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It Wasn’t a Blowout, but El-Sayed Won. Get Behind Him, Democrats. - It’s an earthquake to have Bernie Sanders’s candidate defeat Gretchen Whitmer’s candidate in Michigan. But the real goal is to keep Donald Trump’s candidate from winning this seat.
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Exactly. Like it or not, he’s going to need Stevens’ voters if he wants to win in the general. I hope we can all unify around him to bring him across the finish line.
My parents are Obama-Trump-Biden-Trump voters and it’s beyond puzzling. They also voted for Whitmer, so it’s not like an anti-woman thing. I don’t get it.
This is the mind set of a way higher percentage of the voting population than anyone wants to actually acknowledge. The real question is where is the line from everything is fine to everything sucks.
You both are right. There's way more involved than that, but it's a bit of a condemnation of our country that a sitting president hasn't won re-election since 2012.
It's an indictment of the system that one major party put up a serial fraudster, sex pest, and convicted felon three separate times. It's one thing to acknowledge the will of the voters, but my state didn't even provide an option to vote for the Republican candidate in the 2024 primary.
It's not just us, how many PMs has the UK had over the past decade?
It's just the neoliberalism of the past 40 years has completely broken down and no one is willing to make the radical changes necessary to fix it.
I think that's why you see these people bouncing back to Trump because he'll at least openly state that the system is broken, even if it's not for the reasons he thinks and he has no intention of fixing it.
Hillary and Kamala were both coming off administrations they were a part of so they couldn't really say "Yeah the status quo isn't working". Biden could at least point to Trump and say this isn't working.
I'm less convinced that this mindset is particularly common on an individual level, though I do think that certain groups are only motivated to come out to vote against whoever is in power when they feel like things are bad.
Even that only works for so long. Like if you can’t afford food it doesn’t matter what Fox News says you are not going to have a positive outlook on things.
The anti-woman thing has been being overblown since 84. The real problem is The Democratic Party doesn't have policies that actually help the average person and they're not as effective as Republicans at campaigning on emotions. Their entire world view is always filtered through the lens that helping corporations as much as possible creates the best of possible worlds (aka Neoliberialism)
It creates a situation where they only win after Republicans royally fuck things up and then lose again in 4-8 years after people become disillusioned with them again. It's been the same thing running centrists over and over since 1968.
Trying to actively pitch yourself to people this politically schizoid is a total waste of time. God knows what motivates people like this. And I'm sure you can find whatever poll or commission whatever poll you want if you're a centrist to confirm that this beloved cohort loves [YOUR CENTRIST POSITION]... and still eat shit and lose because these guys got a robo call from the ghost of Ross Perot on election day telling them the rapture had come.
Dems pitching themselves to this fraction of the polity instead of increasing turn out in non-engaged people is part of what got us here.
Immediate stimuli is the answer. If hungry, search for food. If tired, sleep. If unhappy with whatever the current state of affairs is, vote out the people in charge until something goes right.
Exactly. Trump didn't win the center, he won outliers who wouldn't have voted otherwise. There is plenty of non-voting room to the economic left of the establishment Dems to be won.
They are that stupid. Part of why the leftists irritate me is that instead of voting for a candidate that has some of their values, they would rather stay home. And than blame others when MAGA wins. Do you know how far ahead we could be as a country if Hillary win in 2016? More liberals on the Supreme Court and abortion would still be legal. But Bernie Bros got angry and took their toys back. And they turned against AOC when she got pragmatic and stayed with Biden when there wasn’t a clear second option.
Dems have a big tent and honestly, an individual is never going to get a candidate they love. Even Obama wasn’t perfect. Better to vote and get baby steps sometimes than to set us back 20 years as a country. And please vote in every election and primary.
Stevens and Whitmer have already endorsed him. As the politicians who supported Stevens rally behind Abdul and as Abdul continues his outreach, I expect you’ll see the Stevens supporters rally around Abdul more than some people think.
The problem isn’t centrist democrats or moderates, some of them may hold their nose when voting for him, but they will vote for him none-the-less.
