I was going to put this in my critique of Abdul El-Sayed yesterday, but forgot. Fortunately, Bret Stephens, in his latest NYT column, alludes to something like what I’m about to say:
This is what I forgot to add to my own post:
Imagine that a white American had some relatives killed by Islamic militants in Somalia (this has happened, albeit rarely, to both American civilians and military personnel). Devastated, the American gets a gun, drives his truck into the The West Michigan Somali Cultural Religious Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan and opens fire on a group of children, wounding a security guard. Fortunately, nobody was killed, and the attacker takes his own life. When asked about the attack, a white politician proffers an explanation: “Hurt people hurt people.”
Can you imagine how people would come down on that politician for heartlessness and obtuseness?
When Abdul El-Sayed said precisely that phrase after an attack on a Michigan synagogue and preschool this spring (apparently, some relatives of the would-be murderer were killed by the IDF in Lebanon), it was not just an explanation but an excuse. El-Sayed later apologized for the statement, but I don’t believe his faux contrition. But he got away with it, even though it encapsulates his entire view of Jews and Israel.
But enough; Bret Stephens, a far better writer than I, draws the parallel in his latest NYT column, which you can read by clicking on the screenshot below. You can also find his piece archived here.
Excerpts (I hope you’ve seen Cenk’s pro-el-Sayed ad):
The stakes in the race were again brought home after Representative Haley Stevens, who had been El-Sayed’s opponent in the Democratic primary, endorsed Rogers after a falling-out with El-Sayed, largely over his refusal to condemn what may be the most nakedly antisemitic political ad in modern U.S. political history.
The ad, which came from an El-Sayed-friendly political action committee founded by Cenk Uygur, a left-wing media personality, features a couple shopping for groceries while discussing why they can no longer afford a $7 carton of eggs: The money has already been stripped from their wallets by the federal government so that it can be sent to Israel and spent on “killing Palestinians” while also “probably” funding Israel’s universal health care.
A voice-over then asks, “Why does Mike Rogers care so much about what Israelis want, and so little about what you want?”
What’s wrong with the ad? For starters, the price of a dozen eggs has fallen by about half since Trump returned to office; a price-conscious shopper in Michigan could pick up a dozen eggs at Walmart for under $2. And while prices for groceries have undoubtedly been affected by higher energy costs because of the war with Iran, for which Israel is partly responsible, they’ve also been affected by the war in Ukraine; droughts in Brazil, China and the Midwest; and Trump’s capricious tariffs. Is Israel to blame for all that, too?
The larger problem with the ad is that it unites three of the oldest antisemitic tropes in history. First: There’s a powerful Jew out there who’s picking the pockets of the less fortunate. Second, that Jew is doing so to slaughter the innocent. Third, he’s paying a non-Jewish intermediary (who, by implication, is either a dope or a stooge) to do his bidding. To suggest the ad is only about U.S. policy toward Israel would be like arguing that an ad denouncing foreign aid to African countries while featuring the worst stereotypes about people in those countries isn’t racist. It doesn’t pass the smell test.
That’s the ad, but what about El-Sayed’s reaction to it? His failure to denounce it is one reason why Stevens endorsed Rogers. Bret Stephens says this:
It would have been morally right — and a political no-brainer — for El-Sayed to forthrightly and unequivocally denounce the ad. A similar dynamic played out in early 2008, when Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., turned out to have a record of incendiary rhetoric. Obama denounced the pastor’s statements, and, after Wright kept it up, broke off relations with the man. Doing so drew a firm and effective line under the controversy, underscoring Obama’s insistence that he was no radical.
Yet the most El-Sayed has said about the ad was that it “was not made by me,” that he didn’t agree with its content but that the controversy was “not worth my time.” That’s odd: It was El-Sayed himself who called Israel “an affordability issue” while adding “we should keep our money here instead of sending it there to drop bombs on people’s schools or their hospitals.” Nor has he been shy about denouncing Israel at nearly every opportunity he gets. The ad he now says he has nothing to do with merely expresses what he plainly believes.
It’s part of a broader pattern.
