Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: An establishment Democrat warns primary voters that the progressive in the race is the GOP ’s dream candidate, and must be defeated at all costs if the party is to have any chance of winning the seat.
The Michigan senate race to succeed Gary Peters narrowed last week after Democrat Mallory McMorrow withdrew from the field, leaving progressive Abdul El‑Sayed and centrist Haley Stevens vying for the nomination. After two months of steady polling gains , El‑Sayed now stands as the overwhelming favorite in prediction markets. Yet the race remains tight, and the Stevens camp is hoping that enough of McMorrow’s would‑be voters will break her way before election day arrives on Aug. 4.
Eager to lock down the remaining undecideds, Stevens has escalated her argument that only she can defeat presumptive Republican nominee Mike Rogers in November and that her left-wing opponent would all-but guarantee GOP victory. “No one wants Abdul to win more than the Republicans, and that’s because they think that they can beat him in November,” she declared after McCorrow’s exit, pitching herself almost purely in terms of electability.
Two months of polling show El-Sayed leading Rogers by significant margins.
As familiar as Stevens’ argument has become to Democratic voters, it is increasingly undercut by the facts — in Michigan and across the country. Despite Stevens’ assertion that “poll after poll” show her to be in the “best and strongest position to take on Mike Rogers,” two months of polling show El-Sayed leading Rogers by significant margins, and Stevens virtually tied with the Republican candidate. The only recent poll that shows Stevens performing markedly better than El-Sayed against Rogers was taken by a highly partisan Republican pollster.
In addition to misrepresenting the polls, Stevens claims that the GOP is “spending thousands of dollars to prop up [El-Sayed’s] campaign,” and has suggested Republicans are eager for him to win the nomination. Once again, this is highly misleading. The National Republican Senatorial Committee did release an ad last month , yet it was hardly a ringing endorsement: It portrayed El-Sayed, a former public health official, as a radical socialist who wants to raise taxes and take away Michiganders’ health insurance.
In short, all available evidence contradicts Stevens’s electability claims and suggests El‑Sayed is better positioned to defeat Rogers in November. While a lot can change in a month, Democratic voters so far appear skeptical of her electability pitch. El-Sayed not only has an advantage in the polls, but has enjoyed popular momentum after securing endorsements from leading national progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders , Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
Michigan isn’t the only place where establishment arguments about electability seem to be falling flat with voters. Over the last few months, Democrats across the country have been largely ignoring the advice of their party’s leadership when it comes to selecting nominees, opting for progressive or populist candidates over the centrist contenders long assumed to be more electable.
It is a pattern pointing to a wider ideological realignment in the party, driven by voters moving away from the once-immovable center on the economy and foreign policy. But while some polling indicates that more Democratic voters are prioritizing candidates who match their values even when they aren’t perceived as most likely to win in the general election, this does not describe what’s happening. It’s not that Democratic voters don’t care about electability; in most cases, they’re just rejecting party leadership’s judgment about who is and isn’t electable.
All available evidence contradicts Stevens’s electability claims.
The “last people who have any right to lecture us about electability,” remarked Rep. Khanna last month at a campaign event for El-Sayed, “are the establishment who lost to Donald Trump twice.”
Centrist Democrats do not have a good rejoinder to this. In 2016, the public was assured by the experts that Hillary Clinton was not only the most qualified but also the most electable candidate. Her opponents — first Bernie Sanders , then Donald Trump — were widely seen by those in-the-know as unelectable . During that year’s primaries, Clinton’s main argument against her chief rival was that he would all but guarantee a loss to Republicans in November. Worse, her camp warned, the self‑described democratic socialist would drag down Democrats across the ballot, imperiling efforts to retake the House and Senate.
For many Democratic voters, this argument was compelling enough to back the former secretary of state. In polls, a sizable majority of Democratic voters acknowledged that Clinton had a better chance of defeating the Republican nominee in November, despite the fact that the Vermont senator consistently fared better in general election polls against Trump.
During his own primary, Trump was also repeatedly described by his Republican opponents as unelectable. (The Clinton camp agreed with this assessment and even maneuvered to prop up his campaign). But for Republican voters who had seen John McCain and Mitt Romney both lose to Barack Obama, electability arguments fell on deaf ears. Trump was the anti-establishment choice and the GOP’s base was in an anti-establishment mood.
It turned out the general electorate was, too. While the forecasts gave Trump only the slimmest of chance s to win the 2016 election, the most “unelectable” candidate in modern history defeated the most “electable.”
Ten years later, a similar dynamic appears to be unfolding with the Democratic base, which has grown increasingly restless and distrustful of its own leadership. That frustration has boiled over in this year’s primaries like the one in Michigan, where establishment candidates and incumbents are trailing and falling to left‑wing challengers . This has prompted comparisons to the Tea Party revolt of 2010, which was the beginning of the MAGAficiation of the GOP.
On a superficial level, the Tea Party analogy holds. It was a revolt against the Republican establishment, just as today’s progressive insurgency is a revolt against the Democratic one. The former sought to push the GOP to the right, while the latter aims to push the Democratic Party leftward. But that’s where the similarities end. While the Tea Party movement was largely bankrolled by billionaire oligarchs, left-populists are campaigning directly against billionaire influence and entrenched lobbying interests like AIPAC .
Left-populists are campaigning directly against billionaire influence.
The analogy breaks down further when considering the wider appeal of the two movements. Unlike the Tea Party’s agenda, which never enjoyed broad-backed support, many of the left’s core policies — taxing billionaires, breaking up corporate power, guaranteeing healthcare — are broadly popular across the electorate .
Sensing that progressive policies really do resonate with voters, centrist and right-wing opponents have fallen back on red-baiting tactics, warning that the “godless communists” are on the march in pursuit of “tyranny” and “evil,” as the president recently warned. Fearmongering like this has a long track record of successfully marginalizing the left, but in the current political environment, it just isn’t landing like it once did. Voters today care too much about rent, groceries and billionaire power to be kept in line by a crudely assembled Soviet scarecrow.
In Michigan, Haley Stevens and her establishment backers are hoping that Democratic voters will make the same cautious calculation they’ve made so often, and support her as the “safe” choice this November. But if the past decade has shown us anything, it’s that when voters are hungry for change, the safest candidates become the riskiest.
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