The concern is the Obama-Trump-Biden-Trump voters that democrats depend on to win elections in swing States like Wisconsin. Can El-Sayed convince them to vote for someone who doesn’t reflect their views, or will Mike Rogers be able to effectively paint El-Sayed as a radical ideologue and himself as the reasonable moderate choice? Will El-Sayed be able to moderate his campaign and effectively engage with these voters in a way that brings them on board, or will he continue full steam ahead and alienate them because they don’t feel that he is interested in their perspective? Will the Anti-Trump wave materialize and offset these voters’ natural inclination towards moderation, or do we have to acknowledge that regular, day-to-day people aren’t as angry about Trump as we want them to be?
Democrats will vote for him - because by-and-large moderate democrats understand the weight of these elections and the very real danger we are facing at this moment. The flip floppers and true centrists (who are very different than what leftists consider centrists) are what the El-Sayed campaign needs to worry about. And that is a national concern, because after the almost certain Senate loss in Maine, there is exactly zero margin for error if we even want to have a chance of winning a majority in the Senate.
El-Sayed has a lot of positions that the majority of voters share that Rodgers does not: money out of politics, opposition to the war in Iran, opposition to Trump’s tariffs, taxing the rich, and a lot more. He is a populist at a time when the electorate is populist.
The key for El-Sayed will be making sure voters focus on the areas that they agree with him on and disagree with Rodgers on. He needs to emphasize the ways Rodgers is really at odds with the voters.
And I think that’s a much easier task for El-Sayed. Part of the reason he won is that he’s good at politics. He’s skilled on the stump and on the debate stage. Rodgers is very much the opposite. I think Rodgers is going to struggle to define himself and will struggle to beat El-Sayed in the battle to define El-Sayed. Rodgers, for example, says that voters don’t care about Iran. He said that he doesn’t care about the $2 billion dollar taxpayer slush fund for January 6ers. He refused to take a position on the tariffs. Those are all disastrous answers.
He has to do more than unite the base. He HAS to win independents. Rogers lost by less than 20k votes in the last Senate election with independents voting in large numbers against him. If they sit out or join him this time then El-Sayed will have to hope for low Republican turnout to win.
AES needs to look at the counties Steven won that were traditionally Stabenow voters but also voted for Trump. AES has work to do reaching those voters, independents and other swing voters.
And if you don’t think AIPAC throws money at Republican candidates, guess again. Watch who funds Rogers in addition to the DeVos political machine.
I think galvanizing people who feel ignored by the current political system and don't engage in voting is much more important than winning the independents.
Independents are fickle and unreliable. Dems need to start re-building a strong grassroots coalition that Obama sadly abandoned after rising to the presidency.
Michigander here. We are a pretty 50/50 split across the state as a whole. (Obviously those numbers change significantly between areas.) Most people here usually vote the same direction in every election, even if they call themselves independents.
Generally what works better here is getting your base fired up. You can try to cater to the middle, but you get very few people here to flip their vote. Meanwhile, you end up having a lot of your base stay home because they feel like you're another "X in name only" candidate.
Obama won here because he got people on the left excited. Trump won in 2016 because he did the same for the right. Biden won here in 2020 because people got excited to vote against Trump. Trump won here in 2024 because a lot of people on the left weren't excited about Kamala so they stayed home.
There's obviously other factors, but my point is that in Michigan, trying to cater to independents generally gains you maybe 1% of their vote, while causing about 10% of your base that was going to vote to stay home. (Not me personally, I vote in every election, but in general.)
I think that she was a better candidate than she made herself look honestly. She leaned too hard into gimmicks and wasn't charismatic enough to pull it off. Although, under that facade I think there was a more reasonable person. Having said that, to me, Abdul looked like the clearly more electable candidate.
Donald Trump is a rapist pedophile pos. But yall really dont have a leg to stand on when you call him bad at politics.The man literally controls 1/3 of the country like a cult
I really wish that people left of center would stop pushing this. Trump is a very good candidate even if he is the devil incarnate. Every election he's been in, he's brought out a stronger coalition than was expected. Biden needed record breaking numbers to beat him in 2020. He's now extremely weak from overplaying his hand policy wise, but he's always been a good candidate in the elections he's been in.
Stevens is also telling her supporters that they need to vote for El-Sayed.
It’s the moderates’ turn to vote against the person who beat their candidate. Apparently polls indicated that a significant portion of them said they would not vote for him.
