Bernie Sanders dismisses Haley Stevens, says Michigan race is against the 'billionaire class'

Bernie Sanders is 84 years old, has been in Congress since the Clinton administration, and he's out there telling Michigan voters that a sitting congresswoman doesn't matter because the real fight is against "the billionaire class." Haley Stevens has represented parts of that state for three terms. Sanders just waved her off like a stagehand clearing furniture so his preferred candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, can have the spotlight.

This is the same script Sanders has run since 2016. Every race gets flattened into a morality play about oligarchs versus the people, regardless of who's actually running or what they've done. It lets him avoid saying anything specific about Stevens's record because there's nothing disqualifying there. Easier to talk about billionaires in the abstract than explain why a Democrat with actual legislative experience should lose to a public health commissioner with a following on the left.

Democrats keep pretending this factional bloodletting is a sign of vitality. It isn't. It's a party where the loudest socialist in the Senate feels entitled to anoint nominees in states he doesn't represent, based on ideological purity tests that have nothing to do with governing Michigan. Voters there have real concerns, from auto jobs to inflation, and none of them are solved by chanting about billionaires.

What's telling is how little pushback Sanders gets for this. Imagine a Republican senator publicly dismissing a House member from another state as irrelevant to her own primary. The coverage would be wall to wall. Here it's treated as just Bernie being Bernie. Michigan Democrats should ask themselves whether they want their nominee chosen by voters in their state, or handpicked by a senator from Vermont who's never had to answer to them.