Michigan Primary

a warning

I live in Southeast Michigan. Last Tuesday, Sherry and I cast our votes in the state’s Primary Elections for US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed is an ex-jock—wrestling, lacrosse, and football—from Bloomberg Hills, a well-to-do suburb near Detroit. His parents are both Egyptian-born engineers. He went on to play lacrosse for the University of Michigan, where he took a double major in polisci and biology and graduated Phi Beta Cappa. He went on to become a Rhodes Scholar and a medical doctor; but he practice, opting instead for epidemiology. He taught Public Health at Colombia, then went on to become Detroit’s Director of Public Health. He’s no slouch, this guy, so he challenged Gretchen Whitmer—our slimy bought and paid for Democratic Governor—in the 2018 Gubernatorial Primary, where he was trounced. This time out, everyone knows the story by now, he squeaked out a win against AIPAC’s golden girl, Haley Stevens.

Michigan tricks pollsters.*

The day before the election, pollsters were predicting he’d win by up to 17 points. In the 2016 Primaries, they’d predicted Hillary Clinton would beat Bernie Sanders by an average of 65-30; then Bernie pulled of 49.7 to Clinton’s 48.3. Clinton—after she, her big donors, and the entire party apparatus pulled every trick in the book to put Sanders down—went on to lose Michigan to Donald Trump. Not only did Clinton take Michigan for granted and fail to execute an effective ground game here; she was just an incredibly unlikable candidate—exuding that rehearsed, plastic, stage managed thing like a bad smell. Kamala Harris—who has the same problem—lost to Trump again in 2024.

The Stevens pitch to voters was that El-Sayed is “unelectable.” This unelectability strategy employed by people who go on to fail in elections is a favorite topic now among so-called progressives, who are riding high in the wake of El-Sayed’s victory. Coming on the heels of the Mamdani win in New York and several other races that have been taken by progressives and-or DSA-endorsed candidates has intensified their optimism; and I’m here to be the skunk at the party.

Last December, I posted an editorial piece called “I become nervous when Democrats think they’re winning.” I opened with

It is a proven fact that the American Democratic Party is the most adept political institution in recent history at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It’s a feature of technocratic senescence. One feature of this feature is the tendency to overestimate and overstate the setbacks of Republicans. Another feature is ignoring and denying their own role in the emergence and ascendance of the right. Democrats have been repeatedly humiliated, then subjugated, then colonized by the right since a B-grade actor named Ronald Reagan won the Presidency in 1981. The proof of this colonization is that Democratic President Barack Obama was—in every practical respect—a Reagan Republican.

I think we’re facing a dual and dangerous false optimism right now. Both Democrats and progressives are riding high; and the best hope we have for both the midterms and the 2028 General Election is for further inroads from the left inside the Democratic Party Primaries while at the same time going blue-no-matter-who in the face-off between Trump’s Republican cult and the perfidious technocrats.

Polls (← yeah, those again) show the Republican Party on the rocks right now because of its attachment to Trump, who has fumbled disastrously from the time he took office a second time. I hear all kinds of noises about “blue waves” again. Michigan Primaries aren’t the only place polls get it wrong; an I refer you back to what I said above about the DP’s talent for “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”

First of all, people to not like the Democratic Party. Many of us who feel forced to vote for Democrats dislike the Party. Secondly, they have proven to be more effective at fighting their own left wing than fighting Republicans. That’s because they feel more threatened by their own left wing than they do Republicans. The left is out for their jobs. The Republicans are just a convenient foil for their careers. The worse Republicans are, the easier it is to continue to pursue their class interests and loyalties against the rest of us.

“Electability” in the Primaries. “Lesser evil” in the Generals.

In 2016, it was after the Michigan Primary in fact, if I recall correctly, blowhard Chris Matthews of MSNBC said the quiet part out loud in his panic over Sanders’ momentum. Paraphrasing, he said, “Maybe we should just let Trump win, then start over.”

I promise you, a similar conversation is happening behind closed doors at the DNC right now. They will—I don’t say “might,” they damn well will—quietly sabotage El-Sayed in the General, even if it means losing the Senate to Republicans. They could lose their jobs to El-Sayed. His opponent, Mike Rogers—a devoted Zionist like many high-level Democrats—is a fund-raising opportunity. You do the math.

El-Sayed losing in the midterms will validate their “unelectability” strategy against their own left wing. This is a better outcome from their perspective than winning back the Senate—which is never really won back anyway, because it always includes a half dozen or so Republicans in Democratic drag.

In Michigan, El-Sayed has an uphill battle; and I saw the first Rogers ads within hours of Haley Stevens’ concession speech. The message is “Abdul Mohamed El-Sayed [gotta include Mohamed] is dangerous.” Serial decontextualized clips of El-Sayed himself saying “I’m dangerous,” where he’d gone on to say “to special interests” or something of the sort. AIPAC isn’t done yet. It’s funded by billionaires, and Mike Rogers is going to be awash in campaign funds and heavily buttressed by “independent expenditures.” The motivator—always the Republican go-to—is fear. With heavy components of highly racialized islamophobia. I promise you, El-Sayed will be directly compared to Osama bin Laden at some point. The messaging people are working it out now. Republicans are expert racial dog-whistlers, but they won’t even bother with silent whistles this time. It’s going to be overt and harsh. Our best hope is that they overplay their hands.

Don’t count on it though. Because the DNC will be working with them behind the scenes.

To all you “progressives” who are high-fiving right now. You are not unstoppable. In fact, you are walking up to the stop-borders of your appeal and capacity right here in Michigan. This ain’t New York City. It’s not even our own Ann Arbor. (The same goes for Francesca Hong in neighboring Wisconsin.) Your past statements and your culture war nonsense is setting you up like a bowling pin hereabouts. (← Abdul does not have some of the worst, like “Abolish the police.”) Get ready for a trench war.

I’m still arguing for some independents. If we can find the money.

Peace.

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* My best guess is that the Stevens black-voter strategy pulled her through. She’d flooded the zone in Wayne County/Detroit with bullshit ads that suggested she’d been endorsed by Barack Obama, and the Democratic establishment weighed in with its networks there. I did a very long analysis of black politics in the US in my series (links below) called “American black history & political strategy,” including the way the DNC weaponizes the “black vote” in emergencies here. Many older Wayne County voters are not heavy internet users. They still use landlines, and pollsters consistently miss them.)

American black history & political strategy

Part 1 (120 minute read)

Part 2 (120 minutes)

Part 3 (130 minutes)

Part 4 (120 minutes)

Part 5 (55 minutes)

Part 6 (120 minutes)

The shorter version is here at “History, narrative, race & CRT.” (130 minute read)

tldr folks, do not apply