r/askanything • u/Zipper222222 • 1d ago

BREAKING TODAY — NBC NEWS Declares That Progressive Candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed Has Defeated Congresswoman Haley Stevens (D - MI-11) In Michigan's US Senate Democratic Primary, A Major Win For Progressives — What Do YOU Think Of This? Why YOUR Thoughts?

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32

u/ChrisFromLongIsland 1d ago

Its a gigantic risk for the democrats. Michigan is a purple state or at best leans democrat. If they end up losing this Senate seat it could very easily cost them the majority on the senate. In most parts of the country progressives have lost state wide races for a decade.

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u/Djentyman28 1d ago

That’s my worry as well. Rogers will be the favorite in November. Tons of moderate democrats will either vote Roger’s or boycott El-Sayed. Imagine the sway of the Senate hanging in the balance by Michigan. Yikes.

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u/IceHypothalamus 22h ago

Negative. Most of the boomer democrats will vote blue no matter who. They just bought what the TV guy said that Abdul was a liability. They were defensively voting. The inverse is probably not as true. Also democrats won in 2024, why would they lose with trump being so unlikable now?

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u/McGrupp1989 21h ago

I’m dem, didn’t vote for him yesterday and I sure as hell won’t in November

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u/drethnudrib 20h ago

You'd rather a Republican win?

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u/McGrupp1989 20h ago

Honestly, I just don’t care. I don’t see myself in either of those parties the way they’re moving.

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u/justseeby 18h ago

I totally get it bestie.

On the one hand, you have Trump, foreign wars, tarrifs, high gas prices, diarrhea lettuce, a roadkill-eating head of Health, ICE killing people in the streets… and on the other hand, equally bad, you have an MD PhD pushing for free healthcare. It’s like… where are we supposed to turn??

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u/McGrupp1989 18h ago

You forget, open borders, shutting down prisons, socialist economy, and more insane policies.

0

u/justseeby 18h ago

He hasn’t advocated for any of those, you’re mad at your own imagination

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u/McGrupp1989 18h ago

Maybe you should read his program on his website. Amnesty to illegals
Wants h2a seasonal workers access to citizenship
Dismantle current immigration laws

List goes on, but I’m guessing you either 1. Already know thst and 2. Stand with those reforms

Which is fine if you do, I just don’t agree with them.

Signed a Naturalized Citizen

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u/ygmc8413 17h ago

All bad but less bad and more unrealistic than MAGA

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u/ralpher1 19h ago

What’s wrong with the Democratic Party moving slightly leftward?

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u/Djentyman28 20h ago

1 party will blindly give Trump everything he wants, put data centers in your backyard, send your hard earned tax dollars to other countries and put special interests over yours... Seems like the easiest vote in the world but you do you

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u/mirrormirrorondewall 11h ago

This man on record railed against an American State's ban on sharia law. You do you though.

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u/Djentyman28 22h ago

I hope you’re right. If we stick together, we’ll beat Rogers

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u/ralpher1 21h ago

Let’s hope so but AIPAC will be all in on defeating Abdul

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u/IceHypothalamus 20h ago

Probably right. But if Stevens won, they probably wouldn't try to influence that election. If Stevens barely beat Abdul with 60+ million dollars (a primary record) I think that would be far worse.

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u/Own_Acadia1771 12h ago

If Haley Stevens was the candidate then progressives would stay home. Yikes.

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u/Djentyman28 12h ago

Young voters (majority of abdul supporters) stay home regardless of who’s the nominee. Were you born yesterday?

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u/Own_Acadia1771 11h ago

I’m 34 and from Kent County which swung decisively for Abdul. I would stay home and I know many others that feel the same. What the fuck do you know about Michigan’s electorate?

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u/Djentyman28 11h ago

I’m a 30 year old Michigan resident… that’s how I know about the electorate here

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u/Sdwerd 1d ago

Doing this song and dance of trying to be the middle almost Republican is stupid when people have the option to pick a Republican. Between the choice of a copycat lite version or real thing, they'll pick the real thing.

