Thesis Defence: The Political Economy of Macomb County, Michigan: The Shift Towards Trumpism

Megan Lambrecht, supervised by Dr. Lawrence Berg, will defend their thesis titled “The Political Economy of Macomb County, Michigan: The Shift Towards Trumpism” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies Urban and Regional Studies Theme.

An abstract for Megan Lambrecht’s thesis is included below.

Defences are open to all members of the campus community as well as the general public. Registration is not required for in-person defences.

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ABSTRACT

In both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, residents of Macomb County have overwhelmingly supported Republican candidate Donald Trump, departing from the county’s previous support for democratic candidates. This thesis seeks to provide a timely explanation as to why the working-class people of Macomb County have shifted away from the union-supported Democratic Party and grasped onto the protectionist Right-wing ideology of Donald Trump. Drawing on feminist poststructuralist political economy, this thesis studies how processes of deindustrialization, neoliberalism, structural racism, and white supremacy have influenced the political economy of Macomb County prior to and during the 2016 presidential election. Further, this thesis examines how discourses of economic and political abandonment within Macomb County’s political economy resulted in the election of Donald Trump. I seek to better understand taken-for-granted systems of power within Macomb County’s political economy. Using the methodology of feminist poststructuralist political economy, I question how deindustrialization, neoliberalism, structural racism, and white supremacy have combined to form a powerful discursive framework within the community and which has led to the embrace of Trumpism. Using critical discourse analysis to examine the public write-in sections of the local newspaper The Macomb Daily, this thesis describes and critically examines how key events like the 2008 Automotive Industry Crisis, the Detroit Public Schools financial crisis, and a federally increased immigration quota in 2015 have informed Macomb County’s political economy. Through this analysis of these events and their connections with deindustrialization, neoliberalism, structural racism, and white supremacy, this thesis seeks to understand how these processes within Macomb County’s political economy led to the election of Donald Trump in 2016.