REAGAN DEMOCRATS, RIP — When Donald Trump takes the stage tonight in Warren, Michigan, to mark his 100th day in office, it will also mark an anniversary far less publicized but perhaps no less consequential: Forty years of this place, metro Detroit’s Macomb County, being at the center of American politics. The two have much to do with each other. In 1985, a Yale University-based pollster named Stanley Greenberg came here after being hired by the United Auto Workers union to figure out how Macomb, the most Democratic suburban county in America in 1960, became the most Republican suburban county by 1980. Greenberg’s answer reoriented U.S. politics and put Macomb at its center: Working-class, socially conservative white Americans who had traditionally voted for the Democratic Party felt betrayed by it and other institutions they’d trusted for so long — the unions, the government, business interests, certain strains of the church. They were eager to support a Republican presidential candidate who promised to make America great again . Greenberg called them the “Reagan Democrats.” To say here that “the rest is history,” is too passive: What unfolded in Macomb County has shaped American politics for the last several generations and culminated in Trump’s rise to power. But there is at least one central difference between then and now. Where the term “Reagan Democrat” hints at dueling allegiances, there’s much less split-ticket voting happening nowadays. In Macomb, that shift has meant a bloodbath for Democrats since the Trump era began. As recently as Barack Obama’s presidency, Democrats held every countywide post here: executive, sheriff, treasurer, prosecutor, public works commissioner and a solid majority on the county commission. Now, Republicans have a majority of the board and all but two countywide posts: Executive Mark Hackel and Sheriff Anthony Wickersham are the lone Democrats standing, and both were first elected to those offices before local news outlets had collapsed, which meant they had public images all their own, independent from the image of the national party as relayed in national media. Right now, as I write this from Macomb Community College’s south campus while restive rallygoers wait for the president to arrive, it’s abundantly clear that the Reagan Democrat era is dead. A Trump Republican era has begun. Over my years of reporting from here, I’ve learned that many local politicos are happy to let the old era rest in peace. Talk to some of them, and before the words “Reagan Democrats” fully escape your lips, you’ll hear your interview subject let out a sound that is somewhere between a sigh and a polite groan. “The sons and daughters of the people who lived in Warren [in the 1980s] now live up [in Macomb’s communities north of Hall Road/M-59], and they have now crossed over,” Jim Jacobs, the president emeritus of Macomb Community College, told me in 2023. “They're not Reagan Democrats; they're Republicans.” They’re not just Republicans, though: They are Trump Republicans. So formidable are his coattails that in 2016, the county elected as its clerk Karen Spranger, a Republican nominee who was possibly homeless and almost definitely jobless — the Detroit Free Press was unable to find any evidence that the 65-year-old “had held a regular job since graduating high school.” Her primary political experience came as a gadfly who showed up for the public comment section at local meetings, where she sometimes wore a foil tracksuit and complained about radiation from utility meters . (She was forced from office in 2018 after an investigation revealed that she lacked residency in the county and was thus ineligible for the position.) Milling about ahead of tonight’s Trump rally, there are men in red caps and “Auto Workers for Trump” merchandise; men in t-shirts with a photo of a bloodied Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the words “grazed but not dazed;” older women in bedazzled Trump hats. Trump. Trump. Trump. Driving here this afternoon, I found myself thinking about a lyric from Warren’s other famous American culture-defining export: Marshall Mathers, the rapper known as Eminem. “I never would've dreamed in a million years I'd see so many motherf---in' people who feel like me; who share the same views and the same exact beliefs — it's like a f---in' army marchin' in back of me,” Eminem rapped in “White America.” “So many lives I touched, so much anger aimed in no particular direction, just sprays and sprays … How could I predict my words would have an impact like this?” Soon, Trump will arrive. There’s little doubt that his words will have an impact. It was here, at Macomb Community College, in 1988 that President Reagan proclaimed that as a former Democrat, “I didn’t leave my party; my party left me.” It was a message that resonated especially in an era of split tickets. Tonight, President Trump will make a similar proclamation that is subtext but not exactly subtle: Macomb’s Reagan Democrat era is dead at age 40. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at zstanton@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @zackstanton .
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