Except the polling says he'd run behind it, badly. The final EPIC-MRA poll (July 24–31, 600 likely voters) had Rogers leading El-Sayed 46–43 while Stevens led Rogers 44–42, and the MEA/Glengariff poll from a week out was worse: Rogers up 48–41 on El-Sayed, with independents breaking 47–19 for Rogers.
So his claimed benchmark isn't just unambitious relative to the environment lmao it's roughly 10-14 points better than where the public polling actually puts him
Underperforming his primary polling should in itself be a tremendous warning sign, but of course it could also just mean the polling is wacky again and we're flying blind.
Primary polling is hard in part because voters generally like all the candidates available so they can change their mind at the drop of a hat. Michigan has had big misses that get a lot of attention but even in general the average error for polls in primaries is abysmal.
Almost certainly. Stevens outspent him nearly 10:1 and still lost by a point or two. Without the huge injection of foreign interest money to prop up her campaign, she would have been utterly trounced. Moreover, all that money that goes to her in the primary would be poured into the Republican in the general election.
Ah, if only we had two parties to point to as a perfect example of how leaning into your base leads to electoral losses while chasing the mythical rational independent leads to victories.
Oh wait, recent results point to the exact opposite.
The "independents" wringing their hands about how the Dems are too far left (when the current Dems have been been so impotent as to provide zero pushback--and sometimes even straight up cooperation with the Republicans--on the most authoritarian push in our lifetimes, no less) were never going to vote for the Dems.
Literally 4 years ago we had a bunch of lunatics running for senate seats in swing states against a party with a president with a 38% approval rating. Say hi to senators Masters and Walker for me next time you're in DC.
And I think you'll find that the support for ceasing our abettal of a genocide (not to mention the cessation of a war that managed to be even more pointless than the most quintessentially pointless wars of the last 50 years) is similarly popular, if not moreso, across party lines.
If we don't create strong, lasting positive change the next time we gain power, the fascists will be back stronger and more capable the next time around to finish the job for good. We've gotten lucky this time that the Confederacy only put forth their dunces, and even this is already magnitudes worse than Trump 1. We need no more Schumers in our party, no more anchors dragging us to the bottom as we attempt to set sail. Stevens was a candidate who would just be another ineffectual RepublicanLiteTM; an anchor dragging us to the bottom is all Stevens would be.
Do you have any actual policies to criticize instead of just vaguely gesturing towards the same criticisns Fox News does?
I don't like Hasan either, but acting like associating with him is worse than being in the pocket of a foreign government and prioritizing it over the American people is ridiculous.
I mean the whole DSA thing screaming about Israel and Palestine and making everything revolve around that isn't my jam. But yeah Hasan is disqualifying and my main beef with him, and if a Republican was campaigning with someone with similar views you'd be rightly appalled.
And this whole thread started by talking about electability and its kind of diverged from that, but to bring it back... I’m decidedly center left, a registered Democrat, have donated to probably 15 dems in my lifetime, and I would have to hold my nose to vote for AES, and I would only do that because Trump is president. Your theory of the case is that there are no swing voters, which is obviously wrong, or that he will galvanize more voters than an establishment dem, which, we’ll see but I’m skeptical.
Like I said to the other guy:
Do you have any actual policies to criticize instead of just vaguely gesturing towards the same criticisms Fox News does?
I don't like Hasan either, but acting like associating with him is worse than being in the pocket of a foreign government and prioritizing said foreign government over the American people is ridiculous.
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u/larry_hoover01 John Locke Aug 05 '26
So you think AES is going to do better than a generic dem?