Abdul El-Sayed Wasn’t the Only One Who Won on Tuesday. Democrats and Republicans Alike Are Furious.

Politics Hasan Piker’s Moment I’ve followed the provocateur from his ratty T-shirt days to linen suits and national-stage polish. We’re about to find out what he really means for the Democratic Party. By Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Luke Winkie? Aug 07, 20265:45 AM Ryan Garza/USA Today Network via Reuters Connect Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Come back with me to the autumn of 2021. I’m a writer who has been sent out on assignment to the stucco estates of suburban Los Angeles to profile a young socialist named Hasan Piker. Piker initially came to fame a few years prior while making YouTube videos for his uncle’s media company The Young Turks. After leaving, he built a brand as a Bernie-boosting leftist pundit, his rapid-fire takes meted out through the livestreaming platform Twitch. Thousands of young people were tuning in to Piker’s daily eight-hour broadcasts; they watched him scroll through New York Times headlines and riff on cable-news segments, all filtered through his chagrin for bland liberal consensus. I plopped down on a couch across from Piker, his body partially obscured by a towering PlayStation 5, and asked what he made of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, who were then just beginning to make a name for themselves in Democratic politics. Did Piker sense that the party was changing? “We’re ants, we’re nothing,” I remember him saying, sizing up the state of the American left. Looking back, he was right. The Sanders movement was quashed by Joe Biden, of all people. At that moment, the moderate flank seemed to be keeping people like Piker in check. Now come back with me to Tuesday evening, when the Democratic Socialists of America–endorsed public health official Abdul El-Sayed triumphed over establishment candidate Haley Stevens in a fiercely contested primary for Michigan’s Democratic Senate nomination. When I visited Piker’s Twitch profile on election night, I wasn’t surprised to find him broadcasting live from El-Sayed’s reception. Piker had rallied with the candidate throughout the campaign. Back in 2025, El-Sayed had outlined on Piker’s stream his platform of economic populism and an end to military aid to Israel, and Piker had early on joined El-Sayed on the campaign trail, notably leading the streamer’s past comments about 9/11 and Israel to become a major issue in the race. Despite the heat, El-Sayed refused to disavow Piker. And when El-Sayed won his primary, there Piker was, looking on from the crowd. Compared to the 30-year-old I interviewed five years ago, Piker looked considerably more grown-up. Instead of the ratty, paint-spattered graphic tee he had worn that afternoon, he was smartly attired in a loose-fitting linen suit and tie, a Palestinian flag pinned to its left lapel. This was supposed to be a coronation—some polls had El-Sayed up as much as 15 points—but his margin of victory, less than 1 point, raised some questions about the DSA’s vulnerabilities in November. He may have looked more polished, but he had the same energy that he used to deploy hour after hour on Twitch. Piker immediately went on the offensive. He stared directly into the camera and offered this summation of the campaign ahead: “Everyone being like, ‘Abdul has a fuck-ton of work to do mending bridges,’ … you are all unbelievably Islamophobic pieces of shit,” he said. “You literally called the dude a fucking terrorist for months on end, and called him a sexist, misogynist, terrorist, bad candidate. … And now you’re going to say, sit there and be like, ‘You really got to come to me now.’ What are you talking about? Do you want to win or not? Lock the fuck in.” In other words, Piker was still Piker. And on Tuesday night, it was clear he will be one of the Democratic Party’s main characters going into the 2028 election cycle, for better or worse—for both the party and Piker himself. It’s not just El-Sayed who is cozying up to Piker. The streamer has already claimed a number of coups this cycle, having pushed for New York’s Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier and Colorado’s Melat Kiros, three DSA-aligned candidates who beat more-mainstream Democrats and are now shoo-ins for the House of Representatives next year. He has boosted Wisconsin’s socialist gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, who still looks strong in her race, sometimes despite herself. If El-Sayed makes it to Capitol Hill, the win will represent, by far, Piker’s most impressive bounty yet. Which is why this week Politico asked Piker if he thought of himself as a kingmaker. Piker demurred, but I wasn’t surprised by the line of questioning. The man has achieved significant political capital without moderating anything he stands for. The right—perhaps invigorated by Stevens’ strong showing—perceives this as a weakness. In the months ahead, Republicans will be running against Piker just as much as they’re running against the Democratic Party. In fact, it has already started. Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee in the upcoming Michigan Senate race, just released his first digital attack ad against El-Sayed. The first images feature El-Sayed and Piker at a campaign stop together. “You are who your friends are,” reads the text at the bottom of the screen. You are likely already familiar with Piker’s controversies. They are the same ones Rogers focuses on in that video, and they’re repeated, ad nauseam, every time Piker appears on television. To quickly recap: In 2019 the streamer said that America “deserved” 9/11, a comment he apologized for shortly afterward and has since disavowed. His staunch pro-Palestinian advocacy has also landed him in reedy territory; he has said he doesn’t have “an issue” with Hezbollah, and he once interviewed a Houthi militant on his Twitch stream. (The two talked about, among other things, the anime series One Piece.) Republicans were looking for a bogeyman to epitomize perceived DSA fanaticism, and they found their guy. As Piker’s profile has risen, so has his presence on Fox News. On Wednesday, Stephen Miller appeared on Hannity to lambast Piker, in his characteristically florid way, as “heinous, deplorable, and monstrous,” chastising El-Sayed for associating himself with “that kind of evil.” This opinion is echoed by the moderate flank of the liberal elite. James Carville, for example, passed through Fox News recently too. “I’m not going to be in the same party as Hasan Piker,” he said. “If he becomes a force in the Democratic Party, I’m out of here.” None of this should be surprising. After a brief honeymoon period, Piker was always going to find himself at odds with the establishment. Looking back, he gained a foothold in mainstream politics only because of the humiliating defeat of Kamala Harris, and the soul-searching that followed. Democrats, the thinking went, needed to find a “liberal Joe Rogan”—someone with the right kind of politics and an audience of those downwardly mobile young men the party was hemorrhaging. Instead, they found Piker, an ideologue who was never going to betray his heart. The two sides played nice in the heady days of 2025, when the midterms were far enough off in the distance and everyone was willing to pay lip service to Piker’s more exotic ideas. He appeared on Crooked Media and NPR and sat for Q&As with Ross Douthat, outlining his worldview for skeptical but receptive hosts. Inevitably, though, order would be enforced, and Piker would once again be painted as the enemy. Because Carville is right. Piker’s beliefs are incompatible with the sclerotic principles of American liberalism. Unfortunately for Carville and his ilk, that’s exactly why so many young progressives were tuning in to his stream in the first place. It’s worth noting that nobody—not Republicans, not Democrats, not anyone on the fringes—can determine for certain the weight a Piker endorsement carries. A poll conducted in April found that 13 percent of Michigan voters have a favorable view of Piker, 7 percent hold an unfavorable view of him, and a whopping 80 percent “haven’t heard enough to say.” But his outsize influence on intraparty strife seems clear already and is certain only to grow in the months ahead. Perhaps the Rogers campaign is correct, and El-Sayed’s connection to the Twitch streamer will prove to be uniquely toxic, torpedoing his chances in the general. Or maybe Piker’s vision of a dramatically reimagined Democratic Party will catch fire, cracking open wild possibilities for the future. That, I think, is what elites on both sides of the aisle are especially afraid of. But come back with me one more time, to the night before Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term as president. I was profiling Piker for the second time in my life, right as his influence was beginning to crest and the Democratic brand was approaching an unfathomable low. I asked him about the opportunity at hand. Could he envision a future where he was a major player in the party? “I’m not changing. That’s the thing. I have a real political opinion, a real way I see the world,” he told me. “If a day comes where I’m side by side with the Democratic Party, that means the Democratic Party has changed its ways.” We’ll find out how much the Democratic Party has changed soon enough. For now, this is Piker’s moment. Democrats and Republicans alike ought to brace for impact. Get the best of news and politics Sign up for Slate's evening newsletter. Democrats Republicans Senate YouTube Michigan 2026 Midterms