WOLVERINES

Posted at 9:20 a.m. ET

Normally Democratic Michigan is emerging as a battleground in this campaign.  The Real Clear Politics average shows Obama with only a two-point lead in the state. 

What is going on there?  Does McCain/Palin have a shot?  Henry Payne in The Wall Street Journal reports:

Last year, the Big Three auto makers and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union reached a historic labor agreement. In a move, fundamental to domestic automakers' competitiveness, the union reluctantly agreed to restructure workers' salaries and benefits and give Detroit a chance at erasing the $1,500 per-car labor-cost edge Japanese auto makers enjoy. This altered the state's political landscape in ways the Obama campaign has yet to understand...

...This is the backdrop for the presidential campaign in Michigan. Ironically, the "change" candidate in the race, Barack Obama, fought the labor agreement.

Might come home to haunt him.

Now that people are starting to tune in, what's emerging in Michigan is a surprising amount of strength for the Republican ticket. The latest polls give Mr. Obama only a 1% to 2% lead.

Sen. McCain has always been popular here, notwithstanding his alliance with John Kerry to support expensive fuel mileage standards. Mr. McCain is a fit for Michigan's culture of maverick entrepreneurs, military families and working-class voters. In the presidential primaries in 2000, he trounced George W. Bush.

But alone, Mr. McCain probably wouldn't be competitive. With Sarah Palin as his running mate, he has a real chance of carrying Michigan. Mrs. Palin has rebuilt Mr. McCain's bridge to the GOP base and energized voters that he needs to win in November.

Unleash Sarah.  Chant it loud and clear.  Consider critical Oakland County:

Though Mrs. Palin's social conservatism will make some wary, Bill Ballenger, publisher of the influential newsletter Inside Michigan Politics, told me he's seeing signs that she is energizing Oakland's hockey moms (one nickname for Metro Detroit is "Hockeytown"), while also reinforcing Mr. McCain's maverick credentials.

Veteran pollster Steve Mitchell concurs, citing Mrs. Palin's appeal to the GOP base, her appeal to women and the appeal of her small-town story.

But she's never had tea with Christiane Amanpour, or lunch at the Harvard Club.  How can anyone take her seriously?

And Macomb County, home of the "Reagan Democrats"? 

Meanwhile, Macomb County is also up for grabs. Pollster Stan Greenberg, who helped Bill Clinton successfully tailor his message for Macomb voters in 1992, surveyed the county prior to the Democratic convention and found an electorate anxious over lost auto jobs, rising gas prices and high health-care costs. Their ideal presidential candidate? An "outsider, middle-class" senator, who feels their pain and their betrayal by America's economic and political elites, according to Mr. Greenberg.

Both Messrs. McCain and Obama are competing to fit that description, but so far Mr. McCain has a lead in Mr. Greenberg's polling, running ahead by seven points.

And the Sarah effect in Macomb?

She's "Macomb's girl next door," says Peter Brown, Quinnipiac University's assistant director of polling. The McCain campaign knows it. The first stop Mr. McCain and Mrs. Palin made after the Republican convention was in Macomb County, an event that drew a 10,000-plus crowd.

The unspoken issue:

Will race be a factor in the election? Mr. Mitchell suspects it might be. He points out that in 2006 a ballot initiative to ban racial quotas trailed by substantial margins in polls until Election Day, when it won by a landslide 16%. Support for Mr. Obama may be overstated. If it is, the slim lead he holds in the polls is very tenuous.

"One year ago, Obama was expected to win Michigan in a landslide," says Mr. Mitchell. "What a difference a few weeks makes."

We hope race can be played down.  On the issues themselves, McCain and Palin can win this, if the media lets them.

September 20, 2008.