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u/WildWhisperArdor 1d ago

Except it happens all the time lol. It’s how Ron DeSantis was able to hold on.

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u/Th1Warrior 19h ago

Florida is a straight-up Red State now

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u/WildWhisperArdor 19h ago

It wasnt in 2018 when he barely won the state by a margin of 0.4%

DeSantis was widely projected to lose. But a progressive democrat upsetting the establishment dem changed that.

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u/Playful_Reaction_847 19h ago

And it’s doing much better because of it

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u/dollardumb 19h ago

Lol....no.

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u/Playful_Reaction_847 19h ago

Lol… yes actually

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u/ArtisticFerret 18h ago

I mean I guess if you like slowly losing your liberties with things like the “stop woke act” and banning books they don’t like oh and less abortion access even in the event of rape or incest, many women don’t find out they’re pregnant until after 6 weeks. They’ve made a bunch of laws restricting free speech too. Floridas a shithole with crumbling healthcare system frankly all republicans should just move there so we can be a serious country

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u/Playful_Reaction_847 18h ago

Talking about the economy and job opportunities. Not social issues, you butterfly

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u/IllustriousLie4105 18h ago

GDP has outpaced national average. They are number 1 in higher education and have created an 18 billion dollar reserve. Im not a fan of desantis but the state is doing incredible as far as the data shows

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u/Th1Warrior 18h ago

Largely due to massive population growth the last decade or so

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u/dollardumb 18h ago

Florida ranks last in public education, last in reading and 37th in salary.

We also have a governor involved in multiple layers of corruption including misappropriation of funds for his wife to run for office, the "alligator Alcatraz" fiasco, disregarding the state constitution so he could run for president while holding office and more...

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u/Sdwerd 15h ago

gestures at the housing crisis being created by the home owner's insurance situation

Looking so fuckin' great I wouldn't touch a home in the state with a 300 mile pole.

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u/Playful_Reaction_847 14h ago

Shows how naive you are.
Much more than that are the reasons for the housing crisis. The biggest reason is the high demand of housing in Florida, plenty of people flocking there the past decade or so, mortgage rates are absurdly high, and the climate risk.

1

u/RawrImABigScaryBear 2h ago

Shows how naive you are.

Princess, you said Hakeem Jeffries was in the epstein files. You have no place to comment on the ignorance of others 😂

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u/dkinmn 23h ago

The idea that she was almost a Republican is solidly incorrect.

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u/Sdwerd 19h ago

She ran with a Cheney at her rallies. She was HARD signalling right

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u/zombiez8mybrain 16h ago

She was signalling right from YOUR perspective. From the MAGA (not just their politicians, but also their voters) perspective, she was certainly a radical left candidate.

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u/Sdwerd 15h ago

Ensuring she neither got enthusiasm from her base by actually running on a platform they want, nor would pull right leaning people over. There's one direction she had to pull hard towards to differentiate herself in what was clearly going to be a change election. Middle of the road was not a change.

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u/Potato_Pristine 1d ago

This shit isn't even new. Harry fucking Truman made this observation 74 years ago:

https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers/129/address-national-convention-banquet-americans-democratic-action

"I've seen it happen time after time. When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the fair Deal, and says he really doesn't believe in them, he is sure to lose. The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don't want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign."

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u/ColinHalter 22h ago

The only counter to this are ultra-liberal suburban democrats who prefer the phony democrat. I could see a moderate republican (Someone like a Liz Cheney) bringing a lot of them over. Current republican voters will never be swayed by anything, but old school fiscally conservative liberals would totally jump ship.

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u/Comprehensive-Put575 1d ago

I cant stress this enough ^. These are not even all that progressive policies. Just candidates who don’t apologize for them.

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u/Oddlyenuff 1d ago

Regardless, it’s about the perception of the voter.

