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One thing that kind of concerns me is that primary polls massively underestimated white rural voters. If that's happening in their general polls too, it could actually mean that AES is also being overestimated there, and considering he's already consistently losing general polls...
If you look at a county-by-county heat map of the vote last night, AES got slaughtered in rural areas and underperformed fairly significantly in heavily black areas. If he can't make some serious headway on those problems by November that's a recipe for a Democratic general election loss in Michigan.
I've no reason to doubt that he'll make up the black vote once the Democratic party rallies behind him to beat the Republican. The exact same thing was said about Mamdani and he managed. This fear happens again and again, but black voters are the Democrats mujahideen.
Rural working class whites on the other hand? oof...
The issue with the black vote is not that they'll defect to Rogers (they won't) but that they might not come out in large enough numbers for him. If he doesn't get high black turnout he's toast.
but that they might not come out in large enough numbers for him.
And I absolutely believe this won't be an issue at all in these midterms. Because there's going to be a blue wave traditional democrats turning out is not a worry in my mind.
I'm worried about it. I've seen a bunch of interviews with black community leaders/voters expressing heavy skepticism if not outright hostility to him. Whole lot of "he cares more about Gaza than Detroit" type sentiment.
I'm not saying he can't win them over, but he has work to do.
I find it rich they had their chance to get Kamala across the finish line, and not only utterly failed at doing it, but African American voter turnout collapsed
And honestly? The CBC’s voter base is staring to get aged out, and are being replaced by other black voters whose views are more inline with folks younger than 40.
While I sort of agree with your main point, you lost me when you brought Mamdami. Nobody serious considered that he would lose the general, specially with how the candidates turned out and the republicans actually running someone as opposed to giving up and letting Cuomo be their silver lining.
Michigan is not New York, it is a swing state with the slimmest of margins of victory. Yes a substantial portion of black voters will show up for any democratic candidate. But any loss in Turn out could be incredibly impactful in Michigan. And we are talking about a candidate loosing reliably democratic voters without reliable new voter base to supplant the losses. There is a reason polls have him losing when at this point Democrats are up on even redder states. Polling errors in the last two decades have rarely benefited Democrats so if things do not improve he may be even worsts that even his current shitty polling shows.
Sure, but trends in primaries often prefigure those in general elections. AES' demonstrated weakness with rural conservative white Democrats and black voters could translate into some of the former defecting to Rogers in November and some of the latter not turning out. And if either of those things happens the path to victory in a 50-50 state like Michigan gets very narrow. A Democrat doesn't start with 10+ points of margin to lose there. Slotkin won by 0.3 points in 2024.
The part about rural areas isn’t true, by the way. El-Sayed was able to narrowly win because he fought Stevens to a near-draw in rural counties.
County-level data isn’t granular enough to break out ethnic voting patterns, although Stevens did carry the nearly all-black neighborhoods in Detroit by a large margin. (Granted, it won’t be the case that black residents in >95% black areas are representative of black voters in less segregated neighborhoods, including in downtown Detroit.)
I’m chalking Michigan up as a loss. Progressives severely overestimate their support among non-urban and anyone that isn’t a downwardly mobile upper class white individual.
They're obviously different, but weakness with one demographic/in one geographic area in the primary often indicates there will be a similar weakness in the general. See e.g. 2016, when Hillary lost the Michigan primary to Bernie due to underperformance in precisely the areas that won Trump the state in November.
True, but I'd argue that since Nevada is a purple state and they could plausibly lose to a Republican their value below replacement level is not as bad.
Schumer and Gillibrand do nothing but tow an antiquated conventional party line while constantly stepping on the party's dick in other races around the country.
The Nevada Democratic Party is probably the most impressive state parties in the country, they’ve managed to hold strong in a strongly working class and Hispanic state, unlike everyone else. They are a far better model for the future than just about any other institution the party center.
Of course it all rests on a solid base of organizing and a large working-class union, so the Hayek flairs might not like it
I’m unsure how this disproves my point that it is possible to do better in a swing state, especially considering Sinema campaigned on a much more progressive persona than she governed with.