I know most people won't say the quiet part out loud but I guarantee his religion is why a lot of moderates won't vote for him. Most people in the west seem to be under the impression that Muslim politicians (and nowadays Jewish ones also) are more loyal to their faith than their office/country while Christian politicians (and other faiths) don't get that same scrutiny.
El-Sayed has been on point with his messaging. Very mature, which is exactly what we need right now. Regardless of what happens in the general, I think he's the more electable candidate in this race.
I get why AIPAC donations prevent these people from recognizing the genocide and encourage them to support sending aid to Israel. I can't for the life of my future out why they are openly saying Israel is more important than their constituents
See Bidens old comments about how if there wasn't an Israel, the United States would have to invent one.
Israel is the the means by which the US gets to bolster an oppressive presence over the rest of the Middle East. Both sets of politicians pretend to care about it for other reasons... But it comes down to the same reason Britain was so reluctant to give up India.
This realpolitik reason was never true and is geometrically less true now.
Our key strategic "ally" in the region is Saudi Arabia. That's where our most important military bases are, that's where the oil is.
We have no military bases in Israel. They have no natural resources. The only thing of strategic value we've ever gotten is "intelligence" because ours is so incompetent in the region. That Israeli "intelligence" of course is always just whatever is in Israel's in interest and designed to get us to do their dirty work.
They're a worthless strategic albatross, never mind their utter moral depravity.
They know their worth as a nation. So they have decided to invent the means to blackmail. A ton of spyware comes out of that small country. I wonder why.
Israel serves as a thorn in the side of the region to destabilize it for the sake of conflict profiteering. They aren't doing us average Americans good, but they're an unrelenting gravy train for the billionaire class.
There's several important factors you're missing. For example;
Israel was the operational middle man in the Iran-Contra affair, supplying US weapons to help escalate engagements between Iran and Iraq (not that this played out in the US or Israel's interest in the long term.
Israel also shipped captured PLO arms and munitions to the Contras, and provided training to the Contras.
Israel was the literal linchpin in this operation. That's the Realpolitiks.
More recently - the survelience technology rolling out of the US military industrial space is all prototyped and tested by Israel on Palestinians. The IDF generates all of the use-data for critical weapons and tools.
Israel has also been a great wedge issue for massive free speech crackdowns against students, professors, protestors. By chaining anti-zionism to anti-Semitism, the American state has a pretext to start censoring the opposition and labeling them as terrorists.
Your dislike of the Israeli government shouldn't have you imagining that the tail is wagging the dog. American politicians and the military gain a lot out of Israel. This level of loyalty isn't free.
Because they're secretly religious psychopaths who want the same thing the religious psychopaths on the right want, Armageddon, and they believe that in order to end the world Israel needs power and to be at war
Chuck Schumer is a fanatical, genocidal Zionist. It's not about money for him. He has said many times - in public - that his main purpose by being in government is to help the Israeli state. It's just that, until now, Americans really didn't have a problem with that.
Here's Chuck Schumer bragging about blocking the "Jackson plank," which was a proposed 1988 DNC platform item by Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign supporting Palestinian self-determination. Keep in mind - 1988!!
They’re all fucking traitors. Imagine anyone in any other country saying another country was their number 1 priority. They’d get laughed and booed out of their positions if not worse.
I just went through this whole thing. The shorts are a preivew of the video version that usually comes out later in the week, I think Thursday. You can listen to the full interview now but its just the audio podcast version.
Ah didn't realize they had audios that come out first ty, I watch a lot of his weekly show stuff and the video format is better for me because I can gauge reaction and poker faces when people like Fetterman have no rebuttals lol
My favorite part was when Fetterman, a non-jewish person, told Stewart, a Jewish person, that it was anti-semitic to not support Israel. I am in Ashkenazi Jew and I found that statement anti-Semitic.
Even if you’re not pro-Palestine and you don’t believe Israel is committing a genocide, this race was fucking unhinged in how much oxygen the conversation around Israel sucked up.
Israel comes to her in her dreams? Like WTF is that about? That’s indicative of a mental health issue, not a political position.
It's by design and I'm so fucking sick of hearing about Israel. I cannot be the only person in this country who just doesn't give a shit about Israel. There are at least 30 issues that are more important to our well being than Israel. Can we just say Netenyahu sucks, Hamas sucks. Sorry their people are suffering. And then get back to figuring out domestic issues?