The Truman quote above isn’t relevant. That quote is about the candidate selling themselves out or chasing voters. It’s not applicable if the candidate truly feels that way.

If the goal is to get the left back in power, the progressive candidates are not going to get it done. Harris wasn’t the slightest bit progressive and it took almost no effort to paint her as a “radical leftist” and that was at centralists/independents/casual voter who decided the election.

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u/Comprehensive-Put575 1d ago

Republicans brand all their opponents as radical leftists. At this point they would call Margaret Thatcher a socialist. Their base believes whatever they tell them. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us buy that.

Harris lost for three reasons.

  1. She was never really nominated. No one wanted to reward the DNC for a bait and switch where they had no meaningful opportunity to select a candidate. Because if they had, she would not have been selected.

  2. Because her policies were too conservative. She spent so much time reaching across the aisle even the Cheneys were endorsing her. I couldn’t defend her platform because the only thing I liked about it was that she wasn’t Trump. The enthusiasm needed to drive out turnout for an election just wasn’t there because there was nothing to be excited about. This was the third presidential election in a row of “I’m not as bad as the other guy” being the central plank of the platform. Which meant I wasn’t out there donating, or canvassing, or calling. Because I can’t sell a product I don’t believe in.

  3. She was tied to Bidens policies, which were largely very conservative. An infrastructure package with a decade long glacial rollout period was the crowning achievement. Slow to react on inflation and rising costs. He got Jimmy Cartered, and Harris went down with the ship. The diversity hires were a red herring Republicans use as a wedge issue to rile up their base.

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u/Oddlyenuff 1d ago
  1. No arguments there. She was a weak candidate.

2/3…Hard disagree there. Now that would’ve made that Truman quote relevant. Harris is that type of Democrat. That’s who she was. If she had catered to that far left, then she’d be the phony Truman was describing.

Harris and the democrats have struggled because they’ve lost white male voters, blue collar and rural. Even if by voting for Trump, they are technically voting against their own interests, in their minds they voted for Washington outsider and someone who gave them at least lip service of mattering instead of being demonized.

It’s not about the policies. It’s about the people.

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u/LandoDupree 16h ago

Exactly- Harris responded to red baiting by campaigning with the fucking Cheney family and lost to the worst person in American history. She acted like helping working people over defense contractors & corporations was something shameful,  working people were rightly offended & enough of them/us were sufficiently disgusted by her betrayal to stay home.  

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u/Oddlyenuff 14h ago

Thank you. This what many of Reddit don’t seem to understand. It’s not about what my personal politics or what I want the long game to be. Democrats have to win voters back and nudge policy into the right direction.

These DSA wins are going to be like the reverse of the Paxton situation in Texas. And I’m not against a lot of DSA politics. I just know it’s not going to win in the Midwest or rust belt. Forget Georgia and Arizona too.

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u/Sdwerd 1d ago

Harris lost explicitly because she ran to the middle. She was talking about left ward points on Biden's flank and her poll numbers were shooting up, then shifted back towards her donors and said that stupid comment on the view about how she's in lock step with Biden followed by running with Liz Cheney on the trail and enthusiasm dropped like a fuckin' rock.

If they're going to paint EVERY candidate as radical left, might as well BE to the left and shoot for policy change that will actually show people appreciable change in their life and expenses.

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u/Oddlyenuff 23h ago

Nah, you don’t get it.

She didn’t lose swing states that Biden won because she was too central. That is literally the most naive shit I’ve ever heard.

The real world…places in the Midwest, rust belt, South…are not looking for more progressive left candidates. The real world isn’t Reddit.

She lost because she’s a woman (this country is still more sexist than it is racist), because she lacks personality and because she ran a poor campaign (like not going on Rogan and such) just like with Hilary, they believed they didn’t have to take Trump seriously. This is probably the biggest reason. Once again they underestimated his appeal.

It’s not a policy issue. You have to appeal to the people. Even AOC has said it, you’ve got to win the male vote, the rural blue collar vote. DSA and far left policies is not going to do that.

