Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary has produced the kind of result that guarantees a much larger argument about where the party is heading.
Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed defeated establishment-backed Rep. Haley Stevens, overcoming support for Stevens from major Michigan Democratic figures, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and retiring Sen. Gary Peters. For author and investigative journalist Peter Schweizer, however, the interesting question isn’t simply whether democratic socialists are gaining influence.
It’s whether establishment Democrats can stop that movement without moving closer to it themselves.
“We’ve seen socialists win this year in places like California and New York, but this is the first DSA victory in the Midwest,” Schweizer said on the latest episode of “The Drill Down.” Because Michigan remains an important presidential battleground, he described the result as “a massive sea change in where American politics is heading.”
El-Sayed has denied being “technically or practically” a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Still, two of America’s most prominent democratic socialist politicians, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, campaigned aggressively on his behalf.
Meanwhile, the Democratic establishment put substantial resources behind Stevens.
According to figures cited by Schweizer, approximately $83 per vote was spent supporting Stevens compared with roughly $4 per vote for El-Sayed. Whatever the precise significance of that spending disparity, it didn’t produce the result Stevens’ supporters wanted.
Schweizer argues that El-Sayed assembled an effective coalition combining Muslim voters in communities such as Dearborn with heavily progressive voters around Michigan’s university centers. El-Sayed’s position on Israel also sharply distinguished him from more conventional Democratic candidates and attracted support from voters furious over U.S. policy in the Middle East.
The demographics complicate any simple explanation of his victory.
Schweizer noted that Democratic Socialists of America membership is overwhelmingly white according to internal survey data, while Stevens performed strongly among black voters. House Democratic Whip James Clyburn also expressed skepticism about the political movement surrounding El-Sayed, telling reporters, “I don’t see anyone who looks like me” at his rallies.
Schweizer sees echoes of a much older Democratic argument.
In 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton publicly criticized rapper Sister Souljah over inflammatory remarks about violence, creating what became known in American politics as a “Sister Souljah moment.” The episode was widely interpreted as Clinton demonstrating his independence from activists on his party’s left.
Schweizer doubts today’s Democratic Party could produce an equivalent moment.
“But there won’t be a replay of the ‘Sister Souljah moment’ this time, because the center of the party is now so far to the left,” he told co-host Eric Eggers.
Schweizer pointed to organized labor as one explanation, arguing that unions such as the American Federation of Teachers and Service Employees International Union now exercise greater influence in Democratic politics than more culturally conservative labor organizations such as the Teamsters.
He also focused on the demographics of the modern socialist movement. DSA members, he argued, tend to be younger, highly educated and too young to remember the Cold War firsthand.
“They grew up with prosperity, and they have no understanding of the failings of socialism, whether it’s the Soviet variety, the Cuban variety, the Venezuelan variety, or the Angolan variety,” Schweizer said.
That led him to another explanation: “elite overproduction,” a theory associated particularly with academic Peter Turchin’s work on political instability.
Schweizer described it as a situation in which societies produce more highly educated, ambitious people seeking elite positions than there are desirable positions available. Frustrated aspirants can then become hostile toward the political and economic system itself.
“When revolutions take place, they are generally led by people who think they belong in the elite,” Schweizer said. In his telling, some young socialist activists fit that pattern, although that remains his interpretation of their motivations rather than something established by the Michigan election result itself.
The discussion also turned to Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who supported El-Sayed and connected the contemporary socialist movement to liberation politics associated with figures including Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
Whatever ideological label voters attach to El-Sayed, the immediate political question is considerably more concrete.
Michigan matters.
