Our Best Stuff on Abdul El-Sayed’s Primary Victory in Michigan

Turn any article into a podcast. Upgrade now to start listening. Members can share articles with friends & family to bypass the paywall. Hello and happy Saturday. When Zohran Mamdani won New York’s mayoral race last fall on promises to implement rent control and open city-run grocery stores, a lot of pundits chalked it up to the city’s overwhelmingly progressive population. There was a little more scuttlebutt when three Mamdani-endorsed democratic socialists won congressional primaries last month, but, again, it was New York. What happens when an uber-progressive candidate who has a cozy relationship with Hamas-supporting, Mao Zedong-admiring influencer Hasan Piker wins a Senate primary in the heartland? Now that Abdul El-Sayed has won the Democratic nomination in Michigan, we’re about to find out. El-Sayed defeated the more establishment-leaning Haley Stevens in Tuesday’s primary and will face former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers in November. He was endorsed by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Ro Khanna, and “the Squad”—Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar—among others. Stevens, meanwhile, had the backing of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and senators such as Catherine Cortez Masto, Jeanne Shaheen, Ruben Gallego, and Chris Coons. In Boiling Frogs, Nick Catoggio dived into what the race says about the divisions within the Democratic Party. He drew a parallel to the Republican Party circa 2016 and the rise of Donald Trump. For democratic socialists, Michigan is just one battle in a wider war for control of the Democratic Party. The more liberal Democrats leave the party in disgust at the viability of postliberal candidates, the more postliberal the party’s primary electorate will become by subtraction. And the more postliberal that electorate becomes, the more the Democratic establishment will evolve to resemble it. That’s been the story of the Republican Party since 2016. The Trumpist right kept nominating nuts, even after some of them were crushed in general elections, because doing so cemented its control over the GOP. Some classically liberal Republican voters drifted out of the party as their contempt for the right’s postliberal direction grew, leaving postliberal voters behind to dominate primaries. And lo and behold, 10 years later, the Republican establishment is now completely in hock to postliberalism. The Democrats’ progressive wing is certainly loud and enjoying a moment. And that’s all fine and good in the primaries. But will any of this translate to victory in November? Carroll Doherty is not so sure. Citing polling that shows that some Democrats are unfamiliar with democratic socialism and that independents and conservatives abhor it, he wrote: “There’s no avoiding the fact that democratic socialism just isn’t very popular, except among those Democrats who occupy the far-left quadrant of the ideological spectrum.” Given all that, and pointing to El-Sayed’s extreme positions on Israel and Hamas, immigration, and policing, Kevin Williamson argues that the Democrats have committed an unforced error: El-Sayed is not the kind of candidate you run if you really care about winning a majority in the Senate—or if you care about being a majority party in general. He is precisely the kind of candidate you run if you are treating politics as a therapeutic exercise or an expression of tribal affiliation. Michigan voters at large are not thinking very much about Gaza, and neither are American voters at large. Stevens is a more or less normal person with a track record of winning elections in Michigan—that and $5.65 will get you a gallon of diesel. We are not completely through primary season: A handful of states have elections on August 11 and 18. But as we approach November, the storylines are solidifying. In what direction is the Democratic Party headed? How will inflation and the ongoing Iran war affect Republicans’ chances? And is anyone going to focus on the affordability issues that many Americans cite as their topmost concern? Stay tuned! Thanks for reading and have a lovely weekend. American politics is suffering from a disease. Partisans, activists, and a great many voters suffer from a delusion that our constitutional mechanisms and/or various shadowy powerful forces are conspiring against the popular will and the common good. They think that if they lose an argument—and that’s all elections are, arguments about which candidates and which parties should prevail in a specific contest—it must be an indictment of the system. But our system was designed for arguments. People talk about democracy in romantic, almost magical, terms. They think elections are profound expressions of the national will or spirit. They’re not. They’re arguments about who should have a job for a defined period of time. If they get the job, they don’t have a mandate to do things. If they have any kind of mandate at all—beyond faithfully doing the job assigned them—it is to argue for their position persuasively. This is obviously the case for legislators. Their job is to persuade other legislators to pass laws. They can’t force their colleagues to do anything. But it’s also true of the president. He is not the “boss” of the legislative branch, nor of the courts, never mind governors, mayors, or American citizens more broadly. If anything, we’re his boss, because here the people rule. But he is expected to make arguments. He is supposed to marshal popular support for his policies—like, say, going to war with Iran—and he is supposed to convince Congress to pay for his policies. That’s it. It’s arguments all the way down. The Rest Is History Festival was historian Tom Holland’s approach on the podcast made manifest: a humble curiosity about the past that invites people in. It is a dynamic (and attractive) approach that contrasts mightily with both the chauvinism and sentimental nostalgia that can curdle an enthusiasm for history into something toxic and divisive. Elon Musk’s approach to history, on the other hand, is a distinctly utilitarian mode. Included among his many missions—electric vehicles, getting to Mars, freight tunnels—is the preservation of Western (European) civilization. (Or his understanding of it anyway, as something muscular, powerful, and innovative.) He is concerned about the parallels between the decline of the Roman Empire and the threats that multiculturalism and declining birth rates pose to our current society. The classical Greeks and especially the Romans were great civilizations to be emulated, Musk believes, but we must learn from their errors or suffer the same fate as the Western Roman Empire in A.D. 476. It’s not quite clear what possessed Ohio GOP Rep. Max Miller to sit down for a 20-minute direct-to-camera livestream on Sunday, August 2, to deny allegations that he had abused his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, the daughter of Ohio GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno. A couple of news stories—including a detailed Mother Jones report on July 18 and coverage in the New York Times on July 28 documenting Moreno’s claims that he had sprayed hot water on her, held a gun to her head, and shoved her up against a wall—may have provided the motivation to try to refute the allegations on camera. What is clear is that Miller’s media tour has backfired in the court of public opinion, and an increasing number of Republicans are calling on Miller to resign from Congress. “The whole thing is repulsive. Max Miller needs to drop out and get help,” Aaron Baer, president of the Ohio-based Center for Christian Virtue, told The Dispatch. “Even if you set aside the ‘he said, she said,’ the bottom line is being a good father starts by taking care of your child’s mom. Coming out the way Max did … publicly attacking the mother of his child is all the evidence you need that this guy should not be in office right now.” Best of the Rest Dirty Water Why did Jeanine Pirro tell the truth about the reflecting pool? Rachael Larimore is a managing editor of The Dispatch and is based in the Cincinnati area. Prior to joining the company in 2019, she served in similar roles at Slate, The Weekly Standard, and The Bulwark. She and her husband have three sons.