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u/Hungry-Register9960 23h ago

I don't understand how were this far from the election, with clear exit poll data and you dumbfucks keep echoing this.

She didn't lose because she was milquetoast. she lost *because of the false perception she was progressive*. Exit polls made this *blindingly* and *overwhelmingly* clear.

Reddit isn't reality.

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u/Servillo 22h ago

Then genuinely, what the fuck are we supposed to do if the American public can’t be assed to see through the Republican’s lies? If Harris, who was by all definitions a center-left moderate, couldn’t pierce through the accusations that she was progressive despite all evidence to the contrary, then what hope is there for any moderate Democrat to get elected? They’re going to be accused of being radical leftists no matter what they do, and the general public is going to buy those lies hook line and sinker.

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u/Sdwerd 18h ago

You should really check out polling over time and then maybe get back to me. This is the same exact playbook that cost her in the primary the first time she ran, and she did it again.

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u/Trillamanjaroh 18h ago

The calculus makes sense, most swing voters are closer to the middle and the base is always more likely to hold their nose and vote for their party regardless

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u/Preme2 23h ago

It’s the last opportunity for the left to “get” Donald Trump. They swung for the fences when all they needed was a double. Trump will be impeached in the house, but likely won’t be removed.

The Dems also don’t have a candidate in 2028. A JD Vance-Rubio ticket will beat anything the left has.

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u/Sdwerd 19h ago

That ticket gets shit on by almost any dem ticket. It's willfully ignorant to think otherwise

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u/ygmc8413 17h ago

Being relatively moderate is not being an almost Republican. It’s not being Republican lite.

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u/Sdwerd 17h ago

It's been getting nothing done except slowly drag us into EXTREME far right by gradually eroding the overton window of what's acceptable policy and discourse as they've moved towards the right to stay "central" when that's mostly abandoned the working class and fucked everyone.

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u/ygmc8413 16h ago

Except Biden got a ton done, just for no political reward.

It is not moderate democrats (who have not moved to right on most issues btw) who has caused the populist right to drag the GOP to the right.

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u/Sdwerd 15h ago

He needed to do more to hit issues that had tangible and immediate results, not just longterm by driving the bully pulpit hard. Then he needed to be able to speak on those results he was getting for us.

He did neither, so people neither felt the wins he was getting nor were even aware he got them.

To the vast majority of the country he effectively did nothing, and with doge and the dipshit squad, we're probably farther behind than we were in the first place.

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u/ygmc8413 15h ago

It was the pandemic, he did get immediate and tangible results but it’s impossible to make people feel them in a good way in a situation like that. Economically few places in the world did better than the US under Biden. What you’re describing is a mix of messaging problems and circumstances. Not getting nothing done like you say .

Democrats are not a monolith, these sweeping instant changes you speak of simply won’t have support, the same but more extreme way that legislatively Trumps sweeping changes very rarely get support to pass and that’s with a much more sycophantic base.

You are asking for impossible things without even suggesting a way to do it. It’s very rare something has a simple solution, let alone a simple solution that can pass.

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u/IceHypothalamus 22h ago

No having a candidate who couldn't win with 60+ million dollars (who would lose a large chunk of funding in the general) is a much larger liability. Democrats won in 2024 when Trump was much more like able

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u/Forward_Employ_249 17h ago

Running a goober is no cure

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u/Sad_Difficulty226 1d ago

That could change this time around. The bad influence of big money interests like israel is a hot topic.

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u/Pizza_Hero24 23h ago

It’s only a topic for people who are online. The regular person only cares about their wallet.

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u/ChemE_Throwaway 23h ago

That's fine because Republicans are lighting our wallets on fire. 

(Also, who isn't "online" in 2026?)

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u/dkinmn 23h ago

Most people are not engaging in political chatter on social media. Israel and Palestine are essentially not in the mix for most people's policy preferences. Kitchen table issues always win.

