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<\/p>\nEoin Higgins is the author of \u201cOwned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voice on the Left.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Abdul El-Sayed is<\/span> the Democratic Party\u2019s nominee for the Senate in Michigan after besting Rep. Haley Stevens by less than 1 percentage point. Not long after The Associated Press called the race on Wednesday morning, Stevens threw her \u201cfull support<\/a>\u201d behind El-Sayed. While the votes were still being counted on Tuesday night, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow \u2014 who had dropped out of the running in July \u2014 also endorsed<\/a> her former opponent, acknowledging that despite a \u201cbrutal<\/a>\u201d primary race, what is most important now is to head into November as a \u201cunified party.\u201d<\/p>\n What remains to be seen is whether moderates and Democratic Party pundits will follow suit, get on board, and vote blue no matter who.\u00a0<\/p>\n But centrists seem more interested in saving face than a Senate majority. Complaining that primary voters picked the candidate more likely to lose on Election Day has become a face-saving tactic for moderates as they\u2019ve watched their preferred picks lose against upstart insurgent campaigns like El-Sayed\u2019s.<\/p>\n Among them are The Atlantic\u2019s Jon Chait, who\u2019s never met a progressive candidate he won\u2019t sneer at. In typical form, Chait concern-trolled last weekend over the potential that Democrats would lose Michigan\u2019s Senate seat by picking the charismatic El-Sayed over Stevens.<\/p>\n \u201cIs there a single el-Sayed supporter with enough self-awareness to admit they\u2019re willing to accept a higher risk of defeat to elect a left-wing candidate?\u201d Chait asked<\/a> on X, citing polling showing Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers with a slight but consistent<\/a> lead <\/strong>in the Senate race just outside the margin of error<\/p>\n A more honest commentator might have pointed out that El-Sayed beat back an establishment campaign with tens of millions of dollars behind it: a staggering $62 million poured into the state to boost Stevens, half of it from AIPAC, giving her and her allies a 9-to-1 spending advantage<\/a> over El-Sayed. But honesty has seldom been important for Chait\u2019s left-bashing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Making sure donors and power brokers are confident their interests are still being represented fuels how some party hacks are waging war against the left flank. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n By Wednesday morning, Chait had once again reframed the race<\/a>, this time as a key battle in an existential war for liberalism. He groused variously about the streamer Hasan Piker, who campaigned for El-Sayed; democratic socialism; and James Carville.<\/p>\n \u201cThe left has played down every success by the establishment while forcing it to own every failure,\u201d he wrote in The Atlantic. \u201cThis dynamic points to a broader asymmetry between the two factions. The mainstream liberals of the Democratic Party have focused their energies on defeating Republicans. The left-wing faction has focused on defeating them.\u201d<\/p>\n Chait certainly understands that this is how power is accumulated in the Democratic Party but is upset that, for once, it\u2019s not benefiting his wing.<\/p>\n He wasn\u2019t alone. Matt Yglesias \u2014 the ubiquitous blogger whose self-styled branding as a sensible, middle-of-the road liberal belies his support for Israel<\/a> and antipathy for trans people<\/a> \u2014 had warned about El-Sayed\u2019s ability to win in the general for months<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a post on X citing one outlier poll showing Rogers with a 10-point lead on El-Sayed \u2014 the rest of the polls show a very tight race \u2014 Yglesias whined<\/a> he was \u201ckinda dooming on this situation.\u201d<\/p>\n By early this morning, the blogger was downplaying the Michigan results, saying the Democratic nominee \u201cshould be good enough<\/a>\u201d to beat the Republican this year, even though<\/a> El-Sayed \u201cseems like a distinctly bad candidate\u201d who is likely to \u201c<\/strong>underperform the fundamentals.\u201d<\/p>\n This is the kind of frustration that sets in when you realize that lurching to the right is putting you out of step with the party as whole, but you still want to be sure to appeal to the people who pay the bills<\/a>.<\/p>\n Making sure donors and power brokers are confident their interests are still being represented fuels how some party hacks are waging war against the left flank. Center for American Progress president and CEO Neera Tanden\u2019s war on El-Sayed, waged on X, her platform of choice, was prosecuted in shockingly bad faith, even considering the source. Tanden implied<\/a> that El-Sayed is a toxic misogynist, said his campaign had a \u201cserious sexism<\/a>\u201d problem, and went all-in on every single attack line<\/a> that came out of the Stevens campaign and the special interests that funded it.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I was the El-Sayed campaign, I probably wouldn\u2019t want to be associated with Platner advisors\u2019 previous push for [Graham] Platner as a future President given that it sounds grotesque today,\u201d Tanden said on July 9<\/a>. She continued forebodingly: \u201cBut then again, his campaign has all the same advisors so maybe he will be next.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n El-Sayed\u2019s detractors have<\/span> powerful friends. The biggest money targeting El-Sayed comes from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has already spent over $100 million<\/a> on midterm races around the country, including more than $30 million directly boosting Stevens against El-Sayed.<\/p>\n That massive spending comes as no surprise for two reasons: First, El-Sayed has been a critic of Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza and the country\u2019s conduct in general. Second, he\u2019s of Egyptian descent, which is almost certainly a motivator for AIPAC, which didn\u2019t throw much of any cash against Graham Platner, a white man in Maine, during his Senate campaign \u2014 despite Platner taking equally strong stances against Israel.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead, AIPAC bundled $538,000 in donations<\/a> for incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins, and groups linked to its powerful super PAC pushed at least $750,000<\/a> into a state PAC opposing Platner. It\u2019s a far cry from $60 million, but perhaps in the general election, Troy Jackson, who took over from Platner, will face larger financial attacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the waning days of the campaign, Stevens leaned into her support from AIPAC, all but overtly accusing El-Sayed of being an antisemite. Many of her supporters, including Angie Smith, a school board secretary in suburban Detroit whose backing Stevens continued to celebrate<\/a>, have engaged in the kind of blatant, ugly Islamophobia<\/a> that\u2019s been simmering for a decade but was at its height during the Bush and Obama presidencies. Smith went viral for saying<\/a> in an interview: \u201cDon\u2019t come out speaking only Arabic. Don\u2019t come out with your Arabic music on.\u201d<\/p>\n Stevens herself spent the last week<\/a> of the race emphasizing her Michigan roots, a clear comment on El-Sayed\u2019s \u201cotherness,\u201d and hit her opponent<\/a> with broadside dog-whistle attacks<\/a>, tweeting at her opponent: \u201cEveryone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n The real issue is the ongoing struggle for control of the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n But while Israel and racism were undeniably motivating factors for some of El-Sayed\u2019s Democratic naysayers, and will surely continue to be, the real issue is the ongoing struggle for control of the Democratic Party between the increasingly out-of-touch, more conservative establishment and the increasingly progressive, pissed-off base.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over and over again in this primary cycle, progressive insurgents have defeated centrist picks \u2014 incumbent<\/a> and otherwise \u2014 and even disasters like Platner<\/a> haven\u2019t stemmed the rising tide around the country.<\/p>\n\n
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