Stevie Wonder made a call for his home state of Michigan to vote for the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris Democratic presidential ticket in an advertisement created by the MeidasTouch political action committee released Monday (Nov. 2).
Michigan has been one of the key swing states in recent elections and this year is no exception: President Trump won the state by .02 percentage points in 2016.
📺 NEW VIDEO
We need 10,000 retweets by noon: Stevie Wonder joins MeidasTouch to share his love of Michigan and its importance this election. #WonderfulMichigan pic.twitter.com/lquECoaly3
— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) November 2, 2020
In the clip, which is titled “WonderfulMichigan,” Wonder talks about his long history with the state — “You know, I was born in in Saginaw, raised in Detroit and my heart belongs to Michigan,” which of course was also the home of Wonder’s longtime label, Motown Records.
“It was in Michigan that I wrote and sang songs for all the people in this country,” he continues. “If you believe in Michigan, you just know there is power in your hands.”
The clip then cuts to President Obama speaking to a Michigan audience, saying “Imagine on January 20 th, if we swear in a president and vive president who care about working Americans… where everybody’s got a chance. Michigan: that could happen,” he says.
The video then shows a clip of Biden speaking to a Michigan audience, recalling the Obama-Biden administration’s 2009 bailout of the auto industry, which he says saved a million jobs.
Wonder then calls this election “the most important of my lifetime… It’s in your hands to go vote.
“Vote you know like Biden and Harris are the only choice for a chance to bring this country back together,” he says.
While Wonder avoids criticizing the Trump and Republican platforms, there is a clever play on the word “fate” at two points during his narration: “It’s in your hands to go vote,” he says. “You can’t put our country, our lives and our future in the hands of fate” — and at that point the video flashes to the word “Hate” with a no-bogus symbol through it. At that point and later, Wonder’s words can easily be interpreted as saying “of hate” rather than “fate.”
Last month, Wonder released a politically themed new song called “Can’t Put It in The Hands of Fate” that includes contributions from Rapsody, Cordae, Chika and Busta Rhymes as well as Wonder’s five children.
The new video was produced by MeidasTouch, a political action committee founded by Ben, Brett and Jordan Meiselas, three brothers with deep connections to the entertainment industry who have produced more than 100 viral videos calling for Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.