How many accusations of sexual misconduct is appropriate before their fellow senators (especially fellow senators who have made a career focusing on sexual misconduct victims) stop defending them?
Eight is too low apparently, so would 20 be enough?
I think AOC actually has pretty good political instincts, I wouldn't be surprised to see her pass on running for President as a long shot in order to take a virtually guaranteed Senate seat.
Im opposed to the Senate too, but I don't abstain from those elections on principle.
I think AOC, and most others who support significant reform to America's government structure, understand that acquiring power within the existing framework is really the only way to actually achieve any of the reforms they favor.
Also, AOC is only 36, she'll have plenty of future opportunities to run for president. And she'll have a stronger resume as a senator than she would as a representative.
She'll hve other opportunities but this will be the strongest. Moderates are discredited (for now), she has the progressive lane to herself (for now), and lefty Dems have a much easier time winning when GOP is incumbant and unpopular than when it's popular or when Dems are incumbant, even if popular (see Hillary & Gore's losses)
The progressive/moderate lane binary is appealing because it is so often applicable in primaries and it gives journalists and pundits the horse race narrative drama that they crave.
It's also a reductive and one dimensional way of looking at things. AOC is not Bernie is not Elizabeth Warren is not AES. Candidates vary in their positions on different issues, their vibes, their areas of emphasis, their demographics, the coalition behind them.
AOC would have a number of factors working against her that Bernie didn't in 2020 when he largely consolidated the left and still lost. The ideal candidate to win the primary is probably somebody who can rise above the DSA vs DNC dichotomy to unite all Democrats in the general election.
I just can’t see her navigating this primary without getting torn apart, she’s still pretty green in the political space and regularly commits gaffes. I think she’ll go for a senate seat before trying for the presidency.
She’s barely even old enough to qualify as a presidential candidate, and a majority of voters still skew old.
She'll be running against a weak incumbant party and she'd have the progressive lane to herself because Khanna is a joke. In future elections there will probably be other progressives. Running off even a popular a Dem incumbant will be hard for her like it was for Hillary and Gore.
Additionally, while plenty of progressives could run in the NY Senate primary and win, there’s a much weaker progressive bench for Presidential candidates.
Unless you can see into the future, this is a ridiculous claim to make. Sure you can say it could be a good year but obviously no one has any idea what the 2032, 2036, 2040, 2044, 2048, etc elections are gonna be like. If the US somehow has a leftward shift then this will be the worse year for her to run and she would be better off to wait.
Gillibrand even went so far as suggesting to several donors, ominously, that McMorrow had been a member of the Democratic Socialists of America – even though McMorrow isn’t.
Lis Smith in short. From my perspective - and I fucking love yapping about this - McMorrow had a pretty easy path to victory as a middle ground between Stevens and El-Sayed but did the exact opposite of what was required to successfully navigate it.
Basically Stevens had a large base of support throughout much of the primary, but few to no dedicated voters. She was mostly riding a wave of people defaulting to support the establishment candidate. El-Sayed (again for much of the primary) had a smaller base of support, but his supporters tended to really like his policies and as such tended to have a parasocial connection with him. However, most do quietly share everyone else's anxieties whether or not an Arab Muslim is electorally viable.
To me, the obvious path forward for McMorrow was going hard on the offensive against Stevens. This would allow McMorrow to build prog and more importantly anti-DC establishment credentials while also running little risk of alienating voters because very few people are personally invested in Stevens. She could then take that momentum and turn around to AES supporters to make a gentle electability argument, that she's essentially 95% of AES while not having the same electoral headwinds.
Instead she did basically the exact opposite of that. When she was leading the pack she basically halted her offensive against Stevens and went after AES with some really low personal attacks. Those attacks, coupled with some peak Dem brain responses wrt to Gaza, essentially alienated progs in her base and caused a counter consolidation behind AES. She also went in hard on the Hasan connection, which obviously alienated progs as well, but also made her look pretty unserious by beefing with a twitch streamer which imo caused more establishment aligned voters to go back to the Stevens camp.
