price of eggs
Your comment about the “pervasive role of racism, sexism and xenophobia” is a nice example of what psychiatrists call “projection.” Choosing a person to be his running mate simply because of the color of her skin and her gender, in the view of most Americans, is a classical example of racism and sexism.
The recent election demonstrated that a lot of young black men are less racist than many white liberals.
Spot on.
Absolutely. Extreme progressive “Social engineering” has caused a major rift in the Democratic party.
You’re so right, doctor. Bravo!
The BLS, BEA, and NBER economic statistics (and judgements) are goal-seeked lies which should be printed in blue ink on toilet paper. Their only function is to falsely promote Democrats and disparage Republicans.
In the middle of the campaign, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ preliminary 2024 benchmark review of employment data eliminated 818,000 previously claimed new jobs because the Employment Situation Summaries were so far out of agreement with their JOLTS report. BLS had to acknowledge three years of lies intended to promote the Biden Administration. BLS released this truth bomb just after President Biden dropped out of the race, hoping it would not affect Vice President Harris’ prospects.
The United States experienced six months of economic decline in 2022H1 which even the Bureau of Economic Analysis couldn’t paper over. But the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee – staffed by Democrat partisans – refused to label it a recession.
BLS inflation data simply defies the belief of any American who actually shops for themselves. BLS lies may play well with the plutocrats who have others shop for them, but the average American has come to believe their lying eyes, rather than BLS fakery.
Presidential elections are a referendum on economics at the margin. Those marginal voters knew the economic picture was much darker than portrayed by BLS, BEA, and NBER lies.
So you don’t believe professional economists and statisticians when it comes to compiling econometric data. You have your own secret source of wisdom, which is not burdened by footnotes or citations to professionals. You aren’t impressed by the fact that crosstabulations of the data have been made freely available for individuals to pick through and look for inconsistencies. Nor are you impressed that the statistical methods involved follow long established openly published protocols.
I would hazard a guess that you also don’t believe in randomized controlled trials, and prefer ivermectin to mRNA based vaccines, again based on your own secret sources of wisdom.
I’ll go one step further, and guess that you have deep insights into the moon landing, and other historic events, which were undoubtedly staged. Have you talked to Elvis lately?
The DJT Administration doesn’t appear to include a single senior figure who believes in the gaussian distribution, natural selection, gas chemistry, or double entry accounting.
Wonder how many people in 2027 will be willing to admit they voted for Donald Trump? I have a hunch that a lot of those who did are now going to get a lesson in what a bad economy really looks like. Hint: Eggs were really cheap under Herbert Hoover. But if you don’t have a job or a social safety net or a dime, it won’t matter.
FDR’s New Deal coalition is gone – it is not there anymore.
The socialist political realignment in America that occurred in 1933 with FDR will be almost completely rolled back under Project 2025.
The characterization of the Republican Party as the representatives of country clubs and big business was an albatross hung around the neck of the GOP by New Deal Democrats and is finally been rejected by the electorate. The Republicans are now the majority party at federal, state and local levels throughout the U.S., save for inner city pockets of Democratic political machines in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit etc.
Obamacare and other loathsome legislation sponsored by Democrats previously will now be able to be repealed under the Republican “trifecta” in the U.S. House and Senate to be signed into law by President Trump.
Mass deportations, the disablement of bad faith actors in the Justice Department and Deep State will be the hallmark of the second Trump term.
God bless America and Donald Trump.
A new day is about to dawn. Thank God for that!
Outrageous!
Inhuman !
Have we forgotten our Soul ! People get the Government they Deserve!
T.Jefferson
The gross errors in BLS and BEA statistics are an acknowledged fact; acknowledged by both BLS and BEA in routine, gross revisions.
The only question is whether these errors are deliberate bias or some kind of random error. Were they random error, they would equally benefit Democrats and Republicans. But they don’t, so it is clear bias.
You should know that there have been huge discrepancies among the CES Household Survey, the CES Employer Survey, and the JOLTS report. They regularly fail Student’s t-test. Why there is a very large industry which second guesses BLS and BEA for the financial community, where accuract is profit.