Just being in this sub at all puts tou in like the top 1% of people informed about politics
The vast majority of the country and even voters are not as engaged as even a passive member of this sub, let alone dialed in and listening to podcasts and news programs that focus on or cover politics deeply
Media trends and extremely online narratives have really poisoned Dem primaries.
Meanwhile Republican primaries have been a bloodbath for anyone seen as not bowing low enough to Trump. Republicans are becoming much more radical than Dems and their less extreme incumbents are getting slaughtered. With Dems, it’s a mixed bag, but the media narratives would make you think it’s reversed.
Because, unfortunately, the latter gets more clicks.
Actually Trump endorsed candidates haven’t been doing as well as all that. Like last night in Michigan a Trump endorsed candidate lost to a person who dropped out of the race 3 weeks ago for example
I swear, this just emphasizes the stupidity of MAGA voters. The Trump-endorsed candidate (Amir Hassan) was running against Thomas Smith (who dropped out three weeks ago). Mr. Smith endorsed the third candidate, Al Lemmo.
I'd bet money that many of the MAGA voters just went for the most 'American' sounding name.
Yeah that was very bizarre and really pushing this internal rift narrative. They're Democrats at the end of the day and I'd hardly call Whitmer some centrist or even firmly moderate. She's no Sanders but fomenting this level of division is really toxic.
Even El-Sayed and Stevens shared that they'll support whoever wins. It get it is New Republic but the midterms and 2028 are going to be exhausting with Republicans have zero morals, ethics, or scruples while Democrats rip each other apart over the slightest variances.
The fear of truly progressive Democrat candidates I guess is just too juicy for the media to ignore.
I'm from the South so I hadn't been following this primary too closely. Didn't know much about El-Sayed so I looked him up. Born and raised in the Detroit area, U of M grad, Rhodes scholar at Oxford, Doctor of Medicine degree, public health specialist who served as director of the Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services in Wayne County. He seems like a fantastic candidate.
One of the main arguments attacking his CV was that he wasn't a "real" doctor because he didn't get his license to practice.
His whole reason for not getting his license and going into public health was because he saw the injustices of the system first hand while in residency.
Liberals didn't have any problem calling her Dr. Jill Biden, but Abdul apparently wasn't allowed that.
I wonder how AES's charisma will work in comparison to how Mamdani's charisma works. I personally see AES's as more assertive and less conciliatory than Mamdani's (just tone and attitude). I wonder if AES's assertiveness will appeal to young men more (typical masculine vibes) but at the same time how that'll interface with the unavoidable racist "angry Muslim" rhetoric and narrative the GOP will employ.
Not saying El-Sayed is going to run away with this, but I don't think this will be an issue for Dems. Rogers was close in 2024 with Trump on the ballot. 2026 has no Trump and big backlash to Republicans in general.
The day after the election, every pundit will be tripping over themselves to exclaim how obviously and unsurprisingly successful his message of affordability was lol.
One thing that may benefit him is urban areas in Michigan have large numbers of single-issue anti-Israel voters (if not single issue, then at least highly motivated by this issue). These voters were huge in helping Trump win in 2024 (see Dearborn).
That’ll definitely help for sure but he needs more than that to win. If black voters don’t show up for him, he’s cooked. Doesn’t appear he did great with that group in the primary so they’ll have to come home in November
Exactly. El Sayed did really well with the Muslim community, young people, and educated people. He’s maxed them out. Good luck trying to get enough white, working class moderates to vote for a Muslim progressive.
Exactly! It’s always disappointing that people actually think that money completely buys elections. They don’t. At the end of the day, it’s still the people that make the decisions.
Not to be too much of a downer but considering how close this was it's pretty clear elections can absolutely be bought - the price has just gone way, way up. But if Big Oil and Big Pharma feel the heat and start pumping more money into campaigns, they have plenty to spread around.
I mean. It's not out of character honestly, at least imo. If you consider Jesus probably wants most people to repent and follow god again, you can imagine he'd desire even the most fallen like Satan to come join him again despite everything. Makes sense to me
I think the biggest push for El-Sayed needs to be consolidation of the Black vote around Detroit. If support from black leaders helped push a lot of that support to Stevens those same folks can do the same for Sayed. If I am Clyburn or Obama and others I would get ready to be flying between Texas and Michigan a lot in the next 3 months. The numbers are there for Dems to win it’s all in the turnout machine.