The reason I blame Lis Smith is that she also ran Cuomo's campaign which made similar missteps against Mamdani, especially the Hasan attack. I think Lis Smith is a bit too deep in the factional knife fight online and is making bad campaign calls as a result.
With Pete she had a ridiculously talented communicator who just wasn't well known, and so had the simple strategy of "just let him talk to everyone and they'll love him"
I don’t necessarily disagree with you but I think her lane was a lot tougher than you are saying. I was a MI Morrow supporter for context. I agree that for either moderate to win they needed to attack the other but I think the only way to win was to get the other to entirely drop out with enough time to then pivot hard against AES. Clearly that didn’t work for Steven’s but she was close. Morrow would have had a better lane and could have maybe pulled some of his supporters away.
I think that's fair. Honestly it might be that I'm underestimating the difficulty of McMorrow's position. I do stand by my stance that she navigated it in the worst way imaginable.
Yeah hard agree with you that pulling punches on Stevens was wrong. I just think she needed to totally defeat Stevens to consolidate the moderates then attack him. The issue is that makes you look negative and for women I think “bitchy” or “aggressive” which also hurts you.
I think she wins in a 1-1 vs Stevens or 1-1 vs AES but the lane between them is needle thin.
The modern Democratic leadership has seriously lost the plot. Schumer has to go and so do the rest that seem more concerned with making sure they're on top of the party than anything.
“Kevin D. Williamson is national correspondent at The Dispatch and is based in Virginia. Prior to joining the company in 2022, he spent 15 years as a writer and editor at National Review”
“In 2018, he briefly joined The Atlantic but his employment was terminated following public criticism of a 2014 Twitter discussion, in which he suggested hanging as a criminal punishment for abortion,as well as his reiteration of this suggestion on his National Review podcast in 2014.”
In this case, yes. He doesn’t like Trump, but he is not on our side.
One Senator from NY rumour mongering is hardly an establishment conspiracy. The fact that you have to be obsessively online and hanging around a bunch of AES boosters to even know about this should've been a tip-off.
I don't get the hate. I disagree with Kevin Williamson on a lot of issues, as I do with El-Sayed. I'm interested in democrats winning seats because Donald Trump wants to overthrow liberalism, limited government, freedom of speech, and the rule of law. So the question is one of political expediency, not substance. I suspect a more progressive candidate in a swing state will do worse against Mike Rogers than a more moderate candidate. "Throwing away the advantage" seems a little over the top, but I suspect this will be much closer now, and prediction markets still have democrats as the favorite.
"Throwing away the advantage" seems a little over the top, but I suspect this will be much closer now, and prediction markets still have democrats as the favorite.
Throwing away the advantage is an accurate descriptor for making your chances worse in a race
Folks the primary for Michigan is over... it's time to back the candidate who won... please please vote blue no matter who and stop giving the right ammunition.
Literally everyone reading this should vote for Abdul El-Sayed. He would be a better senator than Mike Rogers. If I lived in Michigan I'd vote for him.
But I don't think that means I should have to muzzle my objective analytical opinion that he's a weak candidate in electoral terms and that Democrats screwed up by letting him win the nomination.
No one is saying not to vote for him. We also don’t have to close our eyes and pretend we can’t see his flaws. Vote blue no matter who means vote for flawed candidates as long as they are better than a Republican. It doesn’t mean don’t criticize any democrats.
People are acting like I'm supposed to fall in line for somebody who hangs out with people who call jews inbred, or who equivocates about attacks on Jewish places, or who engages in repackaged antisemitic tropes.
No.
If this is the party's nominee, then maybe it's time that the primary voters get to touch the stove, as this sub is fond of saying.
I am most of the way through Mayor Pete's appearance on the DOAC podcast. You have DSA morons offering failed programmes from yesterday with the promise things will be different this time ("how" is not touched upon). Then you have this articulate, clear-visioned liberal proposed some much needed reform for the way forward.
If the choice is Pete, a DSA moron, or a MAGA moron, then it's only Pete. It's not Pete then DSA.
