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The progressive populist Abdul El-Sayed won Tuesday’s Democratic Senate primary in Michigan — though the vote was so close that most outlets didn’t call the race until this morning.
It’s not exactly the resounding triumph progressives expected. In the lead-up to Election Day, El-Sayed’s campaign boasted of a “massive” polling lead over centrist Rep. Haley Stevens that they said definitively proved the mainstream appeal of his style of politics.
That said, his win is still a big deal, especially given the forces arrayed against him. Democratic heavyweights and big-money donors both threw their considerable weight behind Stevens.
The left’s big swing-state test
We have some left-wing populists in office already, of course — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez D-NY), who both campaigned for El-Sayed this cycle. Progressives represent a number of cities and urban congressional districts. And over the past few months, the left wing of the Democratic Party has notched some notable primary wins.
But all of these candidates have run to represent solidly Democratic communities, where winning the primary effectively meant winning the seat. An out-and-proud, Sanders-style, left-wing populist arguably has yet to prove that this platform can win a statewide general election in a state that isn’t deep-blue already.
That makes Michigan a high-stakes test. The state went for Trump in two of the past three presidential elections. Winning Michigan as a Democrat means cobbling together a coalition from a broad and varied range of constituencies, including Black Detroiters, swing suburbanites, college-town progressives, blue-collar union workers, and both Jewish and Muslim Americans.
“Michigan is like a microcosm of America,” one Detroit reporter told my colleague Astead Herndon. If a left-wing populist can win there, in other words, the Democratic Party will really have to pay attention.
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