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How the Michigan Senate primary activated every bitter Democratic grudge

The ghosts of 2016, 2020, and 2024 have all come to Michigan.

A decade’s worth of grudges and feuds between the Democratic establishment and the insurgent left is coming to a head in one election this year: Michigan’s Senate primary.

Many long-simmering grudges between the establishment Democratic Party faction and a faction supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders have come to the fore in Michigan’s Senate primary.

Dynamics involving gender and race, concerns over electability, and claims of establishment malfeasance closely mirror dynamics in Sanders’s two presidential runs.

Every intra-Democratic controversy over Israel — from the influence of AIPAC to claims of antisemitism — has come up too, showcasing a party with some bitter divides.

The contest between Rep. Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed has somehow unearthed every fault line that’s divided the two factions over the years — from gender and racial politics, to Israel and Gaza, to questions of electability and fair play, to money in politics, and much more.

On one side there’s Stevens, a four-term House member who is the preferred candidate of the Democratic establishment — and of AIPAC, which has spent nearly $30 million to support her campaign.

On the other is El-Sayed, a former public health official who’s been backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and their network of supporters and fans.

But the race has quickly gone beyond just them and become about something bigger — the national struggle for influence in the Democratic Party.

“This is the quintessential contest between the establishment wing of the Democratic Party and the economically populist wing,” said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the left group Our Revolution.

In contrast, Jonathan Cowan, president of the center-left group Third Way, argued that nominating El-Sayed — a “super extreme candidate who will alienate lots of voters in the middle” — is a dangerous risk.

Vox’s Astead Herndon interviews Abdul El-Sayed

In this one race, the Democratic factions are relitigating the 2016 presidential primary, the 2020 presidential primary, and several major controversies of the past few years, all at once. And whoever wins will have to find a way to somehow unite the party and win a competitive general election against presumptive Republican nominee Mike Rogers.

On gender and racial politics, we’re doing 2016 again

When Sanders challenged Hillary Clinton for the 2016 presidential nomination, her supporters frequently implied he had blind spots related to gender and race. They argued, for instance, that certain criticisms of Clinton (and remarks by Sanders) were sexist, and that Sanders’s poor performance with Black voters demonstrated the limits of his appeal.

The discourse also sometimes focused on so-called “Bernie Bros” — online Sanders supporters who, critics argued, directed toxic abuse and vitriol toward people not in his camp. Sanders’s backers argued that the accusations of sexism were themselves a dishonest and inaccurate smear to distract........

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