Michigan Democratic Senate Rep. Haley Stevens, who lost her primary election, released a video on Sunday that cemented her legacy of shame among establishment Democrats who acted against their collective interests.
And, like everyone else on this list, she does it for one thing: Israel.
In the video, shot on a cellphone, in a car and at an awkward angle, Stevens announces his support for Republican candidate Mike Rogers against Democratic candidate Abdul-Sayed. Stevens has previously called Rogers “a rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda.”
Before Stevens defected, he pathetically suggested that Said must make greater overtures to Israeli supporters.
“I’m not part of Abdul’s campaign,” Stevens said of El-Sayed, who currently enjoys the support of 95 percent of Democratic voters in Michigan, according to polls.
Stevens’ defection comes after a deplorable, Islamophobic and chaotic effort over the past few weeks to suggest El-Sayed must make a greater gesture to Israel’s supporters.
Stevens now follows in the footsteps of other conservative Democrats who have shown a profound disregard for the well-being of people in this country and beyond.
We might remember former Arizona Sen. Krysten Sinema, who left the Democratic Party while in office and gave a dramatic thumbs-up and curtsey when she voted against a minimum wage increase during the height of the pandemic. Sinema and then-West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin also joined Republicans in effectively blocking major voting rights legislation in 2022.
And, of course, there is the entire Senate career of conservative pro-Israel zealot, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who remains a nominal Democrat. Fetterman provides a consistent masterclass in dangerous extremism, which his own party should regard as a profound political liability.
After all, it was so-called moderates like Stevens who were the radicals. As writer Eoin Higgins has pointed out, many Democrats have made it clear they would rather see a Republican win than allow the party’s left wing — or, more importantly, critics of Israel’s genocide — to gain further traction.
While there is little political consensus between the left and right wings of the Democratic Party on a range of issues, defeating Republicans, especially one led by Donald Trump, is a stated goal of at least the most conservative Democrats.
Even such a public failure on these basic electoral conditions should be the definition of a party’s political responsibility.
At the same time, left-wing candidates who rely on popular policies and build bottom-up support network campaigns are time and time again seen as the main internal enemy by the party establishment.
The wind changes
Stevens may have thought she could rely on this model. Many powerful Democrats and defenders of Israel, such as Reps. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., have been slow to support El-Sayed and continue to be provocative over his Israel policies.
Stevens’ support for Rogers, however, was not met with the tolerance typically enjoyed by the Democratic Party’s right-wing tendencies. In a bellwether moment, another staunch supporter of Israel, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called her support of the Republican candidate a “despicable betrayal.”
This rebuke is the right response from party leaders to members who have taken aggressive steps to thwart crucial Senate races. This may not mark Schumer’s abandonment of his reliable conservatism and support for Israel’s genocide, but it still reflects a shift in the political landscape, as figures like Schumer see it as more politically expedient to align with progressive, Israel-critical Muslim candidates than with radical centrist spoilers with whom Schumer is more ideologically aligned.
Stevens’ performance is unlikely to have a significant impact on Tuesday’s election results. Voters who put the support of the Israeli state above the lives of Palestinian and American people will no longer vote for El-Sayed.
Stripping Democratic candidates of support in such a close race exposes the extremism of the so-called centrists.
Well, it’s unclear who will be affected by Stevens’ erratic behavior two days before the election. Yet depriving a Democratic candidate of support in such a close race exposes the extremism of the so-called centrists.
We can welcome what appears to be a long-overdue shift in political common sense and hope that positions like Stevens’ are seen as a liability before they reach their most extreme iterations.
However, if the goal of so-called centrists is actually to win elections and implement policies that improve voters’ lives, then they shouldn’t exactly choose Trumpian Republicans over progressive left-wing Democrats to make it clear who poses the real threat to the Democratic Party.
This was of course for El Said. He viewed Stevens’ performance as a distraction.
“None of that matters,” he told reporters Sunday, insisting on talking about the state of schools, health care and food costs for Michigan residents.