Welcome to the first full week of May. The campaign season is well underway and I now can officially declare that I think Michigan might be in play for the 2024 Presidential election.

This is not an easy statement for me to make. The vast majority of the time Michigan is a deep blue state but the Biden-Harris team has done such a god-awful job the past three-and-a-half years it's put Michigan into a swing state category.

READ MORE:

Michigan Is a BLUE State and Lying About It Won't Change That Fact

Thanks, Joe.

Luckily the person whom Joe Biden picked as his vice presidential running mate back in 2020 — who also happens to be a woman, a minority, and a laugh-a-minute word salad machine — will be visiting Michigan Monday to offer more taxpayer-financed incentives to move the automotive companies into electric vehicles.

I read about it right HERE earlier this morning and I could not help but be super enthusiastic about Madame Veep stopping by here today. 

The Biden administration will provide $100 million for small and medium-size auto parts manufacturers to upgrade their facilities and train their workforce, according to the White House.

Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to announce the move Monday during a visit to Detroit.

The funds are the latest in a series of recent investments and initiatives meant to spur a transition to electric vehicles. 

That transition has become a key political issue in Michigan, the longtime heart of the U.S. auto industry and a crucial swing state in the 2024 presidential election. The Biden administration, knowing that, has made several similar announcements aimed at Michigan recently and is deploying top surrogates alongside Harris for the announcement.

I'm sure most people who are reading this story are in no way, shape, or form aware that there's a rumor going around the country that electric vehicles are the future and we need to get there as soon as possible.

Like yesterday. 

Otherwise, the Chinese, who do a lot of head-faking on this subject, will take the lead and beat us, and the world will collapse upon itself.

Of course, this is an odd priority for a product that over half of Americans say they are NOT interested in purchasing.

Half of U.S. adults say they are not too or not at all likely to consider purchasing an EV, while another 13% say they do not plan to purchase a vehicle. The share of the public interested in purchasing an EV is down 4 percentage points from May 2022.

Yet here is the really weird thing about Kamala Harris visiting a state that possibly could swing back to Donald Trump like it did in 2016 and bringing the package of political goodies for the Democrats' special interest groups. Switching to electric vehicles is predicted to kill UAW jobs, which is traditionally one of the Democrats' biggest slush funds of support. 

Maybe Biden and Harris just think the blue-collar workers of the UAW are too stupid to know this.

Thankfully, we have groups within the union that are here to set the record straight.

I covered part of this last September, right around the time of the UAW strike of the Big 3 automakers. The UAW Should Be Striking the Biden Administration Over the Push to End Auto Jobs 

When I read this piece here and looked at some of the numbers of how many jobs would be lost to the transition to electric vehicles I was amazed that the union leadership even gives a dime to the Democrats.

President Joe Biden praised General Motors chief executive Mary Barra at a 2022 event, saying "we owe you big" for pushing the auto industry towards all-electric production over the next decade. The president’s kind words for Barra, and their decision to team up to back a transition to electric vehicles, could come back to haunt both parties amid a historic United Auto Workers strike.

The 150,000-member union has singled out Barra as an example of corporate greed at the "Big Three" automakers, a group that also includes Ford and Stellantis. UAW, which launched a strike at four auto plants last week, took a shot at Barra over her industry-leading $29 million annual salary. UAW president Shawn Fain declared "war" on the Big Three last month, citing the $200 million Barra has raked in over the past decade. The union wants a hefty increase to salaries and benefits for its members, along with assurances that jobs will be protected during the transition to EV production.

That dramatic shift will likely come at a steep cost in terms of auto industry jobs, and the transition to electric vehicles is at the center of the auto workers' complaints. According to one estimate, the transition to EV production will come at the cost of 117,000 auto jobs.

You may think I'm making that up, but I'm not.

"The workers who are making engines and transmissions today, their jobs will be eliminated when we make a transition to electric vehicles," UAW research director Jennifer Kelly said earlier this year. And Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, said last year he expects electric vehicles will require 40 percent less labor to produce than traditional automobiles.

So how long do Joe and Kamala think that 100 million dollars will last?

Just long enough until the election in November.

Those of you folks today who have been invited to show up at the dog and pony show with Vice President Harris need to know they are killing your jobs while saying they're standing with you. Yet if the automotive jobs that are currently creating combustion engines are going to go away at the clip mentioned above, you're getting screwed long-term. 

If you don't realize that living in Michigan, which is the birthplace of the automotive industry, that's on you.

However, I have a hunch that there are enough blue-collar folks in Michigan who've had enough of Biden and Harris and they're willing to vote for Donald Trump again or just not vote for the current crew in the White House.

In Michigan, that's progress.