DETROIT — “Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden and his supporters didn’t use this bumper sticker slogan from the 2012 re-election of Barack Obama going into Tuesday’s presidential primary victory in Michigan.
But it was the foundation of their appeal to Democratic voters — that Biden is a relationships guy with a long history of backing Detroit when it mattered most.
“In 2009, when GM and Chrysler were on the verge of bankruptcy, it was Barack Obama and Joe Biden who believed in us,” Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said Monday night at a rally with Biden at Detroit’s Renaissance High School.
Several media outlets projected Biden as the winner of Michigan’s crucial primary as of 9:15 p.m. EDT on Tuesday. (For more coverage of the primary from Crain’s Detroit Business, an affiliate of Automotive News, click here.)
Biden didn’t say the words — “I bailed Detroit out” — but he didn’t have to.
His allies in the Democratic Party…