You also ignore the selective release of Republican damaging BLS data on social media, prior to their public release. BLS economists have been caught sharing technical calculations and classified data with Democratic political operatives. This is clear evidence of collusion by BLS personnel.
You might want to read US DoL OIG’s October 26, 2023 report on BLS transparency. They describe BLS’s errors in other reports as being due to “imputations”. That would be their “secret source of wisdom.”
“So you don’t believe professional economists and statisticians when it comes to compiling econometric data. You have your own secret source of wisdom, which is not burdened by footnotes or citations to professionals. You aren’t impressed by the fact that crosstabulations of the data have been made freely available for individuals to pick through and look for inconsistencies. Nor are you impressed that the statistical methods involved follow long established openly published protocols.”
You would be well advised to read and understand the BLS’ “CES National Benchmark Article” which dropped on February 7th. It shows the liars at BLS padded the U.S. employment number by 600,000 to 700,000 every month throughout 2024 in their frantic efforts to re-elect Drooling Joe and Kamala.
There was no “vibecession”. There was a real recession that your ” professional economists and statisticians” were lying to conceal.
Not much left to say here, Bill; except maybe for the self-inflicted Dearborn/Hamtramck Arab American debacle which made for an easy layup for the national (Abraham Accord) Trump Republicans to take advantage of. Good job!
It is hard to believe how badly the Democrats mangled a once-loyal constituency of Arab-Americans.
It was DNC chairman Ron Brown’s relationship with Arab-American Institute’s James Zogby that was a key factor in Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential win.
I visited the highly-successful Trump campaign office in Hamtramck during one of their events and was greeted by Mayor Amer Ghalib and other elected officials from the city.
The events there brought a divisive city together. One Polish-American told me was very important to him that Trump visited Hamtramck.
Cornel West, Dr. Stein, and Donald Trump saw visits to Dearborn as compulsory – but Biden and Kamala Harris refused to visit Dearborn. Bad choice.
Another bad choice was the Biden/Harris administration approving $20 billion in armaments transfers to Israel the very day Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination and expressed her commitment to a cease-fire in Gaza.
The August of 2022 Michigan Democratic Party convention was another public relations disaster that continues to play out in federal court in Huwaida Arraf’s lawsuit over her failed U-M Board of Regents nomination bid.
Leanne, Royal, Barbara Green and gratefully Bill Ballenger—you provided brilliant, in-depth analysis.
It is amazing Slotkin won with Oakland County, Kent County and mid/Michigan.
WE HAVE MUCH TO BE THANKFUL FOR
First of all the all the TBR readers out there, have a happyand safe Thanksgiving holiday.
Nice article, Bill. And spot on. Way too much advertising on abortion, almost no advertising on how they plan to fix the economy and other things that bothered the voters, and no real plan for what they would do in the future. But some of that comes from the fact that the legislative accomplishments in calendar 2024 were few and far between. And we can tell because they did not campaign on what was done in 2024. And very little on what was done in 2023 after the first few months. You have to give people something to vote for as much as you give them something to vote against. Someone seems to have forgotten that. And with some of the lame ducks not wanting to vote on progressive stuff, and others who won’t show up unless they do vote on progressive stuff, we may have a very quiet lame duck period.
As for the money, how do you screw that up? Seriously. Normally outspending your opponents by 4:1 should guarantee success, especially if you’re defending seats you currently hold. Not this time. Well, in 2022, Dixon was outspent 16:1 (or thereabouts). Maybe that’s what they need to do, carpet bomb the GOP with money, or they cannot win.
Nice point on Coffia. She did not listen to the “experts” and managed to raise over $1,000,000 (!!!) for a state house race by herself (with staff help, I’m sure). It is interesting that her opponent got more votes in the district than Trump, but the Traverse City area is no longer the GOP hotspot that it used to be.
I cannot believe $1 million was expended on a campaign Michigan State Representative seat.
The commentary on the election overlooks the reality that it was a “margin of error” election. With California still counting, Trump has less than half the popular vote and leads Harris by 1.7 percent. In Michigan, the cumulative vote for Congress was 48-47%. Trump’s margin in Michigan was 1.4%, Slotkin’s margin was 0.3%. In other words, everything was really close.