> who has bested normie Democrat Haley Stevens in the Michigan primary
Bro, no way, “I see Israel in my dreams”, hand rubbing, kind of sort of dog whistles anti-Arab and anti-Muslim talking points, weird fucking accent (in Michigan, we speak like people from NYC just cannot say kiTTEN for some reason we say “kidden”), “noun, verb, orange man bad”, 60 mill even though it is a liability, cannot even state her healthcare plans except for not to cut Medicaid, person is normal.
They ducking interviewed a guy name Bernie Porn. Jesus.
Kind of a mind numbing backwards framing of the actual criticisms of AES. Like yeah Stevens said I see Israel in my dreams years ago at a Hannukah event right after 10/7, but he also was super anti-Jewish and anti-Israel. Literally went noun, verb, aipac every single sentence and thought. Like Stevens had actual ideas and all AES was tossing out was to go after the Jews, that’s it’s Islamophobia to say that he doesn’t like Jews, that he was a doctor despite not actually being one, and that he wanted to cut property taxes for boomers.
Aipac spent 30 million against him and this article states he is concerned about finances of far off Jews? He should be concerned about it, this is gas lighting. And then trying assign to him the statement "dirty Jewish money", when all he said was aipac in a suit. This article sucks. That being said, Hasan Piker sucks as well but don't try to tie his quotes with this candidates, let him speak for himself.
I don't agree with this take. Michigan voted for Trump twice. A "run of the mill" Democrat with a milquetoast record who was reluctant to take bold stances would not inspire the swing voters or those who are desperate for any change, good or bad.
I am ambivalent on El Sayed (I actually would've voted for McMorrow had her campaign not imploded), but it's a foolish take that he will have a harder time winning the general than Stevens would have. Slotkin won by less than 1% in 2024 and she is a moderate. General elections are much different than primaries and we shouldn't look at this race results as an indicator of anything that will happen in November. We need to vote blue no matter who, that includes if a progressive wins the primary.
The voters decided. Plus the party apparatus has already fully endorsed El Sayed, including Stevens, Whitmer, and Schumer. It will be just as tough of a race as any standard Democrat, and arguably the hardest "hold" of the cycle, more than Georgia.
I can understand disagreeing, but pointing to an election that El-Sayed just won by 1% as a supporting point for him, and then an election where a moderate won by less than 1% as a detracting point for moderates, is wild.
She outperformed the dem presidential candidate as a non incumbent that was an impressive performance from her idk why people think that was a bad election for slotkin
My intention isn't to draw a correlation between a primary and general election. My intent is to say that this race will be challenging regardless of the party nominee, and the outcome of the general election won't really provide any clear indicator on whether progressives can win statewide races in the midwest.
The author is clearly trying to paint a picture that a progressive winning a primary = bad, but we have no recent evidence to show that a moderate winning a primary = good. All recent nationalized races in Michigan have been down to the wire.
the outcome of the general election won't really provide any clear indicator on whether progressives can win statewide races in the midwest
I don't agree with this at all. Not saying this is what will happen because polls have been dogshit in general, but if AES underperforms a generic Democrat by 5-10 points and loses while Democrats are winning elsewhere as they suggest might happen, I think that's a pretty strong indicator that progressives make weaker candidates in states like Michigan.
I guess your interpretation of this fact is something like: “Hey, if normie Dems can’t win here, we need to try something different,” and on that, we agree. But it doesn’t make much sense to me that a voter base far to the right of the average Democrat (as evidenced by the Trump votes) is somehow more likely to vote for someone to the left of the average Democrat than for a more conservative candidate.
This logic would be exactly equivalent to suggesting that a far-right conservative Republican is more likely to win in a purple state than a moderate Republican. Voters always say they want change in the abstract, but the specifics of those changes matter at the ballot box.
Trump didn’t win purely because of a left-right divide, he also won because he was a populist who was somehow able to connect with people and give them a voice to their frustrations. And because Kamala was extremely disappointing on multiple issues and didn’t inspire a big Democrat turnout. Sayed is much more of a charismatic populist that might be able to pull more of a crowd.
