Now We'll See Whether the Democratic Establishment Truly Cares About Democracy (Part 1 of 2)
Even though the subject matter of today's column is anything but funny, I will begin with a humorous pop-culture reference. In one of the (few) scenes in the movie "Animal House" that is still amusing and inoffensive, one of the Delta fraternity brothers takes the floor at a disciplinary hearing at which his house has been (accurately, albeit vindictively) accused of violating all kinds of Faber College rules. Here is the end of his speech:
But you can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America.
That evasive non-defense is hilarious because it lampoons a common trope on the right in US politics, where Republicans absurdly expand an accusation to damn as traitors everyone who disagrees with them. The shortest-hand version of that move is: "Why do you hate America?" I have even used that movie reference before on Dorf on Law, in a 2022 column referring to Fox's former "I'm just asking questions" guy. The trope amounts to deflecting specific and directed criticism by pretending that the criticism is a broader insult to good and decent folks everywhere.
Why bring it up again now? Leading up to the primary for US Senate in Michigan this week, the Democratic party establishment's candidate was Haley Stevens, a "moderate" (scare quotes to be explained in Part 2 tomorrow) congresswoman who was heavily backed by record-setting amounts of money (along the lines of $60 million, for a single Senate primary). Her opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, is a critic of the Netanyahu government's actions in Gaza, a stand that guaranteed that a ton of the money pouring into Stevens's campaign was from the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Both the Democratic electorate in Michigan and the American people in general have notably turned against the Netanyahu government in the last year or so. More to the immediate point, AIPAC's public image has become so toxic that it has resorted to creating front groups with innocuous names, such as Elect Chicago Women and the Chicago Progressive Partnership, very non-progressive shell organizations that attacked a female candidate in an Illinois congressional primary earlier this year. Whatever the merits (or lack thereof) regarding the policies at stake, it is hardly a surprise that a candidate would highlight and criticize AIPAC's support of his opponent.
But here is the galling punchline (as reported last weekend in The Guardian): "And in a Twitter post this week, Stevens criticized a video where El-Sayed criticized Aipac, with Stevens saying: 'Everyone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans.'"
Again, this is the unfunny echo of the rant from "Animal House." El-Sayed says AIPAC is bad news. Stevens responds that he is attacking "Jewish Americans." I put it to you Greg, I will not stand here and listen to you badmouth ... . Ecchhh.
As most readers have likely heard by now, El-Sayed won that primary, despite the forces that opposed him. But it is important to note that those who fought against his nomination were not merely AIPAC but essentially the entire establishment of the Michigan and national Democratic Parties. Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jefferies, and James Clyburn (and Michigan Governor Jennifer Whitmer and Senator Gary Peters) energetically supported Stevens. More importantly, they continued to do so even after she issued that unbelievably sleazy tweet! So far as I know, she did not pay any price, and the people backing her did not bat an eye.
Was that primary hard-hitting? Sure. But one notable difference arose when some of El-Sayed's supporters started to mock Stevens's exaggerated "down home" Midwestern accent. As it happens, I grew up just across the Michigan border in Ohio and went to law school at the University of Michigan, and I am here to say that Stevens was clearly cranking up the folksiness. People who have lived around this part of the country know authenticity, and that was not it. Even so, El-Sayed asked his supporters to knock off the mockery, a gesture that was similar (in kind, though not degree) to John McCain's famous (if a bit inadequate) 2008 rebuke of a supporter who said that she did not trust Barack Obama because he was "an Arab."
Why does Stevens's attack on El-Sayed bother me so much -- beyond its noxious dishonesty, that is? Writing in The Contrarian last month, Jennifer Rubin noted that internecine battles in primaries are inevitable but must not get out of hand such that they hamper the ultimate nominee in the general election. She was writing about the 2028 presidential election, but the idea applies to Michigan 2026 as well: "Above all, the greater pro-democracy coalition must remember that — whenever the nominee is chosen — past grievances must be put aside. Our democracy’s future depends upon it." Stevens handed the Republicans a ready-made smear to use against El-Sayed, one that would not be as powerful if it merely came from the Republicans' smear factory. Stevens had no business doing that, because even though "grievances must be put aside," some attacks do damage beyond the primary.
This is hardly a new phenomenon among establishment Democrats. During the 2020 Democratic primaries, for example, I was incensed that Pete Buttigieg attacked one of his fellow Democrats on health care policy by amplifying a Republican talking point about taxes, even though he could have made his point without feeding the other side's agenda. And the "blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans" distortion leveled against El-Sayed is so, so, SO much worse.