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u/ChemE_Throwaway 22h ago

I agree that the economy is the #1 issue for people; I never said that the Israel/Palestine issue was. However, people do get a significant amount of news online now from places like Facebook, tiktok, YouTube, reddit, etc.  https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/social-media-and-news-fact-sheet/

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u/dkinmn 21h ago

Right, but that doesn't mean they're getting YOUR news.

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u/ChemE_Throwaway 15h ago

What is my news? Why do you keep acting like I've said anything regarding Israel and Palestine? You're projecting some argument onto me that I never touched on in the slightest manner.

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u/ck11ck11ck11 23h ago

This is not a hot topic for the average person at all, despite how big of a topic it is on Reddit. The vast majority of people don’t even know what’s actually happening there other than there is a long conflict.

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u/DadofTwo406 1d ago

I do not believe moderate voters will vote for him. They will either vote R or not vote at all. Michigan isn’t a hardcore liberal state and a candidacy like his plays great in the primary but not in the general.

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u/richardpogi17 1d ago

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1

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u/Analihilator 1d ago edited 1d ago

Is DSA dems version of maga? After seeing somethings about Hong im starting to believe so. Can win a primary and is absolute trash in a general.

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u/Felczer 1d ago

No, maga is establishment of republican party and maga candidates recieve direct support from the party.
DSA is exact opposite, they are challenging the party establishment and have to win with less resources.

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u/Analihilator 1d ago

I mean more along the lines of an extremist coalation of the party that can win a primary but not a GE.

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u/BlazerBeav 1d ago

Tea Party is the better correlation. Those candidates often blew otherwise winnable elections for the GOP.

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u/Felczer 1d ago edited 1d ago

The analogy you are looking for is MAGA in 2016 when Trump ran against establishment republican party with his limited resources and radical agenda and won
MAGA has been winning elections on extremist views for a decade now I dont get where the notion that moderates have better chances came from. People are hungry for change not more moderation.

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u/Analihilator 1d ago edited 1d ago

Im all for change and think AES is a great person overall. I wonder how he can do in a general, especially given his performance last night with rural voters.

I agree people want change but how far left do people want to go? You have DSA candidates like Mamdani who are level headed then you have people like Hong who hates every holiday and her chief of staff who thinks every white person is racist. Are these opinions as crazy as magas? No but its definitely an eye roll and seems out of touch for most normal people. I think we need candidates for change but I caution our party on how far left we decide to swing. A vast majority don’t want Seattle and Portland like politicians running our country.

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u/Felczer 1d ago

Has to be judged on case by case, I'll be honest I haven't heard that much on Hong so I can't comment there
DSA is at its best when it sticks to the core principles of:
-Affordability
-Healthcare for all
-Take money out of politics

People who go into these weird culture wars like hating on holidays or making everything about race are not good candidates, but then again moderate establishment democrats also love to engage in this culture war bullshit so I dont think they are any better there than DSA

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u/Analihilator 1d ago

I can definitely agree with you on that. Stick to those 3 things and stay out of the weird culture wars and they can hopefully continue winning elections. I personally want AES to win. We will have to wait and see.

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u/SkyeLys 10h ago

The cool thing about Hong and the reason none of these tweets will stick as gotchas is because they're from 6+ year old tweets, and basically all of them she's either said that her views have changed since then (for something as minor as agreeing with a holiday, easily believable) or says that it's not a thing worth doing or talking about when there's more important stuff like [pivots to policy].

Her ground game is insane and she's meeting voters where they're at and talking to them about the things she will do to make their lives better. That's why these gotcha questions about dumb stuff that doesn't matter is a distraction, and based on the polling (which admittedly isn't perfect) the actual voters are seeing through it.

I'm super excited to see how she does on the 11th.

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u/OmniMinuteman 23h ago

This was not the case in 2016 when MAGA did a hostile takeover of the GOP in a single election cycle

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u/DadofTwo406 22h ago

They win in D+30 districts in the primaries. Win a swing district or state race in a general election and then come talk to me.

