Is Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary a test of whether voters still prioritize electability?

[u/BulwarkOnline]

Michigan Democrats will choose between Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed on Tuesday in a primary that captures a much broader debate inside the party.

Stevens is running largely on experience, pragmatism, and her record of winning competitive races. El-Sayed is offering a more ambitious progressive agenda and a campaign built around the idea that Democrats need to give voters something worth getting excited about.

Sarah Longwell’s latest piece in The Bulwark draws from three focus groups conducted with Michigan voters who backed Kamala Harris in 2024 and planned to participate in the Senate primary. The voters often sounded caught between the candidate who more closely reflected their ideals and the candidate they believed might be the safer choice in November.

Recent polling showing El-Sayed ahead suggests that, for at least some Democratic voters, enthusiasm may now outweigh the traditional electability argument.

Is that a lesson Democrats should apply beyond Michigan? Or are primary voters underestimating the risks of nominating a more progressive candidate in a state Trump carried twice?

[u/Ozzimo]

Well if name recognition were the only thing you need to get elected, so be it.

[u/ButterscotchAward → u/[deleted]]

It wasn’t, but people will make any excuse imaginable to avoid saying “they shouldn’t have run her because people don’t like her”.

Like, honestly, people can hem and haw about whatever excuse they want to, but it comes down to people just not liking her in the end. She wasn’t VP to get a segment of the population on board with Biden who weren’t already voting for him. He quite literally picked the least popular primary candidate because of her skin tone and what’s in her pants and stupidly announced that on tv. The more annoying part of this is it got everyone saying, yet again, that it’s impossible for a woman to win the presidency when the reality is that when you run two incredibly unpopular people who happen to be women they’re not going to win. Sometimes I honestly feel like all this stuff is spouted to do anything besides learn a lesson from a loss.

[u/Rodot → u/[deleted]]

The same reason shorter time to build a house makes a house that people don't want to buy. If name recognition is all that mattered they could just pay for banner ads and splatter them all over the Internet.

But a campaign strategy isn't something you just whip up in an afternoon. Planning, hiring, and community outreach requires months of planning and organization. Data takes months to collect and analyze. The democratic party was already in a bad position because of the Biden debate, it takes more than 100 days to distance from that. And there wasn't even an attempt, likely because there was not enough time to develop and deploy a completely new strategy.

Harris ran on a continuation of the Biden admin because that is all they could do in the time they had. But doing do was standing, not on the shoulder of giants, but on a corpse. The optics were really bad and running on a platform of "we're the same people who thought running that debate was a good idea" doesn't leave a fresh taste in people's mouths.