We are a nation divided down the middle. Small campaign miscalculations can and did change results. It wasn’t a landslide for the GOP, a repudiation of the Dems, or a mandate for Trump’s radical proposed remake of the nation. The idea that Democrats need to completely reinvent their strategy is contradicted by the numbers.
History suggests the Dems will bounce back in the midterms and likely reclaim control of the House. Given the small-state dominance of the Senate that will be a harder lift for Dems, but it wouldn’t be a surprise for the Senate to flip back as we..
exactly!
It was the biggest Electoral College victory margin for the GOP in a presidential election since 1988 – and Trump did NOT have the Moral Majority backing him as George H. W. Bush did.
Trump is a flawed candidate – he will never win 49 states as Reagan did in 1984 -nevertheless he is extremely popular with rural voters and white Southerners. his victory is theirs.
In his 2024 victory speech, he described the MAGA mindset as the greatest political movement in U.S. history – and few in the GOP doubted him.
The part about Democratic messaging is exactly right. But with reference to policies, despite some negatives, if the economic message had been handled propertly the Democrats would have done well.. It wasn’t just “the economy”, the important issue was more precisely “prices”. The Democrats could have pointed out the part that the Trump administration had in causing inflation and high prices, and claimed credit for keeping inflation down compared to the rest of the world despite inheriting the Trump deficits and limitation of oil production. But they didn’t bother to point that out, wasted resources by overemphasizing choice, and they paid an awful political price as a result.
Elissa Slotkin was smart enough to not to go too overboard with expressing support for Israel – but actually criticized Israeli policy more than Kamala Harris – and that may have been the difference in her beating Mike Rogers in a close race.
As a moderate and frustrated Democratic voter, I should add to my comment above that I fully agree with Bill on this: “Out-of-touch, know-it-all Democratic consultants and campaign ‘gurus’ in the Lansing ‘bubble’ squandered millions on nationalized messages that failed to connect with and inform moderate and frustrated Democratic voters, or even low-information independent voters. Too much of their funding went toward solidifying already likely voters . . . ” And this isn’t Monday morning quarterbacking, I was complaining about bad messenging by the Democrats even before Biden dropped out.
My inclination is to believe the Michigan Democratic Party will need to “clean house” when they choose their leadership at the next state convention.
I could not believe in my home State House district that long-time incumbent Democrat Nate Shannon lost in a near landslide to GOP nominee Ron Robinson – a political unknown. I figured that Robinson had a good shot at taking the seat – but not by SIX PERCENTAGE POINTS. Mr. Robinson had good levels of PAC campaign funding.
Pete Hoekstra did a fine job in assuming leadership of a GOP state party organization in disarray and helping engineer a successful election cycle.
Liberalism, like Gender Dysphoria, is a mental disorder. If making insanity normal becomes a major message, expect a rebellion among those who still have a shred of sensibility.
Three factors affected 170,000 Americans
Spread over 4 Key States that made it happen for President Elect Trump and his followers.
1Ignorance & mis information
2. Greed & Inflation
3. Biden should have said good bye Before the Primary and let the people decide who the Dems candidate should’ve been !
God Save the USA!
Biden’s failure to acknowledge his dementia issues until they became undeniably public resulted in Kamala Harris being the only viable candidate to accept the Democratic presidential nomination due to federal restrictions on campaign funding that had already been accepted as part of Biden’s campaign.
Kamala Harris’ tenure as “Border Czarina” was marked by abject failure resulting in double-digit election percentage landslides for Trump in both Texas and Florida – as well as a victory in Arizona by a sizable margin. Immigration enforcement became a key issue for voters – and these voters gravitated to former President Donald Trump.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ foreign policy on Israel and Gaza was undoubtedly a disaster that resulted in Arab-Americans voting for Dr.Jill Stein or Mr. Trump. She appeared weak and ineffectual as casualties mounted and violence proliferated.
Kamala Harris had no coherent economic policy – while Trump’s advocacy of tariffs and protectionism resonated this election cycle as it did in 2016.
Bill good job and the Alarming In Human Comments are
Ridiculous! Ask one of those Folks how
Mr.Trumps Economic Package will benefit
The people & Economy ? Sad.