El-Sayed Breaks the Democrats

The Dems are managing to steal defeat from the jaws of victory. Reminds of their efforts to take down Voldemort in court and Russia-gate. It only enhanced their opponent's brand.

Had the Dems run on a Clinton type moderate pro growth platform they'd have cleaned up. Not just for this midterm, but would be positioned for the 2028 presidential election.

As it now stands, the socialistic arm of their party may win today but will have a tough time in 2028 against a moderate candidate like Little Marco. That will filter down through Congress.

El-Sayed Breaks the Democrats

Democrats savage Rep. Haley Stevens for endorsing the GOP’s Mike Rogers.

By William McGurn, WSJ

Nov. 2, 2026

What a difference a weekend makes.

On Friday, the woman who in August lost Michigan’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate by 1% of the vote was preparing to show her support for the man who defeated her. He was preparing to head into Tuesday’s elections with a united Democratic Party behind him.

The woman is Rep. Haley Stevens. The man is the Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed. On Sunday Ms. Stevens shocked everyone by endorsing Mr. El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, Mike Rogers. The rift goes well beyond Michigan and raises a big question for the Democratic Party: Is it still possible to be a pro-Israel Democrat?

Michigan Sen. Gary Peters set the stage for this fight in January 2025 when he announced he wouldn’t seek a third term. The battle between the pro-Israel Republican, Mr. Rogers, and the anti-Israel Democrat, Mr. El-Sayed, was always going to be heated. But it turned into an all-out civil war when Ms. Stevens on Sunday traveled to a Detroit church to endorse Mr. Rogers.

In a short video posted on X, Ms. Stevens said: “Hey, Michigan, as you may have seen, our Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, Abdul, said that I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away.

“And he’s right. And that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today.” She said she’s still a “very proud Democrat” who believes in everything she’s voted for as a congresswoman. “Who we are as Michiganders is not hate,” she said, “and is not what we are getting out from our Democratic nominee right now.”

Then all hell broke loose, if not in the church then in the public commentary. Mr. El-Sayed’s statement was among the mildest. “If you are somebody who believes that we should stand up to hate,” he told reporters after a different church event, “and you have watched this last campaign, I think we probably would not want to support Mike Rogers and Donald Trump and JD Vance.” Other Democrats went into attack mode, excoriating Ms. Stevens in print, on TV and throughout social media.

Whenever a politician endorses someone outside his own party—especially at a key moment in a tight midterm election—he has to know his former associates are going to treat him like Benedict Arnold. Still the reaction to Ms. Stevens is particularly vituperative. James Carville addressed her in a video commentary, warning her that Republicans would discard her like “a used condom” and then adding: “The Democrats don’t even think you’re worth a used condom, but that’s about where you are.”

That an intended show of party unity would end up exposing such a split speaks to the intensity of the underlying issue: whether the Democratic Party, political home of American Jews for more than a century, will remain hospitable to supporters of Israel. Or will the election of Mr. El-Sayed hasten the exit of pro-Israel voices from the American left? And what about pro-Israel Democratic candidates for president? Do they have a future in the party to which they have devoted their lives?

The Stevens-El Sayed schism comes in the midst of a stink over an ugly ad released by Rebellion PAC, which is run by the left-wing commentator Cenk Uygur. The ad depicts a couple in a supermarket. The woman tells the man he has to put back a carton of eggs because “we have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians.”

Mr. El-Sayed said “that ad was not made by me, and I do not agree with the contents of that ad,” but he refused to “play the condemn game.” Ms. Stevens, however, had said the ad “dramatized” an argument that Mr. El-Sayed has “made in his own words throughout this campaign: that Israel is the reason Michigan cannot afford schools, health care, and child care.”

Ms. Stevens is a Protestant, but her fiancé, who endorsed Mr. Rogers ahead of her, is Jewish. She revealed to the New York Times she has seen a rabbi to discuss converting. Certainly no one can accuse her of doing it for political advantage.

The New York Times sums it up well: If Mr. El-Sayed wins on Tuesday, he “would be the most anti-Israel U.S. senator since the formation of the Jewish state 78 years ago.”

Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.