'CBS This Morning' comes to Michigan to record the pulse of voters — literally

In its most recent episode, "Saturday Night Live" debuted a new Weekend Update segment, Aidy In America, which mocked both undecided voters and the reporters trying to find and interview them. Today, CBS This Morning offered an example of the kind of reporting SNL was making fun of, Tony Dokoupil travels to Michigan to get the pulse of voters.

"CBS This Morning" co-host Tony Dokoupil travels to three crucial battleground states to talk to voters about the issues that matter most to them, less than three weeks before Election Day. Monday, he visited Macomb County, Michigan, which voted twice for President Obama, before electing President Trump in 2016.

That's a good summary both of how important Michigan was in the 2016 election and the potential importance of Michigan to the 2020 election. I also think Tony Dokoupil and his news crew went to the right place to check the pulses of Michigan voters, Macomb County. It was Macomb County that swung Michigan to Donald Trump and will be one of the crucial parts of the state in this year's election, along with Detroit proper.

Follow over the jump for the rest of the clips from "CBS This Morning."

The next segment uploaded to YouTube Michigan voters could play critical role in 2020 election opened with Mt. Clemens, the Macomb County seat, and then traveled to Oakland County, where I live, then to Wayne County and Detroit.

"CBS This Morning" co-host Tony Dokoupil hits the streets in suburban Detroit with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer ahead of the 2020 presidential election. The state is critical to both Republican and Democratic bids for the White House. Dokoupil examines the importance of voter mobilization ahead of one of the most important elections in recent memory for the "CBS This Morning" series At America's Crossroads.

Gayle King asking "Save the suburbs from what?" reminds me of what I wrote in Kunstler said Americans would elect maniacs.

Five years ago, I juxtaposed two quotes from James Howard Kunstler to reconstruct a prediction about American politics from the movie "The End of Suburbia."

There will be a great battle to preserve the supposed entitlements to suburbia and it will be an epochal act of futility, a huge waste of effort and resources that might have been much better spent in finding new ways to carry on an American civilization.
...
Americans will elect maniacs who promise to allow them to keep their McMansions and their commutes and that’s going to produce a lot of political friction, probably a lot of violence, probably a threat to our democratic institutions.

Kunstler was both right and wrong about that prediction, as I pointed out when I revisited that quote in my comment on Slowly, Then All at Once.

As for Trump, you once predicted that Americans would elect maniacs who would promise that they could keep the entitlements of suburbia. Trump has shown you to be right and wrong about that. Yes, they'll elect maniacs to protect the entitlements of suburbia, but those entitlements turned out to be psychological and social, not physical. Trump's support is more a response to threats to the social environment as it is to losing SUVs and McMansions, which with the price of oil being low right now, are not issues like they were in 2008 and 2012. Instead, it's immigration, terrorism, and "law and order."

What I also wrote, but didn't post because I didn't want to inflame Vlad, who now goes by Janos, and his fellow deplorables was a second observation.

The one thing missing from "The End of Suburbia" was any discussion of White Flight; the movement to the suburbs was all phrased in class terms, not racial ones. That's something my students from Detroit and its suburbs notice.

It's not what, it's who Trump promises to save the suburbs from. I know who and so does Governor Whitmer, which is why she called it a dog whistle, one people in Michigan have been hearing for decades. I suspect King does, too, which is why she asked.

Speaking of Governor Whitmer, the next segment serves as an update to The plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer from NBC News, MSNBC, and CBS News, Michigan Governor Whitmer responds to Trump as kidnapping case goes to grand jury.

A judge is seeing evidence in the alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. She tells Tony Dokoupil that continued rhetoric by President Trump is putting her in danger.

Donald Trump, stochastic terrorist.

Returning to the subject of the first video, Dokoupil measured what Michigan voters' pulses revealed when they were asked about politics.

Every year, journalists are tasked with "taking the pulse" of voters. This year, "CBS This Morning" co-host Tony Dokoupil took that literally by taking the pulse of voters in Michigan, while asking them about politics and the election. He reports from Macomb County about what he found.

I'm glad to see that someone is concerned enough about climate change to mention it as a key concern. It was an issue before the pandemic and will remain one after the pandemic is over. Still, COVID-19 is the more urgent problem and has people worked up on both sides. Mask hysteria continues. Sigh. As I wrote in Ruby Tuesday and Sizzler file for bankruptcy, tales of the Retail Apocalypse and pandemic, Anti-mask sentiment has actually slowed down the reopening of the economy, not sped it up as the anti-maskers had hoped. I wish the people who consider pandemic safety measures to be an unnecessary impingement of their liberties would learn that. Anyone have a genie's lamp to rub?