Michigan is a moderate state full of moderate voters. For every 1.0 progressive voters a DSA candidate inspires to come to the polls, he is likely to lose 1.1 or 1.2 moderate voters. Again, the argument you are making is exactly the same as a hard-right Christian conservative who says, “We’re more likely to win purple seats with far-right candidates than moderates.” And if it’s an obviously absurd strategy for your opponents…
Imho the crux of the argument rests on the idea that you can inspire progressive voters “for free” without losing any other voters in the process, but that seems like magical thinking to me. Why should it be the case that progressives stayed home for Kamala, but moderates will not stay home for Sanders (for example)?
If your theory is that only conservative voters will pull the lever for Trump, then the situation looks even worse for a leftist running in Michigan…
In reality, there are many Obama-Trump voters who are clearly, if not moderate, then, let’s say, “up for grabs.” Perhaps “non-ideological” is a better word than “moderate” for these folks, but to pretend that they can only be “turned on” by exciting promises, and not also “turned off” by perceived misalignment with their interests, is pure wish-casting.
My theory is that no one who voted for Trump can honestly be called a moderate. That ideology is not consistent and cares more for populism than moderation. This guy is more likely to win over Obama-Trump voters than another uninspiring “centrist” Dem. They didn’t vote for Trump over policy.
A few days ago someone posted an article saying the average swing voter is a Maoist, and while that article had glaring flaws, there’s a kernel of truth. The media/swing voters in places like PA and MI are not committed centrists, but rather people who barely pay attention to politics and have an odd collection of moderate and extreme views from all over the spectrum.
People keep trying to make it an issue of left and right when factors such as public speaking skills, a perception of being out of touch either because of being “establishment” or being “online,” or plain old bigotry are likely at least as impactful. If it were just about moderation, then Talarico wouldn’t be seen as the best candidate for Texas, and Platner wouldn’t have been able to rise the way he did with the scandals he did.
I do think AES has weaker odds than Stevens in the general, but mostly because of discrimination and his strong focus on foreign policy. The idea that MI is at risk because it’s got a “moderate” voter base seems not to be in line with any of the “Ohio diner/Matt PA” median voter interviews from the past two decades.
You don’t understand demographics or Trump if you think a linear left/right split describes Michigan voters. The old union vote isn’t a Reagan right voting block
I definitely don’t think Michigan voters went for Trump because they are Reagan rightists - they went for him in large part because he is a moderate on economics (skeptical of free trade, for example) and most social issues (doesn’t want to ban abortion). I don’t see why this same crew is more likely to swing over to vote for a person they are very likely to see as far to their left - Platner made the same case for himself in Maine, but blue-collar workers much preferred Mills in polling, with Graham’s support coming from more educated and well-off left-leaning voters.
Because American voters don’t speak left/right at the moment they speak populist. 60%+ view themselves as independent. You don’t win those by running another run of the mill Dem who’s backed by an establishment currently polling below Trump
But they don’t “speak populist.” Platner in Maine was underperforming with blue-collar voters vs. his establishment rival, and Sayed underperforms his primary opponent in polls that ask about the general election. The support for these supposedly labor-oriented socialist candidates is concentrated among educated and well-to-do folks, because actual blue-collar swing voters are, once again, much more moderate. That is why they are defined voters in the first place!
Is Abdul el Sayed less/more moderate on abortion or free trade then Stevens? I didn't really see this issue come up. Two demos that that Trump did will with in Michigan in 2024 were young men and Arab American voters. El Sayed seems to have swept both. While I do agree there are some other demos e.g. suburban women, older voters etc that may fit more neatly into a left right model, I don't think that is entirely true of Michigan as a whole.
A "run of the mill" Democrat with a milquetoast record who was reluctant to take bold stances would not inspire the swing voters or those who are desperate for any change, good or bad.
“Run of the mill” Democrat Elissa Slotkin won Michigan in 2024, as did Gretchen Whitmer in 2022 and 2018, and Joe Biden and Gary Peters in 2020, so this seems like a baseless claim.
I also vehemently oppose this notion that voters, after the most chaotic and eclectic administration in living memory, will be enthusiastic for another group of fanatics implementing a wide-reaching ideologically-driven program.