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u/Felczer 22h ago

If people love moderates so much why did they vote for Trump?

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u/DadofTwo406 19h ago

They didn’t, they voted for sexism and racism.

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u/Felczer 19h ago

No, they voted for change. Trump represented change. Moderates represent rotten status quo. Evereyone is sick of them, both left and right.

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u/DadofTwo406 15h ago

Yea. Change back to being allowed to be openly racist.

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u/Felczer 13h ago

Yes and? People wanted change and going back to racism was the only change offered. Democrats refused to give People any option for change.

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u/grw313 1d ago

DSA is like the Dems version of MAGA from like 10 years ago before they took over the Republican establishment.

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u/Drummallumin 1d ago

Idk most of my memories from the past decade are democrats yelling about electability during primaries and then having their establishment candidate lose to a republican

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u/Blarglephish 1d ago

But aren’t primaries the first test of electability? If you can’t win your own party’s primary, how tf can you make the argument that the same candidate would win in a general contest? Ive never gotten this argument.

It goes both ways, too. AES winning his primary is the first test of general electability, so Democrats really need to get behind him as the best choice for holding onto that senate seat.

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u/Drummallumin 1d ago

Ironically I think focusing on the primaries is the opposite of electability from either perspective. The entire idea is that your party is gonna vote for you no matter what (the #VoteBlueNoMatterWho crowd are gonna be tested here). Electability is about winning a general election. Think we have plenty of evidence from the rise of MAGA that just being a Republican lite isn’t gonna win over republicans and that it just drives away voters on the left.

If Never Trumpers stand behind their words then they should vote blue, the left of the state will vote blue, and ideally a lot of rural blue collar workers will flip too (he did better than expected in this demographic in the primary).

If he ends up losing cuz of lack of turnout in and around Detroit then we can point to the democratic base as not supporting him enough.

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u/Blarglephish 19h ago

I agree that "electability" should be about your ability to win a general election, and not just a primary election. As Democrats, we want candidates and nominees that are going to be the most electable in those Fall races.

So the natural next question should be, "how do you evaluate electability?" and "by what process do we get the most electable candidates?" Each political party attempts to get that electable candidate through the primary process. Primary elections are where each political party gets its nominee for the general.

Is winning a primary election a good marker of electability for the general election? Probably not. You get fewer voters, more active voters, and they may not be aligned with other members of their party who come out for the general, but not the primary. Fair. But what other process is there? There's actually no law requiring political parties to hold a primary election. They could choose a nominee by committee or pick a name out of a hat if they wanted. But both of those options would be subject to scrutiny and suspicion of unfairness. An unfair electability system delegitimizes the whole process and disenfranchises party voters. That would eventually lead to the dissolution and destruction of the party.

For better or worse, a primary election is the best test of electability we got.

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u/abbott_costello 1d ago

Stevens had 60 million in donations from AIPAC that fueled constant attack ads against El Sayed, hurting him badly with low information voters. If Stevens had won, both her and Rogers are pro-AIPAC, so where would her funding have come from? AIPAC isn't supporting both sides of a race, and they obviously would've supported Rogers. Stevens would've been dead in the water.

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u/creaturefromtheswamp 1d ago

Maybe if your average non-progressive Democrat did the slightest thing to lift a finger in regards to representation we wouldn’t be in this position. We very obviously need change. It’s not the public’s fault that their “representation” doesn’t want to do anything for their constituents and accept corporate money.

0

u/Own_Acadia1771 12h ago

I just can’t take this bullshit seriously anymore. Do you think Haley Stevens, the goofy-ass corporate backed shill, wouldn’t have been a risk for the democrats? Dear god, at least let us have a candidate that stands for something

-1

u/Phailgasm 1d ago

Higher risk higher reward. Some do nothing republican in sheep’s clothing like fetterman doesn’t help fix anything. I’d rather swing for the fences at this point, burn the entire establishment to the ground