The president needled the governor. She needled back. (File photo)
President Donald Trump isn't shy about vilifying Democrats and liberals for his base.
But that didn't seem to work for last week's election when he repeatedly went after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and her Covid policies, writes Chad Livengood of Crain's Detroit Business:
At every turn of 2020, President Donald Trump clashed with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, pushing responsibility of the coronavirus pandemic response onto her and other governors, dismissing her pleas for medical supplies and trying to convince voters in the waning days of the campaign that she still had them in a lockdown.
It didn't work.
The contrast of Trump's approach to the threat of COVID-19 to Whitmer's management of the pandemic largely backfired among a bloc of COVID-concerned voters who helped seal his defeat in Michigan last Tuesday.
"Trump's response to COVID is appalling," said Susan Browder, 65, a retired educator and lifelong Republican voter from Higgins Lake in Roscommon County. "It was one of the major factors in how I voted. His whole behavior was a major factor."
Whitmer had a higher approval rating in Michigan than Trump, and Biden won the state by about 147,000 votes. Trump took the state in 2016 by 10,704 votes.
