Senator Gary Peters, the last Michigan Democrat to win statewide (in 2014), talked about why Hillary lost and Trump won Michigan in an interview at Vox.
Key reasons include not reaching out to UAW and other union folks who did not trust her on trade issues, not showing up with the candidate or Obama until too late, and using old lists to get out the vote that actually increased Trump turnout. Like the Bernie campaign people, Senator Peters worried about the effect of the trade issue.
Senator Peters supported Hillary in the primary. And, yes, like others, he warned the campaign, but they ignored him also.
Here are some key parts of the interview.
That includes working with our labor unions. I certainly ran into a great deal of angst from union members who were not confident of Hillary Clinton's message on trade. They didn't trust that she’d actually oppose the [Trans-Pacific Partnership] deal even though she was saying she would. If you're on the ground actually talking to voters, and you're recording that information and getting it back, it's either going to prove your model right or prove your model wrong. If your model's not right, then you better think about doing something else, and apparently that didn’t happen.
snip
I was surprised when I started getting anecdotal stories from people who were doing the get-out-the-vote effort. They were knocking on doors of people to tell them to make sure they cast ballots, but the people they were speaking to said they’d be voting for Trump. Some of the anecdotal evidence or stories I heard were up to half of the people of the doors that they were knocking were Trump supporters and yet they were on our get-out-the-vote lists. That tells me that no one actually called that person to find out who they were supporting. Obviously, politics 101 tells that if they tell you they're supporting Trump, you take them off your get-out-the-vote list. You hope they forget about the election.
snip
As far as I know, she didn’t stop at any UAW halls. I probably would have been invited to be with her if she was going to one, and I never got that invitation. She didn't do any labor-specific events that I'm aware of.
snip
Trump’s talk about TPP was certainly important for union members who have been impacted by trade deals. We have seen the erosion of jobs and employment in Michigan. The trade deals, the way they have been written in the past, have really hurt many workers here, so that message has certainly resonated very powerfully. Secretary Clinton said that she would not support TPP, but my personal experience in union halls is that a lot of people didn’t believe her.
Part of the reason that she didn’t have much credibility with some union members is that her husband was a supporter of NAFTA, and there's strong negative feelings about NAFTA in union halls across the state. The fact that her husband pushed NAFTA made it difficult for her to put out a message that she too would be opposed to these kinds of trade deals in the future.
Vox: Hillary Clinton’s loss in Michigan, explained by the last Democrat to win in Michigan
There is a lot more there, including his view that Michigan should no longer be seen as a reliable blue state.
I would say to 2018 and 2020 folks that Michigan is a state where you've got to run a strong campaign. It's got to be heavily focused on an aspirational economic message. This is not a solid blue state by any stretch of the imagination.
It is well worth reading.
It was not just Bernie people and unions whose warnings were ignored by the campaign. They even ignored U.S. Senators who supported Hillary in the primary.
I understand that people make mistakes, but this campaign had highly paid decision makers hired not to make mistakes that would cost the election.
If we want to defeat Trump, we cannot make the same mistakes again.
Update I: Many causes for our defeat.
This comes to mind:
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Another concept is cascading failure:
A cascading failure is a failure in a system of interconnected parts in which the failure of a part can trigger the failure of successive parts. Such a failure may happen in many types of systems, including power transmission, computer networking, finance, human bodily systems, and bridges.