Did Michigan Give Us a Gift or a Curse?

Senate nominee El-Sayed brings the DSA test to the Trump Belt

I had a flurry of quotes running through my mind this morning as I was slinging iron in a downtown Nashville gym, making men half my age wonder what they’re doing wrong. One of them is an all time classic, which I’ve shared in these virtual pages many times:

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. - NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

I’ve written extensively about the rise of the DSA-aligned candidates who have been punching through a little at a time, mostly in long-gone locales like New York City, Denver, and Seattle. I’ve made specific notations that this hasn’t been tried in a critical battleground state in which widespread appeal will be required, particularly when the task at hand will be to peel back that pesky Trump coalition that has been squandered by Democrats in the “Rust Belt” and Upper Midwest over the past decade.

From that article:

Forget New York, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Los Angeles for a minute. They all fit the same profile. How do you think this lurch toward a more extreme ideology will play out in Lancaster, Altoona, Saginaw, Muskegon, Oshkosh, Sheboygan, Surprise, Casa Grande, Henderson, Macon, or Columbus?

The most prominent shifts are those in the Rust Belt, Upper Midwest, and heavily Latino areas in Florida, Texas, and California. They were spurred on by the left’s continuing lurch toward legitimate socialism, the right’s turn away from outdated conservatism and toward pragmatic populism (problem solving). The only way to send those gains back is to revert to neoconservatism, making the left’s inevitable lurching less noticeable.

I am becoming more and more convinced that Democrat strategists read this newsletter. They seem to understand that specificity matters. Of course the utter lunatics they are nominating in New York City are going to win their Harris +60% seats. Their psychopath in CO-1, who isn’t even American by birth, is going to win in Denver because a majority of people there have no problem dodging syringes and feces when they go into LoDo to get high and watch some ratty emo band dance around on a makeshift stage. They know that, and they also know that sending these communists into the heart of the Trump revolution is a bridge too far. That’s why we got a big Whitmer-aided push for this individual:

That would be Haley Stevens, who left-wing media isn’t exactly a fan of but for necessity (depending on the outlet). In the six Midwestern (Industrial and Upper) states Trump completely overhauled (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin), Democrats have exactly one playbook. Yes, their grassroots lunatics are exactly the same lunatics campaigning openly in the Bay Area, much like your standard right-winger in Vermont is as right-wing as the ones in Wyoming. The common ground is that neither seems to understand how everyone else around them thinks (and votes) and as such, gives no thought to how to reach those who don’t have ideological uniformity with them.

This playbook is best executed by running the most bland, boring white woman as possible, pulling her recording string, and having something like this come out on the campaign stage:

Hi, y’all, I’m Tammy Sue Morgan and I’m just like you. Grand-pappy worked right down yonder in the factory until the global special interests closed it down in the 1980s, but I’m one of you and I’m proud of my roots and that’s why I’m standing here today. I want the same things you want, a higher wage, better schools, and safe streets to raise our children in. They should be able to play in that creek just like we did when we were getting ready to watch the (Lions/Packers/Bears/Steelers/Eagles/Vikings) with our families. I will put my state over party every day of the week and here are my Republican friends behind me to tell you a story about that time I held a real shotgun and waved an American flag at a parade with our county sheriff 42 years ago.

Successful cases:

• Tammy Baldwin

• The Wisconsin Supreme Court

• Tina Smith

• Amy Klobuchar

• Gretchen Whitmer

• Jocelyn Benson

Many of these test cases are on the ballot this year. But not Haley Stevens.

ENTER ABDUL EL-SAYED

I am convinced the Democrat machine pulled out all the stops, including aggressive mail-in ballot fraud, to stop him, but nevertheless - he has prevailed in his quest for the Democrat nomination to replace the retiring Gary Peters (a male version of the generic boring woman giving her biography above).