The polls were wrong in Michigan, but the firebrand Israel-hater Abdul El-Sayed still pulled out a very narrow victory in the Senate Democratic primary after leading handily in opinion surveys.
El-Sayed beat the favored candidate of the Democratic establishment, Congresswoman Haley Stevens. She’s thoroughly progressive but was the moderate compared with El-Sayed. His win is an ill omen for the current direction of the Democratic Party — and a terrible development for Michiganders and Americans alike — but an enormous and deeply symbolic victory for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
The DSA needs little introduction at this point: The radical splinter faction within American left-wing politics, increasingly under the sway of avowed communists, is confessedly hostile to both the Democratic Party and the United States of America alike, and seeks electoral control over the former to foment revolution in the latter.
And after several false starts at attempting to boost one of their own onto a statewide ballot as a Democrat — including the Graham Platner debacle — the DSA finally have their man in Michigan: longtime progressive activist (and serial statewide candidate) Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed is a mask-on/mask-off socialist, consistently claiming that he is not “technically or practically” a member of the DSA, despite having been intimately associated with its Detroit-area chapter for nearly a decade, including in a fundraising capacity. (Few are fooled by the artifice, which he clearly considers necessary for the sake of electoral purposes.)
El-Sayed does not disclaim the DSA’s radical politics, however. Not only did he have its tacit endorsement; he has the explicit ones of luminaries like Bernie Sanders and Hasan Piker as well. El-Sayed is running on a platform of “Medicare for All” as well as packing (or otherwise “reforming”) the Supreme Court, and he has a long list of institutions he wishes to see abolished: the Senate filibuster, the Electoral College, and ICE, to name but a few.
Another thing El-Sayed wishes to see abolished is the State of Israel — and he spends as much time talking about the country as he does Michigan’s domestic economic issues. “Every definition of a Jewish state ends up in some articulation of illiberal values, every single one,” El-Sayed told CNN in early July. Elsewhere in that same interview, he was asked if it was possible to be a progressive while supporting Israel, and his answer was definitive: “Not if you’re a Democrat and you believe in human rights.”
This is the man Michigan Democrats have put forth as their champion for November. And because Michigan (a state where Republicans have not won a Senate race since 1994) retains its inherently Democratic lean — especially given an anticipated midterm walloping for the GOP — he stands more than a reasonable chance of becoming the most anti-American senator ever elected to office.
In Mike Rogers — who won the uncontested GOP Senate primary — Republicans are extremely lucky to have drawn their best possible matchup against El-Sayed for November. Rogers is a well-known and widely respected former congressman from central Michigan. His background in national security should provide a fine contrast to El-Sayed’s childish posturing, and his manifest seriousness as a candidate should fit the profile of what Michiganders are looking for in a senator far better than the rhetorical bomb-throwing of El-Sayed.
It is notable that El-Sayed forged his primary victory among educated white voters and showed notable weakness among working class and black voters, a well-established pattern now for DSA or DSA-type candidates — who claim to speak on behalf of the same people who keep rejecting them at the ballot box. This is an electoral opening for Rogers to try to exploit in November.
But the electorate is going to be an angry one, and President Trump is unpopular in the state. The problem with a major political party losing its mind is that a goodly number of the candidates it nominates will, if the circumstances are right, make it into office. Beware.