Suffice it to say, then, that I was unhappy that Stevens attacked her opponent in that way, and it was shocking but not surprising that the party's so-called moderates let it pass. Even setting aside what I take to be a defining moment in that campaign, however, the larger story is about the people who predictably attacked yet another exciting, progressive candidate. Rubin's piece in The Contrarian yesterday included this welcome assessment:
An El-Sayed victory also would be another reminder that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is remarkably inept when it comes to evaluating the campaign skills and the public appeal of candidates. A Stevens loss (in the wake of Maine Gov. Janet Mills’s spectacular failure to knock off Graham Platner during the primary) would no doubt add momentum to those calling for a Senate leadership makeover.
Indeed, I ended my Dorf on Law column earlier this week by reminding readers that
So let us take up that discussion about electability here. Rubin, in her column yesterday, also argued that "'electability' in today’s politics may turn out to be something more than ideological inoffensiveness." Inoffensiveness? She is right that Schumer et al. think about electability in that way, but what they are willing to support is itself ideologically offensive, as I will explain in Part 2 tomorrow. They are, in fact, quite happy to offend people. Which people? The ones that Schumer's crowed fears will take "their" party away from its rightful owners.Chuck Schumer ma[de] up a fictional couple that he "consults" about policy, but he has imbued his creations with Reaganite views and says that they voted for Trump.
... Democrats in general are much too quick to say that anyone with a non-defensive-crouch policy agenda is UNELECTABLE. I will have much more to say about that in my column on Thursday.
Even though those party leaders have a terrible track record and habitually slam anyone to their left, it is nonetheless important to engage with the question of whether their preferred candidates would indeed be less likely to lose in the general election. Because I am a progressive, I want candidates I support to have a good answer to the electability attack.
Unfortunately, they do not always deliver. For example, in a friendly interview on Zeteo, Mehdi Hasan asked Francesca Hong, the progressive candidate for Governor of Wisconsin, offered this weak tea: "The person who wins the most votes is the most electable." When she then tried to blather on about her campaign's events, Hasan had the good sense to cut her off and re-ask the question. Her second stab at an answer was only slightly better, saying that her Trumpist opponent is so bad that anyone could win against him: Beating such an extreme right candidate, she said, "isn't a matter of if. It's a matter of how much."
With respect, that is not good enough. And the sad thing is that there is an evidence-based answer that is more than good enough, an answer that moreover is anything but a heavily guarded insider secret: motivating the base. Hong could have said that the difference between going with the "safe" and supposedly inoffensive candidate reliably kills enthusiasm among Democratic voters, while trying to appeal to supposedly moderate voters by not being progressive does not make up the difference.
That argument is obviously based on an empirical prediction. Is it defensible? Do the data support it? New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall (who could never be accused of being a shill for the left) asked that very question in "Is It Really True That Socialism Is a Threat to the Democrats?" earlier this week. Although Edsall gives far too much oxygen in the piece to establishment talking points, he was at least skeptical enough to keep asking questions in an effort to separate cant from honest analysis. After a long "one side says this, the other says that" buildup, he brought it home with something extremely important:
Adam Bonica, a political scientist at Stanford, is a leading skeptic of claims that left-wing candidates can significantly undermine Democratic prospects. He wrote by email: “Who wins these primaries matters much less for November than either side of the debate assumes. Control of Congress will be decided by the national environment and the lean of each seat. The electability argument is being fought over effects an order of magnitude smaller than what actually decides majorities.
“Wave elections are made by turnout swings and economic conditions, and those swings are largely set nationally, not by who the nominee is in any given district or state.”
Bonica acknowledged that he and two colleagues have found “0.5 to 1.0 points for nominating a moderate over a progressive. The effect is there.” But, he added, “it is also far too small to carry the argument being built on top of it.”
Bonica cited separate research showing “that nominating a progressive increases Democratic turnout by about 1 percentage point. A more progressive nominee does cost you some swing votes, and it does buy you some turnout. But both effects are small, they point in opposite directions, and on net they seem to cancel.”
Put another way, Bonica wrote, “centrists touting their electability are advertising a 1 percent interest rate on a savings account that charges a 1 percent annual fee.”
Honestly, I would have thought that the numbers would not have been a wash, but Bonica's data-driven response certainly makes the point that all of this crazy talk about progressives being a drag on other Democrats -- both in individual races and by tainting establishment Democrats with what is apparently supposed to be their progressive stink -- does not reflect the real world.
I wrote the headline to this column ("Now We'll See Whether the Democratic Establishment Truly Cares About Democracy") after it became clear that El-Sayed was going to win his primary in Michigan. The party leaders who supported his opponent and then looked the other way when she libeled El-Sayed have, so far, made the right noises about uniting to hold that Senate seat. As I will explain in Part 2 of this column tomorrow, however, there are reasons to worry about their sincerity.
- Neil H. Buchanan