Politics is the art of turning the enemy’s weapons against them. 

Before a fundraising letter called her a groomer two years ago, State Sen. Mallory McMorrow was a little-known lawmaker. Last month, she spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

Before Donald Trump called her “That Woman from Michigan”, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was best known for a tight blue dress. Nothing she’s done since—no law, speech, or memoir that could’ve been an email—has validated her place on the national stage. Trump provided the match, Whitmer lit it.

Congressman John James just mastered this game in his fourth run for office, his first as an incumbent. 

An August 2022 Detroit News column was supposed to hurt John James. Look no further than the headline: “James plays to economic fears in Macomb County by questioning EVs.” 

A Detroit News columnist, Chad Livengood, tagged along when James spoke at a fundraiser. James told the crowd what’s common knowledge today: The EV transition is bad for Michigan. 

“We’re building the Chinese middle class on the back of ours,” he warned.

When Livengood called James’s opponent Carl Marlinga for comment, Marlinga talked himself right into a John James commercial by calling the auto industry “a dying industry”. 

Two years later, Marlinga’s words have come back to haunt him. James just released a new 30-second attack ad based entirely around the response. 

“I’m glad that Mr. James gave this speech,” Marlinga told the columnist, “because it shows there’s a clear line between the old way of thinking, which is his way—let’s try to save all of the jobs that we have now, let’s hold tight and try to stick with a dying industry as long as we can.” 

“Or we can do it my way, which is to embrace the new products of the future of the new green industrial revolution,” Marlinga added.

Those words echo harshly two years later. This was a 75-year-old man willing to turn the page on the industry that once made Michigan rich and powerful. He’ll turn the page, but he won’t live long enough to be held accountable for the aftermath. 

Macomb County residents can expect to see Marlinga’s words many times between now and Nov. 5. People here don’t respond kindly to talk of the auto industry dying. It didn’t help Mitt Romney in 2012. It won’t help Marlinga in 2024.

The EV is bad for the economy, James said, but it’s also “terrible” for the planet. 

And this is the heresy that shaped the headline. Readers of mainstream media understand the news in Animal Farm-style slogans. Gas engines bad, electric vehicles good. It’s so simple, a sheep could bleat it. 

James was talking off script here and introducing a confusion that would need to be explained to readers.

As Livengood writes: 

“​​James also said his comments that EVs are ‘terrible for our planet’ was in reference to strip mining in China and the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the extraction of metals needed to make batteries to propel vehicles—and the reported use of forced labor to gather those raw materials.”

“Forced labor” is a nice way of saying “slavery.” Journalists pride themselves these days on calling lies lies and calling racism racism. Yet when presented with literal slavery, it’s “forced labor.” OK.

The headline portrays “questioning EVs” as something only a cynic would do. The body of the story tells it differently, admitting that EVs require “hundreds fewer parts” than gas engines. The going estimate is that EVs require a third fewer workers. 

If the disadvantages of EVs are slavery and the death of Detroit, what exactly are the advantages? The column never says. It assumes you know. Or at least know enough to bleat the slogan: Gas engines bad, electric vehicles good.

Michigan’s 10th Congressional District was the third-closest race in America in 2022, decided by just 1,600 votes. 

In a race where every vote counts, every remark matters. Marlinga in 2022 was presenting as a good foot soldier, an adherent to the Green New Deal. An old dog who’s learned new tricks. A man who embraces progress. When asked about the remarks from two years ago, Marlinga’s team doubled down.

The people of Southeast Michigan have this crazy idea they can still make a living working with their hands as their fathers and grandfathers did before them. They believe Detroit, not Shenzhen, can be the king of manufacturing. 

At any rate, the gas-powered Detroit auto industry isn’t dead yet. Will Macomb County send someone to Washington who would hasten that day?

James David Dickson is host of the Enjoyer Podcast. Join him in conversation on X @downi75.