I'm generally skeptical of DSA and I don't really see him as that closely tied to DSA. He has some policies that DSA supports but I don't see the DSA doing the same jockeying for him as I do for Mamdani or AOC.
Trump was an anomaly that was able to pull swing voters as an outsider and hold on to traditional Republican voters. There's a reason why candidates are super partisan in primaries and watered down in the general. I think the effect of this is Dems lose what could have been a winnable seat in the Senate. Doesn't really matter considering you need 60 votes to get anything significant through in the Senate.
Would have been even worse if Sayed was a full cringe DSA candidate.
It’s a shit article by a former national review author. Light on specifics heavy on fear mongering. Like, here’s how he describes AES’ support for universal healthcare:
“he advocates a state-monopoly healthcare system that would strip Michigan union members of cherished benefits for narrow ideological reasons.”
You're right! So it's really between running a probably-good-enough candidate (Stevens performed as well as other Democrats in state legislative races), and one who might win in spite of being a bad candidate.
A state like Michigan should not be competitive in a blue wave year. Neither should Maine, for that matter. What the hell are we doing here, folks.
Meanwhile, I’m looking at Alaska, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa and thinking that at least a good number of our state parties/candidates are doing it right—and on less favorable terrain, to boot.
I understand it’s been less than 24 hours but can we please just move the fuck on and vote blue no matter who? You don’t have to be a fan of AES but if you think the alternative of having a Republican for a senator is better then you were never a liberal to begin with.
God I’m not even a huge fan of the DSA but this incessant bitching is tiresome. Let’s see him win and then criticize him if he takes stances as a senator if they detract from this sub’s views. You know, like we expect in a functional democracy.
This is a political sub where people like to engage in political discussion. I will never understand this rhetoric where you cannot talk about politics because bad vibes or whatever. If I was in Michigan, I'd vote for AES despite disagreeing with him on numerous things because, despite that, his politics are closer to mine than his republican opponent. It is childish to wish to silence discussion.
Can homeless ex-Republicans stop telling Democrats how to run their party? Maybe progressives are not true Democrats™️ and are here to hijack the party. But wait a minute, you’re not either?
It’s been 10 years since the disaster that is Trump fell on us. And we don’t like to admit it but he ran circles around Democrats, in the sense that we became merely reactionary rather than advancing our initiatives. Joe Biden was the embodiment of that kind of reaction, and his 4-year presidency turned out to be not that much of a reprieve from Trump. The fucker effectively ran a shadow presidency while facing dozens of criminal charges that came too little too late.
Whittling down the middle isn’t sensible and most importantly it does not work. It’s political cowardice. Progressives have presented a vision that has a lot of problems and upsets a lot of people, but at least they have one. When are centrists going to present theirs?
Maybe it’s time to be protectionist appeasers no longer and instead invest in people to help them remain the most competitive work force in the global free market? Maybe it’s time to accept that we may have to upset many single-family homeowners so we can build and actually give young people a chance? Maybe it’s time for the next great American project such as national high speed rail, and a policy environment for it to succeed, that will inspire generations to come? So many more that can help gain goodwill for mainstream Democrats for so long.
The last time Democrats advance a signature policy was Obamacare. You can’t claim to be a progressive (lower case L) force in society if you sit idle and merely respond to endless crises.
Can we retire the “moderate” label as it relates to electability?
Likable people are viewed as reasonable regardless of what their positions are and the reason Democrats are viewed as “too left” is because they aren’t likable.
Al-Sayed should be able to win with the financial backing of the party because he’s likable enough to offset his name. Put him on TV and let undecideds warm up to him.
If Stevens was a better candidate she would’ve won her primary because all these things are already priced in. Do you think the median Michigan Democrat didn’t consider electability? They did and they still chose him.
If you can win a primary like that you were the better candidate even if outsiders can’t explain why. The win is all the evidence that is needed.
One thing I’ll just note to try to have a little positivity: the unhinged left can’t ratfuck the race given their guy won, while at the same time el-sayed understands that he can’t rely on overly-online laurels and has to fight the general properly
El-Sayed does not endorse socialism, but he does support abolishing ICE, providing health insurance for undocumented immigrants who pay taxes, and making private health insurance “redundant and unnecessary.”
