Imagine if Donald Trump went all-in endorsing a candidate for the Senate, campaigned for them and helped raise eleven times as much money as their opponent — who then lost.
There would be wall-to-wall media coverage declaring the end of Trump’s influence and of the Republican Party as we know it. “Trump’s Bitter Defeat,” The New York Times would say; “The End of an Era ,” The Washington Post would echo.
This actually just happened in Michigan’s Senate primary — with one detail glaringly absent.
Basically the entire Democratic Party leadership supported Haley Stevens, who outspent El-Sayed eleven to one amid a relentless campaign of warnings about how bad news bears he would be for state, party, country — but lost. And the media’s response? ‘He didn’t win by that much,’ ‘Now comes the hard part, the general election,’ and so on.
Bullshit.
This is a massive defeat for the Democratic Party old guard and an affirmation that the new crop of outsider, renegade candidates are the people’s choice.
Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — basically the entire Democratic establishment endorsed Haley Stevens, a textbook party stooge. For her to still lose is a repudiation and humiliation of not just Stevens but the entire political death star behind her.
The party elders threw everything at El-Sayed but their dentures. The attack ads were ugly even by the standards of politics.
“Abdul El-Sayed HAS A PATTERN OF DISRESPECTING WOMEN,” reads one AIPAC-funded mailer (they dumped $30 million in defeating El-Sayed). The evidence for this? He said that Gov. Whitmer was “bought and sold” and that Michelle Obama was “ineffectual.”
Sitting Democratic congresswoman Hillary Scholten of Michigan told CNN that El-Sayed had a “uniquely sexist bent to the things that he has said about women.” The evidence? His calling Stevens “a suit with a large AIPAC bank account,” and, again, his calling Whitmer “bought and sold.” The latter remark, Scholten claimed, was “essentially comparing her to property with no ideas of her own” (lol).
But the real story here is bigger than El-Sayed. It’s that voters were not swayed by an avalanche of big money and big people. Instead, they hoisting a bigger finger than we’ve seen since Barack Obama’s own primary upset in 2008, when he defeated party leader-approved Hillary Clinton. Any media outlet that doesn’t acknowledge that is on the side of the big money and big people.
For example, beltway outlet Politico, which declared in a headline this morning: “Progressives didn’t get the big election night they wanted.” Politico pointed to the “razor-thin margin” (1 percent) of El-Sayed’s victory.
El-Sayed’s insufficiently “big” win is in fact the highest-level Democratic upset since Barack Obama. The irony here is that Obama actually won the 2008 presidential primary by less than El-Sayed — just half a percent of the popular vote.
Imagine the headline, “Obama supporters didn’t get the big election night they wanted.” Would anyone be able to read that without laughing?
As with Obama, young people in Michigan voted for El-Sayed at rates that Washington types consider implausible or even impossible. Young people don’t vote, the conventional wisdom goes.
As I’ve written about before, from Zohran Mamdani to El-Sayed, the impossible keeps happening — because it’s only impossible if you follow the Washington obsessed and dominated news media. They rely on the very army of strategists, consultants, and pollsters for their spin, the same people who keep calling these races wrong and don’t seem to know a single American outside of the Acela Corridor.
What is “possible” or “practical” is a scam propagated by a political class that profits from your despair and resignation.
Something deeper is going on here in the United States. From coast to coast, and now in the heartland, people are defying the gatekeepers and voting for change. The Democratic Party is a ghost ship, its captain hiding in some isolated old folk’s home in Washington. They keep pushing “empty suits” (no sexism intended) of various colors but all with the same diehard commitment to the status quo.
Americans always deserved better. Now they know it.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
"The party elders threw everything at El-Sayed but their dentures." Best line this week.
generational headline. the winds are changing and it's only a matter of time before dem leadership wakes up or gets ousted.