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    • Trump’s victory brings joy to some in Michigan, stokes fear to others
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    Trump’s victory brings joy to some in Michigan, stokes fear to others

    Sakege Posted on

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    Wednesday dawned for a divided Michigan, as a large swath of voters celebrated a comeback victory for former President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris, while a nearly equal share lamented the loss of what might have been when a second presidential candidate he failed to win. a run for the White House in the span of eight years.

    The elation among conservative voters over the red wave Trump achieved in this election was as palpable as the despair among liberal voters, who described themselves as shocked and in a state of disbelief over Harris’ loss.

    “I’m happy, elated, actually,” said Blake Howard, 40, of Northville, who woke up around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday to discover that Trump had won the election. “The turnout was like a red wave. I think the country needed that.”

    Howard, who is married with a 7-year-old daughter, said he didn’t vote for Trump in 2016. And in 2020, he felt “changing his mind.”

    “I wasn’t sure about my decision,” he said. “I was a Democrat for the longest time. I grew up with that brainwashed mentality that because you’re black, you have to vote a certain way; 2024 was the first time I applied all my strength and bold confidence.”

    ‘The change happened last night when a country turned red’

    He has matured, he said, and in this election, the economy was his main concern. He referenced an appearance Harris made in early October on ABC’s “The View” as one of the most damning moments of her campaign. In that appearance, Harris said she couldn’t think of anything she would have done differently than President Joe Biden.

    At the time, the Harris campaign’s mantra of change rang especially hollow.

    “So you’re already in office and you already said on ‘The View’ that there’s not much difference between you and Biden. That’s a little contradictory. The change happened last night when a country turned red.”

    Ron Fournier, a senior adviser at Detroit-based Truscott Rossman Communications Group who worked as a journalist covering the White House for the Associated Press and The Atlantic from 1993 to 2016, agreed that the United States was looking for a change agent in this electoral cycle. and Harris did not convince voters that she was the inspiring change the nation needed.

    “There are handfuls and handfuls of micro tactical reasons we can attribute to this loss, starting with Vice President Harris not having enough time to mount a campaign, Vice President Harris not breaking away from Biden, the problem of young Arab and American progressives with Gaza “said Fournier, 61. “There will be all kinds of excuses and reasons.”

    But the overall conclusion, he said, is that the country has an angry population at a time of economic, demographic and technological upheaval.

    “The country is angrier than hell,” he said. “One party listens to them… Trump listened to them. The other party doesn’t listen to them, and what we had was another change election. Voters were looking for change, and this year they decided that a former president was the change agent with more likely to disrupt the system, and I think the vice president was sticking too closely to the status quo.

    “Change always wins in times like this, and in this election, Donald Trump was a change and she was not.”

    Was America ready for a woman president?

    Although Howard was jubilant over Trump’s victory, in Macomb County, Erika Richter was despondent as she drank her morning coffee Wednesday morning in Mount Clemens.

    Standing outside downtown stores with his iced dirty chai and caramel apple latte in hand, Richter, 36, of Harrison Township, said he didn’t want to give up hope that Harris could win when the elections came around. election results.

    “I’m disappointed and I think just overwhelmed with the idea that hate and anger prevailed, and unfortunately I don’t think America is ready for a woman to be president,” she said, especially not a woman of Black and Southern descent. Asia. .

    “This is about more than progress; it’s about morality and dignity,” Richter said. “Not only that, but she is exceptionally qualified; she is more than qualified to do the job.”

    Richter said she is worried about the fate of the country during a second Trump presidency, and especially that he might abuse his executive powers.

    “He has said what he wants, and what he wants is to get revenge on his enemies and to have a sense of power and control that is not what our Founding Fathers had intended for America,” Richter said.

    Sabrina Shulman, director of political action at the nonprofit Vote Run Lead, a nonprofit founded in 2014 with the mission of training women to run for office and helping them win, said it’s impossible to rule out the role that gender played in the outcome of the presidential election.

    “I think the most disappointing aspect of this is not just the gender dynamics, but the overlay that the country elected, not just a man, but a dangerous man, a man who has made it unequivocally clear that he will go after women’s rights.” women. who will pursue trans rights,” Shulman said.

    “The country elected a man who has openly attacked and diminished women’s access to health care and reproductive health care. He and his party have made this choice in many states to undermine transgender people and their safety and their access to medical care.

    “Unequivocally, this country elected a dangerous man over an incredible, overqualified candidate.”

    Hopes for Trump to boost economy further

    In southwest Detroit on Wednesday morning, Richard Fling, 67, was all smiles as he walked away from a construction project on West Vernor, near Clark Park.

    Once Trump is back in the White House, Fling said he’ll be able to retire… again.