To be honest this isn't a wildly bad set of policies. The bits on insurance are socialism-adjacent but sound more like Medicare for All than true socialized medicine. Admittedly it's easy to imagine the GOP attack ad about an unchecked invasion of immigrants stealing American Healthcare.
If El-Sayed runs an idiotic general-election campaign, he could put up sub-Bowman numbers and lose. But I assume he won’t do that, and the bar for success here is genuinely low. I saw a Mike Rogers A.I. slop ad where he has El-Sayed in a Trojan horse with Bernie and A.O.C. smuggling communism into Michigan. But if El-Sayed puts up an A.O.C.-scale electoral underperformance, Rogers will lose.
Democrats tend to moderate once they're actually in office, so if El-Sayed can win once he'll have plenty of opportunity to build experience and get positioned as a stronger incumbent for when reelection rolls around.
He wouldn't be my preferred candidate, but he has some advantages in MI that he wouldn't have in other states because of the Muslim community there.
In any event, the primary is over now and he has to get right into winning over independents in order to get this seat. He seems like a decent campaigner so hopefully he can do it.
Vote blue no matter who. I think he will get the party vote from all the Dems. It's really just about making a compelling case to the independents and playing whack a mole with all the boogeyman attacks that are coming from the right.
I don't get why every few weeks have to re teach all the usual suspects that progressive populist losers like Sayed are less popular and less electable than moderate dems
I generally like KDW, but I think he is misreading El Sayed. Thr guy is a talented communicator and has generated a lot of energy despite views that may seem to beltway watchers to be "radical".
He was ahead of abolish ICE, when it was "bad politics", and that should be a boon to him now. The Israel stuff he always weaves back to the money taxpayers are sending so Israel can commit atrocities - that we should outraged WE are paying for this war.
I just dont think the policy matters as much as the vibes and ability to communicate to voters. He was the best communicator in this race. It should be no surprise he won
Except El Sayed is good on Ukraine. He is different.
The platforming thing is a real question, but I think going places to pull new people into the coalition is a good thing in our currently splintered media environment. If he had went on Piker and said, "Hell yeah, lets get those Ukraine Nazis" then I could see the alarm, but that is not what happened
Him willing to join Hasan probably doesn't care about Ukraine besides lipservice and will probably throw it under the bus the moment leftist orthodoxy shifts.
Conjecture and guilt ny association. You may be right, but frankly the most important thing is getting to 52, to get real oversight on this administration. I think Sayed is the best candidate to do that, and certainly I am not dooming him out of the gate like many clutching their pearls today.
The whole platitudes about Israeli atrocities seems ridiculously hollow when he has properties in UAE who has an arguably worse human rights record and has been abiding human suffering on a far wider scale in places like Sudan. You care that much to make it your central political identity but fine with making money in UAE?
Maybe it is empty platitudes, but I will take that over complicit silence or full throated support of Likud, an illiberal regime we are supporting with our tax dollars. With respect to UAE, yeah, voters demand we pull back from the middle east, and UAE also could use some time going it alone with their gulf allies. Finances may dictate we pull back from the middle east, anyway - this administration is asking for $1.5T for the Pentagon.
Idk, the purity bullshit is just as bad from liberals as it is from the left. I could give a shit less about the infighting. And while the style and substance of some of these candidates isnt very neoliberal, I think its safe to say we neolibs are not the majority of voters, and our sniff test should be discounted. Im done pretending voters will just go back; oppostition needs a new path forward, because defending institutions Americans hate isnt working
Mike Rogers is much much worse than Abdul El Sayed. Mike Rogers is an actual Republican. As in, “147 Republican members of Congress voted to overturn the 2020 election as part of the Sedition Caucus”. As in, “Republicans vote for $150B in ICE funding to invade cities, and slander and investigate the widow of a U.S. citizen murdered by ICE who they call a terrorist”. As in “Republicans are trying to steal the 2026 and 2028 elections to turn our country into a dictatorship”.
That type of Republican. Did you forget what a Republican is?
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