‘Swaggering El-Sayed’ Drives the Democrats Down a Radical Road

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s slim victory over Congresswoman Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic primary for Senate hardly diminishes its value as a indicator for where the radical direction the party is heading. Dr. El-Sayed ran as a leftist whose candidacy was fueled by implacable anti-Israel sentiment. Ms. Stevens’s aimed for the center, and pro-Israel groups supported her with $30 million. Republican hopes for the Senate have brightened.The story for today, though, is that the hard left, which has already established a foothold at New York under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has breached containment. While Dr. El-Sayed is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America — he calls himself a “capitalist” — he is a fellow traveler. Michigan is the paradigmatic purple state, seesawing over the past three presidential elections between President Trump and his challengers.Dr. El-Sayed, who was sometimes referred to as the “Michigan Mamdani” or the “Pontiac Platner,” was backed by the likes of Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Senator Charles Schumer supported Ms. Stevens, his second unsuccessful intervention after his ill-fated role in Maine’s Senate primary. Dr. El-Sayed said plainly that “I want AIPAC to cease to be a force in Democratic primaries.”In the race’s final days Ms. Stevens declared in respect of Dr. El-Sayed that “Everyone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans.” That came just days after Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, announced that she is skipping her own party’s nominating convention because “I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at.”That is an absolute scandal, but could also be a harbinger. Mr. Mamdani’s Boswell, Ross Barkan, hails Dr. El-Sayed’s victory a “triumph for the progressive Left” and crows that Dr. El-Sayed has “shattered taboos around what could be said about the Jewish state.” Mr. Barkan cites Dr. El-Sayed’s “bulging muscles and willingness to mix it up on the podcast circuit and alternative online channels” as bullish signs for “swaggering El-Sayed.”Mr. Barkan reckons that a story bigger even than Dr. El-Sayed’s biceps is the “pro-Palestine current running through the party, and the generational shift well under way that will eventually tug top Democrats away from Israel.” It is no surprise that Dr. El-Sayed was backed by the podcaster Hasan Piker, who last night slandered critics of the candidate as “unbelievably Islamophobic pieces of shit.” The two cavorted at a pool party on Monday. For all the triumphalism on the left, though, the race was razor close. Polls in advance of the vote that predicted a double digit blowout for Dr. El-Sayed appear to have missed the reality that moderate Democrats perform better in lower-income and less educated areas, while leftists draw support from the wealthier and higher educated. The pollster Nate Silver notes that “Black voters, especially working-class Black voters, can be hard to reach.” The Republican nominee, Mike Rogers — he ran unopposed — declared in the wake of Dr. El-Sayed’s win that the “choice this November is simple: common sense or complete insanity.” Polls show that Ms. Stevens would have been a stronger opponent for him than Dr. El-Sayed, who calls Mr. Rogers a “beta character” and boasts that he is “gonna define him into eternity.” For now, though, it is the likes of Dr. El-Sayed who is defining the Democrats.

‘Swaggering El-Sayed’ Drives the Democrats Down a Radical Road

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