Obama Election Watch

Michigan has an unemployment rate of 8.5 percent, the highest in the nation. Scores of factories in Michigan have closed. Tens of thousands of autoworkers have lost their jobs.

More than 1.4 million people in Michigan, 14 percent of the total population, are living below the poverty line. In each year of George Bush’s presidency, the poverty rate in Michigan has increased. One third of all residents of the cities of Detroit, Flint, and Kalamazoo are poor.

The crisis in Michigan is best viewed in the data on food stamps. Over the past four years, the number of people in Michigan using food stamps has increased from 838,000 to more than 1.2 million. That’s an increase of 43 percent.

Let’s draw an analogy from emergency medicine. If all 50 states were competing for economic rescue in a hospital emergency room, Michigan would be the first to require attention.

Given the grim statistics, it is remarkable that polls in the state of Michigan still show a close race between Barack Obama and John McCain.

A solid shift in Michigan voter preferences will happen if the Obama campaign is successful in making sure that Michigan voters are widely informed of the sorry story of John McCain’s 22-year Senate record. Throughout his career McCain has consistently voted against all of the standard measures that would relieve economic distress in the industrial, working-class cities of Michigan.

In a series of hard-hitting television and radio advertisements directed toward Michigan voters, the Obama campaign needs to instill a full understanding of McCain’s long-established opposition to government aid or support for Michigan’s economic problems and the large number of distressed families.

Here are some possible examples of what these political messages might say:

• “Senator McCain, I am from Flint, Michigan. I lost my job in an automobile manufacturing plant six months ago. My wife has lost her job at a firm that supplies auto parts. Our unemployment benefits are running out. We are having a very difficult time providing food for our family.
“Senator, do I understand that in your career as a senator you have voted at least 18 times against extending benefits of the federal unemployment insurance?”

• “Senator McCain, temporarily I have succeeded in holding my job at a plant in Kalamazoo. But this year my daughter is preparing to go to college. We have worked all our lives to make this happen. But now we can’t pay for her college tuition.
“Senator, with all due respect, do you expect my vote this fall when you have opposed on at least 26 Senate votes the benefits of the federal Pell Grant college assistance program for low-income college students?”

• “Senator McCain, along with thousands of others, I have lost my union job in a Dearborn factory where I worked for 30 years. Now I have taken a job at a local store at minimum wage of $7.40 per hour. Senator, do you really feel that you should have my vote when over 22 years in the Senate you have, on no less than eight occasions, voted against raising the minimum wage?”

• “Senator McCain, my father fought for our country in the Korean War. He has now has developed a serious cancer. He now has huge expenses for prescription drugs that he can barely afford. Senator, can you have any claim on my vote this November when you have consistently voted to protect the profits of drug companies and always opposed measures that would make prescription drugs more affordable to my father?”

• “Senator McCain, my son was wounded in the Iraq war. He is disabled and since his return to Mackinac he has been unable to work. One of my neighbors, who is a reliable student of government, has informed me that on at least 10 occasions you have voted against increasing healthcare benefits for veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan.
“Senator, you will not have our votes.”