The Real Detroit Comeback

Detroiters know what a comeback looks like. It’s the Detroit Tigers who were so far out of the running in mid-August, that they had a 0.2 percent chance of making it into the playoffs. And then, in October, they were in the playoffs. But, there are those who clearly do not know what a comeback looks like, including Kamala Harris, Lizzo and a whole lot of local Detroit political and religious leaders.

After Donald Trump’s Detroit Economic Club speech on October 10, during which he warned that the whole country will look like Detroit if Kamala wins, these delusionists  pounced on that statement as an “insult” to Detroit.  “Look at the revived downtown Detroit,” they say,  which hosts three gambling casinos and three major sports venues, along with hotels, health centers, financial institutions, restaurants and greenway.

It is the case that when you are in downtown and Midtown, and soon Corktown, you are no longer surrounded by what became known as “ruin porn.” 

But to call that a comeback spits in the face of the vast majority of people who live in Detroit, 80 percent of whom are Black. Here’s what their Detroit looks like:

• A city which has lost 1 million people since 1960, now home to a mere 630,000 people, with vast swaths of empty land, or abandoned buildings. 
• A city where the median household income is $38,000 (half the national average) and where the percentage of children living below the poverty level is 44.5%.
• A city with an infant mortality rate three times the national average
• A city where only 14% of third-graders read at grade-level standards, and only 10% of eighth-graders are at grade-level standards in math.

I think most Detroiters are insulted by anyone who thinks that it is an insult to recognize this brutal reality.

Donald Trump returned to Detroit on October 18,  eight days after his Economics Club speech and pledged the following: 

"We’re going to bring back our jobs, our dignity, and our dreams. And standing before you tonight, I am proclaiming to the people of this state that by the end of my term, the entire world will be talking about the Michigan miracle and the stunning rebirth of Detroit. And this will be a real rebirth.

...So vote Trump, and you’ll see a mass exodus of manufacturing jobs from Mexico to Michigan, from Shanghai to Sterling Heights, and from Beijing to right here in Detroit and other cities all across America. Because a strong auto industry will make all of Detroit richer, boosting suppliers, real estate and your entire economy. And I’ve been reading. Seriously, I’ve been reading about Detroit for so long, the comeback. This is the real comeback. This isn’t artificial stuff. This is the real comeback." (emphasis added)

The next day, Kamala Harris showed up with singer Lizzo who tried to counter Trump by saying that she was proud to be from Detroit, “we’re talking about the same Detroit that innovated the auto industry and the music industry, so put some respect on Detroit’s name, okay?” Respect for what? Being the poster child for the destruction of a proud, manufacturing city, which had the highest per-capita income in the nation in 1960? 

Do these people really believe that Detroiters will be so star-struck by Barack Obama and Lizzo and Magic Johnson that they won’t notice that their kids can’t read? And that Stellantis, the one auto manufacturer which has major facilities in the City of Detroit and which employs thousands of Detroiters, giving them a chance at a decent standard of living, is laying off workers and threatening to leave the state?

Trump’s message addresses this reality, and it is being magnified by Republican State Representative candidate Ron Kokinda, running in the blue collar district (HD 2)  just south of Detroit. Speaking to a candidates forum hosted by the “100 Black Men of Greater Detroit” organization in Detroit on October 22, Kokinda struck hard at the message he has been delivering to his constituents. “The Green mandates are crushing auto and stressing our electrical grid and industry is leaving the state because of this. If the Green mandates are not reversed and we lose auto, we are going to become a lot poorer very quickly.” This message has resonated with the voters Kokinda is talking to, and his Detroit audience responded as well.

Kokinda contrasted those policies to the new Republican Party platform which he characterized as a “revolution” which revives the Lincoln tradition of the Republican Party and returns to its roots as the party of working people and industry. Stressing Trump’s tariff policy, he said, “we all know there is only one person who can rebuild industry in this state.”