Ever since Donald Trump became the
face of the Republican Party back in 2016 the far left as well as too many
mainstream Democrats have been stunned as to why the GOP would get behind a
candidate that they consider morally disgusting. To them the question seems to be "For
what shall it profit a political party if they gain power but lose their
souls?"
The GOP has never directly answered
that question mainly because it seems implicit. They get political power and
that's what a political party is supposed to care about. The media and the left – to whom everything is
a moral question – either refuse to accept this as a legitimate answer. To
politicians -particularly the GOP - it’s
the only answer that matters.
Over this same period the left has
increasingly come to idolize so many Republicans – many of whom they loathed
over the bulk of their career prior to 2016 – when they publicly broke with
Trump, from Jeff Flake to Liz Cheney to Mitt Romney and so many others who
chose not to seek reelection as a result. None of them seem to have realized
the cost of doing the right thing is the end of their political lives and that
as a result they no longer have the power to make policy and serve the public.
Doing the right thing, particularly in politics, almost always comes an
enormous cost and in the era since Trump took office the left has observed this
and praised these people while ignoring the fact that they're no longer able to
serve the public good. That these people have served as a voice against Trump
and might have able to do good within in the party and America as a whole is
irrelevant. Thomas Reed, a Congressional Republican famously said:
"A statesman is a politician who is dead" and he might as well have
argued politically dead applies just as well.
And it has to be noted this has only
gone in one direction. Increasingly during the Trump era many left-wing
Democrats have made pariahs of their own who choose to go across the aisle and
work with Republicans. They've long accused the GOP of renouncing bipartisanship
under Democratic administrations yet when members of their own party do
likewise they have almost to one referred to as traitors. This was true of
Jared Golden of Maine a Blue Dog Democrat who crossed the aisle multiple times
and who chose not to run for reelection when he made it clear that the current
tenor of politics had made it harder to do his job. And the left turned on John Fetterman when,
immediately after running as a progressive, he chose to work across the aisle
and among other things chose to work with his Republican colleague in the
Senate Dave McCormack for the common good of Pennsylvania. He has now become
such a pariah among the left that it's frequently rumored he'll switch parties
despite his saying he has no intention of doing so and his track record of
voting with Democrats ninety precent of the time.
Much of this is being driven by the
extreme left flank of the Democratic Party which has increasingly been far more
of a weight on it then it will ever admit. They've spent much of the primary
season of the 2026 midterms getting a lot of attention but not winning many
critical races as they want, in large part because of the level of their
candidates. This was true of Graham Platner's implosion in Maine earlier this
summer where the left chose to stand stubbornly by him until a second
accusation of sexual assault finally forced him to withdraw from the race. This
led to Troy Jackson stepping in and while the Democrats may yet manage to pull
out a win there Tuesday it nevertheless shows the toxic nature of so many of
their candidates as well as what the left wants to accept.
The biggest example of this, and one
that has drawn national attention, was the Democratic primary race in Michigan.
In what came to be a bloodbath between former Justice Democrat Abdul El-Sayed
and the more moderate Haley Stevens the polls suggested El-Sayed would win in a
landslide. Instead the race wasn't called for El-Sayed until the following
morning with El-Sayed winning by little more than a percentage point.
The normal path of every primary win
is that El-Sayed was supposed to become a more moderate candidate, bury the
hatchet with the other side and shore up where he was struggling, particularly
with African-American and Jewish voters, in order to win in the fall. El-Sayed,
by contrast and against all good sense, has basically chosen not to do that.
His efforts to reach out to the African-American community and Jewish community
are considered half-hearted at best, he's basically chosen to soft speak much
of his past rhetoric rather then uniformly denounce it and time and again he
chose to essentially refuse to campaign with Stevens on the trail.
Considering the narrowest of his win
as well as the fact that the GOP was going to be laser focused on trying to
pick off a Democratic seat in a race they were playing defense in as well as
the fact that Michigan had gone for Trump just two years ago this approach to
running was tantamount to political suicide. One can campaign as
anti-establishment in a primary but once you're running in the general you need
the whole party behind you. Instead El-Sayed has behaved like so many left-wing
candidates have before: he assumes winning the primary is the same as winning
the general. This works in deep blue districts; running for a Senate seat in a
swing state is taking your life in your hands.
El-Sayed has time and again rejected
multiple overtures to try and go anywhere near the center that Stevens clearly
won. It was clear her willingness to stand by him was getting increasingly
harder for her to deal with in October and the two never appeared on the same
platform despite the efforts of multiple people in both Michigan and national
Democrats to intervene. Despite all of the national criticism against him as
well as the very real problems he had in the primary as well as a much closer
race in the polls then a Democrat in Michigan should face – particularly
compared to the nominee for governor Jocelyn Benson - El-Sayed has run the campaign as if he had
'all the votes he needed' and he didn't need to bother with such things as
'party unity'.
I suspect while the Democratic Party
and all of the major names associated with it, left and center, have come to
campaign and endorse El-Sayed it is done out of the necessity of party unity as
well as the political calculus that any political institution has to endure in
an election year. Democrats want to win elections and hold political power
because that is the only way you can get things done. Much as the Michigan
primary exposed fissures in the party that they will have to deal with down the
road, the critical phrase is 'down the road'. I suspect many Democrats are
repulsed by El-Sayed's rhetoric as they are many of their own more far-left
members then and now. I expect all of them wish their candidate for a
state-elected office would make some effort to try and moderate his rhetoric
and they can't be thrilled that Tucker Carlson chose to more or less endorse
him. Nevertheless the Democrats have taken the approach that has basically been
the standard the Republicans have: "He's a son of a bitch, but he's our
son of a bitch."