His initial response to the Temple Israel attack, where only a miracle spared the over 150 children and staff inside from death or injury, was that “hurt people hurt people.” It took him five months to offer a quasi apology. (“My comments may have been misconstrued.”) He campaigned alongside the antisemitic media personality Hasan Piker (who recently compared campaigning for El-Sayed in heavily Jewish West Bloomfield Township to campaigning for a Black candidate in a “Klan K.K.K. neighborhood”) and quietly distanced himself from him because he feared it was costing him votes, according to reporting by CNN. Tucker Carlson, the right’s most prominent normalizer of antisemitism, now features in one of El-Sayed’s campaign ads.
A question for Michigan voters, especially those who lean left: If the stigmatized minority here weren’t Jewish but, say, gay or Latino or Black, would you even consider a vote for any candidate abetting, or at least tolerating, the stigmatizing?
Remember that El-Sayed gained nothing with his “hurt people” statement, but he said it anyway. This is why I think it represents what he really believes, and why I distrust all his later apologies. El-Sayed doesn’t have much of a filter between his brain and his mouth.
Stephens finishes this way:
None of this will matter at all to voters who thrill to El-Sayed’s message. Nor will it matter enough to voters willing to put their misgivings about him aside because they feel that Rogers, for his part, has failed to call out the rhetorical excesses of Republicans, and that nothing is more important than sending Trump the sternest electoral rebuke they can. Yet come January, Trump will still be president, no matter how well Democrats do in the midterms.
The real issue for voters in Michigan is what moral price is worth paying for an additional seat in the Senate. There are, after all, other winnable Senate races in other states. And a vote to further strengthen the forces of antisemitism in American politics, under any party banner or political justification, is no vote for democracy, either.
This is a clear declaration that Stephens thinks El-Sayed an antisemite. I agree. But antisemitism and demonization of Israel are rapidly becoming hallmarks of not just “progressive” Democrats, but of mainstream Democrats as well. If party affiliation should always override principle, we are truly lost. And one principle should be that attacks on Jewish children, simply because they were Jewish, are evil and should at least be denounced.
El-Sayed is completely despicable. If I still lived in Michigan I’d vote for an opponent.
I agree this is a particularly odious case, but single-issue voting (veto?) might be a far greater danger for democracy than holding your nose and casting a vote for a party (i.e., the overall platform). Many voters could potentially find some issue incompatible with their deeply held beliefs. Here in Canada, for example, we have a Green party that siphons off votes from mainstream parties because the environment matters more to its supporters than all other issues. The irony is, their votes could help put in place a party not only LESS sympathetic to the environment than the party that could win with their support but also one that adopts numerous other policies Green voters would not favour.
What is disturbing and certainly difficult for me to understand is how El Sayad even became the Democratic candidate (i.e., how enough people voted for him at that stage). The very real danger, unfortunately, is that on a close vote he or any single-issue representative could demand movement on his issue to secure a needed vote on an irrelevant bill (i.e., blackmail).
No matter what, it’s an ugly scenario!
I think he became a Democratic candidate because the Democrats would have him, unlike the the Republicans, who traditionally have far more in common with his race hatred and his clerical fascism-based worldview, but are too racist themselves to accept him as the kindred spirit he is.
As for the “single issue” concern, a lot of people do indeed feel that demonizing a vulnerable minority is a policy stance that cannot be tolerated in a candidate.
So I live in Michigan, and have agonized over this developing situation thru the primaries and up thru today. Far more so than any Senate seat in my long life.
During the primaries, I found myself frequently yelling at my poor tv during the campaign ads by Haley Stevens. I don’t recall much in the way of ads from outside Pacs (ads not her own), but her ads mainly treated El Sayed with kid gloves and did not teach the public about his faults. But those things are how many voters decide how to vote, unfortunately. She meanwhile mainly went after Trump. All very good and principled, but meanwhile El Sayed could safely define himself, and he has a far more charismatic personality than does Stevens. Stevens, btw, is not charismatic, but is a solid moderate. I think many moderate voters who would have voted for the incumbent Stevens instead chose to vote for the exciting and non-establishment picture that El Sayed was allowed to paint of himself. They were not made aware of his troubling positions and significant gaffs bc of choices that Stevens’ group made during the primaries. I have to face it, despite his issues, he did run a smart campaign.
My two cents.
