Here's the Account That's Causing Abdul El-Sayed a Lot of Grief in Michigan
Progressive policy ambitions meet practical realities as Americans weigh costs and consequences.
There's something almost quaint about watching a Democratic candidate try to distance himself from a guy who said America deserved 9/11, as if that's the bar now. Abdul El-Sayed didn't come out and denounce Hasan Piker's politics or his endorsement. He just said, essentially, that one specific sentence went too far.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
Well, take a bow, DSA Watch — you’ve been given your flowers, to a certain degree, for disrupting the Democrats in the Michigan Senate race. Democrat Abdul El-Sayed is trying to smooth over his far-left tendencies with an electorate that is decidedly not one where democratic socialists can win easily: the two largest minority groups, who also happen to be cornerstones of the Democrat Party base, Jewish voters and black people, do not like this guy.
And they won’t be won over by him just because he said Hasan Piker, the leftist streamer who’s endorsed AES’ campaign, shouldn’t have said the US deserved the 9/11 attacks.
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
There's something almost quaint about watching a Democratic candidate try to distance himself from a guy who said America deserved 9/11, as if that's the bar now. Abdul El-Sayed didn't come out and denounce Hasan Piker's politics or his endorsement. He just said, essentially, that one specific sentence went too far. That's not repudiation. That's damage control with a word limit.
The account causing him grief, DSA Watch, isn't running some elaborate opposition operation. It's mostly just quoting people back to themselves, which in this case happens to be devastating. That's the real story here. El-Sayed's coalition problem isn't a messaging problem he can solve with a carefully worded statement. Jewish voters and black voters in Michigan, two groups Democrats need and usually get, are looking at his associations and drawing their own conclusions. You can't spin your way out of who endorsed you and what they said while doing it.
Democratic socialism keeps running into this same wall in swing states: the online left says the quiet part loud, and then the candidate has to spend the campaign explaining why that's not really what they meant. El-Sayed didn't build this problem, but he's the one standing in it now, in a state where those two voting blocs actually decide elections. No amount of hedging on Piker changes what he chose to let stand for.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.