First Draft: In Michigan, the War for the Democratic Party Is On
Reactions to Mallory McMorrow's exit showed most know Abdul El-Sayed is a stronger candidate than Haley Stevens. Meanwhile, in DC, the madman in the White House was ranting about crowd sizes again.
⚽️🏴 England pulled off an astonishing 3-2 victory in Mexico last night against the (co-host) nation and are through to the quarter-finals of the World Cup. Mehdi thinks it is “coming home,” and even Donald Trump is heaping praise on Harry Kane, who lost his voice on the pitch but still did this hilarious post-match interview.
Good morning from DC. Martin here, making a claim to be the Folarin Balogun of Zeteo FC – if only in that I’m American and British at the same time, as I both wasn’t born here and somehow doubt Donald Trump would personally intervene to have me reprieved from a red card and freed to play for the U.S. in a (rugby) World Cup.
Anyway. In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we take in a major development in Michigan, where Mallory McMorrow dropped out of the Democratic U.S. Senate primary on Sunday, leaving a straight fight between pro-Palestine progressive Abdul El-Sayed and pro-Israel centrist Haley Stevens. All the issues that have dominated recent House primaries won by left-wingers are present – Medicare for All, corporate cash, AIPAC – and the polls look good for El-Sayed. Elsewhere, Trump spent Sunday pretending he’d had a huge crowd for his Saturday night 250th birthday speech, when he wasn’t posting about his repellent remodeling of DC, while talks to end his illegal Iran War remained in limbo. There’s all that and more to think about, so let’s get started.
‘The Most Important Primary Candidate in America’
On Sunday, after state Senator Mallory McMorrow ended her campaign for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Michigan, sources from either end of the party considered the most telling part of her move: she chose not to endorse.
Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), said: “Kudos to Mallory McMorrow for not endorsing Haley Stevens.”
Though “the DC establishment is sending a desperate signal to Michigan voters that Haley Stevens is the status quo insider they want to rally around,” Green said, “Abdul El-Sayed is the most important primary candidate in America.”
Tellingly, Green found an echo from the heart of that establishment. Former Obama strategist and White House adviser David Axelrod said: “Conventional thinking in DC has been that a Mallory McMorrow exit would help Haley Stevens. But candidate quality matters, and Abdul El-Sayed is a strong candidate. Stevens has big establishment support but he remains the frontrunner.”
El-Sayed does enjoy healthy polling leads. The progressive choice opposed to Stevens, the party insider, like other left-wingers who won recent primaries in New York and Colorado, El-Sayed campaigns passionately for policies such as Medicare for All, and passionately against influences such as AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby group that maintains a grip on much of Congress. Stevens, a former Obama adviser in the House since 2019, enjoys massive AIPAC support.
After McMorrow announced her withdrawal on social media, El-Sayed responded.