Andrew Mangan argues that “Abdul El-Sayed may just prove a progressive can win a purple state” at Daily Kos: “In this year’s midterm elections, the hardest Senate seat for Democrats to defend probably isn’t what they expected a few months ago. Polls show Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff handily leading Republican challenger Mike Collins, noted friend to white supremacists…Rather, the seat most at risk sits in Michigan, and this Tuesday’s Senate primary will see Democrats making a familiar, if especially high-stakes, choice: centrist or progressive?… As is the case with Wisconsin’s gubernatorial contest, polls suggest the left-most candidate will prevail in the Democratic primary. But unlike in the Badger State, early polling in Michigan hints that the most progressive may also be the best positioned to win in November…Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official, leads centrist Rep. Haley Stevens by an average of 11 percentage points in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, according to nine public polls conducted since July 5, when moderate state Sen. Mallory McMorrow dropped out of the race. (Polls were collected as of Friday at 5 PM ET.)…Progressives have rallied around the metro Detroit native. A strong advocate of Medicare for All, El-Sayed has racked up endorsements from superstars like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. He’s also managed to win support from a broader coalition that includes a major nurses union, the president of the state board of education, and United Auto Workers, a labor union with deep roots in Michigan and around 127,000 local members as of 2023…Meanwhile, Stevens has the support of The Detroit News as well as various Democratic establishment figures, like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Sen. Gary Peters, whose retirement kicked off this primary.” More here.
From “Black voters, divided on progressives, are pivotal in Michigan Senate primary” by Erin Cox at The Washington Post: “Michael Sutton, 18, is new to politics, but he says he’s convinced they’re broken…Sutton walked this working-class neighborhood of bungalows near Detroit last week armed with literature, trying to sell his elders on Abdul El-Sayed, the surging progressive in Michigan’s intensely competitive Senate race…Sutton, a young canvasser trying to build up the coalition of progressive Black voters, said he believes a candidate like El-Sayed will disrupt politics for the better…He asked Barbara Lawton, 51, as she pulled into her driveway, “Do you know who you’re voting for in the Senate race?”…Lawton glanced at the flier…“Not that dude,” she replied…She later said her gut told her political disruptions usually make things worse…Michigan’s bruising Senate primary has laid bare the Democratic Party’s divisions, and it could chart a course to what it might become in a post-President Donald Trump world…Black voters like Lawton and Sutton will be crucial to defining that trajectory. In doing so, they will either hand progressives their biggest win of the election cycle or fortify a Democratic establishment that has been on the defensive…When they cast their ballots in Tuesday’s primary election, Michigan Democrats will choose between the liberal El-Sayed, who has caught fire in recent polling, and Rep. Haley Stevens, a moderate three-term congresswoman with a record of flipping red districts…The winner will face Republican Mike Rogers, the former congressman who narrowly lost his first Senate bid two years ago. The Michigan race could be crucial to which party controls the Senate…El-Sayed, a former public health official, has built a broad grassroots coalition and campaigned in communities that turned to Trump in the face of economic stress. Stevens is the establishment pick who has sought to build deep ties with churchgoers as she courts Black voters.” More here.
In “Thirteen House Rating Changes Toward Democrats as Seat-by-Seat Assessment Better Aligns with Our November Expectations,” Kyle Kondik write at The Center for Politics: “We’re revamping our House ratings this week, which has the effect of bringing the number of seats at least leaning to each party to rough parity after redistricting helped Republicans build an edge in our ratings a few months ago…Our overall topline assessment is basically unchanged, though: Democrats remain favored to flip the House majority in November, but Republicans have a path, too…The number of House Toss-ups expands from 15 to 20 as part of this week’s update…The overall race for the House appears fairly steady, with an overall national Democratic lead that doesn’t seem quite as robust as 2018’s was, although the lead may eventually get there by the end of the cycle…Following today’s changes, the new ratings show a much tighter spread overall: Republicans have 208 seats at least leaning to them, Democrats have 207, and there are now 20 Toss-ups. This gives both parties pathways to a majority, but we’d still expect Democrats to do better among the Toss-ups. Our best guess at this point would be Democrats winning a majority in the low-to-mid 220s.” More here.
“For decades, the right-wing forces set on steadily eroding our democracy have worked in tandem with a pro-corporate movement that has increasingly marginalized organized labor, creating a ballooning crisis for the working class,” Stephen Lerner and Joseph A. McCartin write in “How Resisting Trumpism Could Revive the U.S. Labor Movement” at In These Times. “Yet this politically hazardous moment also represents an opportunity to overcome deep-seated institutional inertia, drawing elements of a cautious labor movement out of their defensive crouch, and helping unions devise forms of struggle that might both revive the labor movement and renew American democracy…President Donald Trump’s second term has, in a way, broken a spell. For years, the pre-Trump status quo kept labor locked in a pattern of slow decline even as democracy was increasingly stifled and abridged by voter suppression, gerrymandering, filibusters and the overweening power of organized money. But the decades-old dysfunctional status quo that gave rise to Trumpism is now crumbling under the weight of the most lawless, antidemocratic, rights-trampling administration this country has seen since the 19th century…While our democracy’s crisis deepens, the national labor movement has yet to play a leading role in the resistance against ascendant authoritarianism. By seizing the opportunity to play such a role in the year ahead, labor has the opportunity to reverse its decades-long slide toward irrelevancy by taking up an indispensable role in preserving, expanding and deepening rights-based democracy…There is no doubt that democracy and workers’ rights are facing down an existential threat. Yet that very threat and the sense of urgency it has spawned have created an opportunity we could not have engineered on our own. It has roused growing numbers to the defense of democracy, glaringly exposed the dangers of unchecked corporate power and catalyzed actions within pockets of the labor movement that have a potential to spread and become transformative.” More here.