In the case of Haley Stevens it’s a
different story. It's genuinely not clear what future she had in Michigan
politics after losing the primary but it has to have hurt immensely to have
lost by so narrow a margin. She also did
better with the voters who are more typical of the Democratic base, the kind of
voters El-Sayed needs to win on Tuesday. So that the nominee has made it clear
at every level that he doesn't think he owes her anything, even when it comes
to making the most token efforts, should be considered offensive to good
political standards. And its been clear that El-Sayed doesn't think he needs
her. There was going to be a unity breakfast on Sunday when the two candidates
appeared on the same platform. Yesterday El-Sayed made it clear he didn't want
her there, which wasn't just an offense to Stevens but to all of the Democrats
who had been trying so hard to paper things over before Election Day.
My feelings about El-Sayed aside I
truly believe he has treated many people on the campaign trail shamefully,
particularly his defeated opponent. It is the kind of arrogance and
spitefulness I'm honestly more used to from our current President, never mind a
man who is, to be reminded, running to be the junior Senator from
Michigan. So I truly think the decision
Stevens made this afternoon was not merely incredibly brave but inevitable.
She chose to endorse Mike Rogers for
Senate.
Just Rogers. Not John James for
Governor, not any of the Republicans running for Congress in Michigan and she
certainly isn't in favor of Trump. She
said she expected Chuck Schumer to become the majority leader and that she was
still a Democrat. She just said she couldn't support a man who'd campaigned
brutally against her and had done nothing to accept any olive branch she tried
to offer.
The reaction from the Democratic party
was frankly stunning in its speed. Within hours from Nancy Pelosi to AOC and
Mamdani they all chose to pile on Stevens and call her very close to a traitor. Her campaign manager
resigned along with half her campaign staff. And Curtis Hertel, the chair of
the Michigan Democratic Party essentially chose to excommunicate her saying
"she is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will
she be in the future." El-Sayed himself tried to downplay it saying:"
None of this matters." To be fair it may not.
When Stevens said that she believed
Democrats would flip the Senate Tuesday, she's not talking out of school. She
made it clear that this was about a referendum on 'hate in politics' all of
which is a legitimate argument considering much of El-Sayed's rhetoric. She had
been counseled to remain quiet and out of the news cycle. In other words she's
condemning the exact kind of hateful rhetoric that people like the President
should do publicly with nothing to gain from it. The stakes are far lower than
the Democrats truly want it to be: the Democrats were already favored to win
take back the Senate before her announcement and that will likely happen even
if Mike Rogers wins. And honestly if the Democratic Party believes everything –
not just Michigan – but the entire blue wave will dissolve because of Stevens'
actions, they're as dumb as everyone says they are.
What all of this lays bare is
something far more simple: For all the morality and garment rending the
Democrats, progressives and so many on the left have made about the Republicans condoning a morally
bankrupt candidate for the sake of political power, they are just as willing to
do the same when it meets their political ends – and honestly when the stakes
are much less important by comparison. I don't find this nearly as hypocritical
as Fox News and the right absolutely will: they lost the moral high ground well
before Trump showed up.
But it's part of a pattern that's
always been just beneath the surface when it comes to so many on the left about
basically everything: the way that they will throw out everything they've said
about those they despise for years when they say something against a newer
enemy. Rachel Maddow deciding to publicly attend Dick Cheney's funeral because
he'd chosen in 2024 to endorse Harris is just the most public equivalent of
this.
On a personal note I truly find that
so many seemingly intelligent people have chosen to make Abdul El-Sayed either
an existential threat or potential savior to the Democratic Party, if not
America itself, demonstrating the same kind of silliness that I found with
everything involving Graham Platner. Again, El-Sayed is running to be the
junior senator from Michigan, full stop. He's not going to have any more
power in the Senate if elected then any of the other freshman Democrats who
will win office. He'll have the same influence that James Talarico, Roy Cooper
and Sherrod Brown all do if they win: one Senator, one vote. If you truly believe that him winning is the equivalent of the destruction of the Republic,
you watch too much Fox News. If you believe that it can bring about the instant
realization of a socialist utopia, you don't understand how Congress works.
Now at my core, I don't think El-Sayid
is any more qualified to be in the Senate then Ken Paxton is and for the same
reasons. And I also understand why the Democrats lined up behind El-Sayed after
the primary the same way the GOP did with Paxton: "He's a son of a bitch,
but he's our son of a bitch."
But whatever my personal feelings are the decision isn't up to me: it's
up to the voters in Michigan and Texas and I believe they are perfectly capable
of making up their own minds without having to be told what the entire world thinks
they should do. I have my opinions about it, I know what the polls are telling
me about both men's chances but in either case, I don't think the voters will
listen to me so I'm not going to hit them over the head with it.
Haley Stevens, however, does live in
Michigan and does have a reason to care about this as well she should.
Now it is still possible, even likely, that El-Sayed will still win election on
Tuesday. Early voting has been going on
for two weeks and the most it may do is influence some Stevens voters to either
stay home or vote Republican. To be honest I think they might have done so even
if Stevens had said nothing and I suspect Stevens knew this too. So her
decision was about her future in politics. The choices were simple: be quiet
and possibly have one or take a stand and lose everything. Stevens chose the
latter – and I truly do find that brave even if that is not the opinion of so
many in America today.
Like every major political website I
think that a blue wave, perhaps a tsunami, will happen Tuesday. Perhaps it will
be enough to sweep El-Sayed to victory; I suspect it will. But no matter what I
think I respect and admire Haley Stevens's decision. It was a true Profile in
Courage, the one that Democrats say they want to see more often – but of
course, only by Republicans.
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