DAVID MARCUS: Socialism and El-Sayed run into harsh reality in blue-collar Michigan

Abdul El-Sayed brought in AOC and Bernie Sanders to fire up Michigan Democrats, and what he got was a room that looked a lot more like a college seminar than the shop floors of Macomb County. That's the tell here. When you need the two biggest names in the democratic socialist movement to headline your Senate primary rally, and the crowd still doesn't reflect the blue-collar electorate you're supposedly courting, you have a message problem, not a turnout problem.

Michigan is not Brooklyn or Burlington. It's auto workers, tradesmen, people who care more about their paycheck stretching to cover groceries and gas than about the finer points of Medicare for All. El-Sayed's brand of politics plays great on a podcast and terribly at a union hall, and no amount of star power from Washington's favorite socialists changes that math. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez can pack a gymnasium with true believers, but true believers don't decide statewide primaries in a state that still has a stubborn independent streak and plenty of voters who pulled the lever for Trump twice.

This is the same lesson national Democrats keep refusing to learn. They think the answer to losing working-class voters is louder ideology, so they parachute in the loudest ideologues they've got. It didn't work in 2020 when Bernie ran nationally, and it's not working now in a Senate primary that's supposed to be a proving ground for the party's future. If this is the best case El-Sayed can make in a state built on manufacturing and grit, blue-collar Michigan is going to keep looking elsewhere.