    Fling worked in the construction industry for 35 years and tried to retire six years ago, but said Social Security benefits didn’t cover his expenses.

    He believes Trump will boost the economy in his second term. There will be more work available, which he said should allow him to retire permanently next time.

    “He kept us all working,” Fling said of Trump. “There was no let-up.”

    Manuel Barraza, a 60-year-old factory manager who lives in Detroit’s Mexicantown neighborhood, said he didn’t believe Harris would bring change.

    But what cemented her vote for Trump were ads saying Harris would pay for prisoners’ sex changes.

    “If you murder someone, or you’ve done something really bad to our society that you deserve to pay for something over time, you shouldn’t get any benefit more than the minimum,” Barraza told the Free Press while at work Wednesday. tomorrow.

    He likes that Trump seems tough, a trait he believes Biden lacks.

    “With Joe Biden in power, we became the laughing stock of the world,” he said. “He was an old and weak man, who stuttered his words and fell. … If you are going to be someone in power, you have to be willing to make difficult decisions, to be a man of your word.”

    Barraza wants to see the tariffs on Chinese imports that Trump has promised, even if that leads to higher prices.

    Barraza, whose father was born in Mexico, said the only thing that bothers him about Trump is the way he “puts all the illegals in a pot, as if they were all murderers or all criminals. Others I know are hard-working guys.”

    Barraza has people working for him who live in the country illegally and support Trump even though he has threatened mass deportations.

    “Whether it’s one evil or the other, I think it’s the lesser of two evils,” he said. “That’s the only thing I don’t like about him. But like I said, I’m a Republican and I’m going to be a Republican either way. I hope it doesn’t (mass deportations).”

    ‘Rest, but only for a moment… get up, and we must endure’

    In Detroit’s Boston Edison neighborhood, Char Goolsby was much less optimistic.

    “Disappointed is an easy word” to use to describe how she felt hours after Trump secured his victory. “I think being afraid of what’s possible is a better way to frame it.”

    Goolsby, 59 years old, worked tirelessly in the run-up to the elections to get out the vote for Harris, opening his home for campaign events, organizing phone banks and pollsters. It’s okay, he said, for Harris supporters to grieve and rest now, but they can’t go down for long.

    “There is always pain from loss, but we, historically, have not had the luxury of feeling pain. Black people throughout history have not had much time. We were too busy trying to find a way to heal, run, hide ., rebel.

    “We have to rest, but only for a moment, and we have to get up, and we have to resist, resist in ways that we are not used to resisting, and then we will have to move on.” do it. “I just wonder if our skin is thick enough to go through what we’re going to have to go through.”

    He worries that a newly emboldened Trump will place the architects of the Jan. 6 insurrection in positions of power in his second administration and use them to dismantle the framework of the nation’s democracy.

    “I’ve never been more worried about the Constitution than I am right now,” she said, noting that the U.S. Supreme Court has a conservative majority that is likely to rule in Trump’s favor, and the U.S. Senate was also elected by Republicans in this election. . This raises the possibility that Trump may refuse to leave office at the end of his next term.

    “If you believe what it says, it will go in and never come out,” Goolsby said. “We used to have the guardrails of the court. We don’t have them anymore. This man has hundreds of federal appointments that he can now make over the next four years. The complexion of this country has changed forever, and there will be many groups that will join They will regret this.”

    ‘Take care of your home before taking care of the outside’

    But Howard disagreed. He said the economy will get a boost with Trump in the White House.

    “People are struggling,” said Howard, who works in sales for a telecommunications company. “When you go to the grocery store and buy a couple of items and end up spending $100, that’s ridiculous.”

    Your customers can’t pay their Internet and cable bills.

    “Everything goes up, prices go up,” Howard said. “So there are people who pay $200 or $300 bills and say, ‘I can’t afford this.’ You feel for them. “You see it every day.”

    Howard hopes Trump will tighten the U.S. border and redirect federal spending on foreign aid to its own citizens. He was dissatisfied with the Biden administration’s handling of that.

    “Rolling out the red carpet for illegal immigrants when there are people within your own country who are struggling, that doesn’t match… Take care of your home before you take care of the outside.”

    Public schools, she said, are too liberal for her daughter, who attends a Christian academy. “School systems are trying to take away parental rights over gender from parents, and there are drag queens in school systems, and the bathroom situation is a little ridiculous,” Howard said. “Trump will just restore it, keep it conservative… I don’t think children need to be exposed to that kind of life… You can’t trust a child not to touch the hot stove, but everyone suddenly knows what gender are? Contradictory. This will put things on the right path, and I think the country is going in a great direction.”

    Contact Kristen Shamus: [email protected]. Subscribe to Prensa Libre.

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