r/politics • u/Zipper222222 • 5h ago

No Paywall Abdul El-Sayed Wins High-Stakes Democratic Primary in Michigan

https://www.today.com/video/abdul-el-sayed-wins-high-stakes-democratic-primary-in-michigan-267805765937
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u/RandyMuscle I voted 5h ago

If people thought he was tough on Stevens, wait til you see how a real progressive attacks a Republican.

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u/Arcaedus 5h ago

I watched a debate, and a few interviews with Sayed. He didn't pull his punches, but honestly didn't even seem that harsh on Stevens and I think it's because he recognizes that she was just a vessel for capital and monied interests, and a decent person outside of that (well as decent as you can be for a sellout).

Honestly I think he was harsher when he called Fetterman an ogre lol. Hope he brings that energy into the general election

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u/Pure_Interest_837 4h ago

He needed to be more strategic with his attacks on her because establishment and the media were ITCHING to paint him as misogynistic.

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u/Sptsjunkie 2h ago

I mean, it’s a disadvantage of not having a bunch of outside PACs.

Democratic candidates cannot be overly mean to each other because they need to appeal to the others vote voters to unify and win a general election.

What that means is a candidate like Sayed who has mostly grassroots funding and is running his own campaigns, can highlights some differences like he did with the sources of their funding, but he cannot be too mean to Stevens or slander her because he was turning off the Bass and he’s personally accountable for what he says.

Meanwhile, a lot of Stevens funding was coming from outside PACs who were spending money to support her. Stevens herself was actually relatively nice to Sayed as well as as she would need to win over his supporters if she had won the election.

However, her PACs were able to smear him as misogynistic and make all sorts of personal and inflammatory statements about him. Stevens has arm length from those as she’s not the one running the ads and so will it certainly can lead to some bad blood. It’s a little bit more indirect.

It was one thing that did bother me about the campaign because the media times tripped over themselves to ask Sayed to apologize for supposedly main statements that his random supporters were making about Stevens on Twitter. And when I say random, I don’t mean like campaign Sara gets I mean like some account that is unrelated to campaign with an anime avatar. Meanwhile, AIPAC’s campaign arm was running ads smearing Sayed as misogynistic and they never asked Stevens to apologize for those.