I would never vote for anyone just because he was a Democrat, but the winner of this race will be either a Democrat or a Republican, and the latter are a threat to our nation, even, perhaps, an existential threat to humanity. I would vote for an outright antisemite, an overt racist, a disgusting, immoral, unscrupulous cad, if it helped to stop what the Republicans are doing to our nation and to the world. That, in my view, is a far greater moral imperative than any other being considered right now.
Trump won’t be President in two years, but the rise of antisemitism is embedded in the Democratic Party and shows no sign of abating. And it DOES look as if you are voting for people simply because they are not Republicans (i.e., Democrats). To each his own, but I agree with Stephens.
El Sayad may be the difference between a Democratic controlled Senate and a Republican controlled Senate. Arguably that is important enough to hold one’s nose and vote for him. I would not fault anyone who votes for El Sayad for that reason. Personally if I lived in Michigan I would decline to cast a vote for either candidate.
If you think this may make a difference in who controls the Senate, I’m curious why you wouldn’t vote for El-Sayed.
If El Sayad wins, the radical wing of the Dem party is emboldened and encouraged, which is bad. If El Sayad loses, that might but won’t necessarily make the critical difference for control of the Senate, which would be bad. I don’t feel a strong enough preference to cast a vote.
Jeffrey, I’m struggling to reconcile your post with the usual comments used to describe Trump. Your words “overt racist, disgusting, immoral, unscrupulous cad” seem very close to the reasons often given as to why one shouldn’t vote for Trump, yet you’re justifying a potential vote for Democrat candidates even if they are that horrible. If you reverse your wording of Democrat and Republican, perhaps this is how Trump got elected? 🙂
I mentioned yesterday that when the news broke on CNN about Haley Stevens switching her support to Rogers, the anchor and her guests fell all over themselves to feign confusion over why she would do such a thing at the last minute. In the day since, other commentators, too, have professed confusion. Democratic leaders, on the other hand, with the exception of outgoing Representative Nancy Pelosi, simply ganged up on Stevens to accuse her of party treason.
This is what has become of the Democrats and their acolytes in the media. Stevens became persona non-grata and has summarily been cancelled.
The reason that Stevens withdrew her support for El-Sayed is no mystery. She did it because she could not in good conscience support an antisemite for the Senate of the United States. The Democratic leadership and the American media have no such reservations.
See, this is why I admire Stevens even more. But now I don’t see a way for her to get back in to the Democratic Party. Not unless there is a sea change coming.
The issue is not quite as you explained it. The issue is not simply that she withdrew her support for El-Sayed. She also declared her support for Rogers, a Republican candidate who is very arguably more ethically wanting than El-Sayed.
I am a bit surprised that so many people seem to find it so wrong that Democratic Party politicians would speak out against another Democratic Party politician who had publicly supported a Republican Party politician for election, especially during an election cycle as contentious as this one. Any other political party would do the same, and the current Republican Party would be much nastier about it.
Perhaps Stevens took the high road, morally speaking, though given that she also came out in support of Rogers instead of simply withdrawing support from El-Sayed I am doubtful of that. But even granting that she had, we do not live in a world where she wouldn’t pay a price for that. In a very real sense she did betray her political party. She acted in a way to harm her party, in a wider context than just specifically the Senate race El-Sayed is in.
I did say, in my first sentence, that she switched her support to Rogers. Indeed, as you suggest, Stevens would have been better off simply stating that she could no longer support El-Sayed. Predictably, the price she paid for switching is her political career.
Stevens was willing to put up with El-Sayed until she could no longer bear to be associated with someone who would go so low. Those who disowned her appear to have a lower bar.
Bret Stephens, brilliant as usual. I admire what Stevens did, it’s refreshing. Have some bloody principles and stick to them. And I don’t think the difference between just withdrawing support for El-Sayed versus endorsing Rogers is particularly important. It mostly amounts to the same thing, unless you think she’s just urging people to abstain. But politicians don’t usually take a position of “just don’t vote”.
The unfortunate reality is that whoever Michigan elects is going to be awful and bad for the country. But since I am feeling rather fatalistic about most things political these days, what else is new? I will just look at this as another morbidly fascinating experiment in national self-immolation.