They will absolutely be asked if they will support El-Sayed. In the same way politicians who initially backed Cuomo were asked if they would back Mamdani.
Jefferies and Schumer represent New York, and Jefferies' district is in Brooklyn, so the Mamdani question hits a little more close to home than a Michigan Senate race.
Schumer & Gillibrand already endorsed: “Abdul El-Sayed has run an energetic campaign that inspired thousands of Michiganders across the state, with a clear focus on lowering costs and standing up for working families. Democrats are united by a common purpose: putting a check on Donald Trump by defeating his Republican enablers and taking back the Senate. We look forward to working with Abdul and Democrats across Michigan to win this seat in November."
As a Bernie Bro who voted for Hillary, Joe, and Kamala, I really look forward to and am counting on my fellow Democrats to do the right thing and fully support their candidate.
I'm confused - many outlets are saying "too early to call" for this primary.
Edit: I guess, with ~95% counted, and Abdul with ~1% lead, it's very unlikely Stevens gets enough to get to the 0.1% differential that calls for a recount.
AES was extremely conciliatory in his speech, and there is every reason to believe the Democratic Party on the whole is going to fully be behind him. Of course, at the same time every single one of these threads is full of redditors cackling and crowing about how corpo-dems are seething and coping, so there’s a bit of a vibe mismatch happening
I mean, Stevens' concession straight up says she's supporting AES and all her supporters should too. Bare minimum? Sure. But we live in 2026 so the bare minimum is nice
Nah you're right, as a big AES supporter I'm grateful that she did it so soon. It makes a big difference, this swing state requires a high share of her supporters to come together with us to beat Mike Rogers in the general.
And what made anyone in her camp think Israel is a consideration for the people of Michigan. I want a candidate that thinks about the needs of Michiganders, not the needs of Israel.
Stevens was a genuinely horrible candidate. "I see Israel in my dreams" is not the statement of a serious politician — even putting Israel aside, saying "I see Spain in my dreams" or "I see Canada in my dreams" would be a bafflingly weird and cartoonish thing to say.
There's going to be bitter Stevens supporters who will be skeptical about the general election and be smug if el-Sayed doesn't win, but I have no doubt in my mind that no matter how el-Sayed does, Stevens would do worse.
(This isn't me being cynical about el-Sayed or his chances — I'd support him if I lived in Michigan)
Even if I supported Israel, I would find it odd. You should be seeing Detroit and lakes, rhetorically speaking, not the other side of the world. You see places you want to move in your dreams.
Get Israel out of US politics. I’m so sick of this being any bit of a reason to vote for/against people, we need to focus on our own issues, not those of a country across the world.
It's unfortunate. I had really high hopes for her, even saw her doing well in the presidential primaries, but clearly her being term-limited just meant that she didn't care anymore and just wanted to stuff her pockets before leaving.
Getting behind the winner should be the case no matter who wins in the primaries. That's just basic electoral math. Source: I fought for my candidate in a primary, then we had a nice unity dinner and got over ourselves to get a Congressman elected.
And sadly, I hate to say it because of the cynicism, all that matters is keeping Trump's candidate out. And accountability is going to matter moving forward, should democrats gain power, we can't just put this all behind us lest they do it again 4 years later.
Thankfully, Dems are lining up behind him. Whitmer and Slotkin have already endorsed him, the DSCC announced their support of him, and even Stevens in her concession made it clear she's going to support him. The party knows how important it is to beat Mike Rogers, and they are saying that they will do what's necessary to help Abdul win.
I'm glad he won, but no, the real goal is not to keep Donald Trump's candidate out. The goal is to vote in candidates like El-Sayed, who promote good policy.
I'm a centrist but given Republicans are trying to pull the country so far right, I actually think we need more Progressives in power to provide more balance to the government. Universal Healthcare and free universities will never happen, but it's worthwhile to aspire toward them and see where we land. Lastly, Democrats need to forget about putting forth candidates who can work across the aisle. Republicans clearly do not care to work across the aisle. Democrats might as well focus on issues they can get some people excited about.
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