This week's batch of primary elections had some promising outcomes. I'll start with Missouri, a red state. Cori Bush was decisively defeated for the Democratic congressional nomination from St. Louis by Wesley Bell. It wasn't a rejection of a progressive, because Bell is also apparently progressive, but he had AIPAC support, so Bush's Israel-critical stance took a hit.
More important, though, two proposed amendments to the state constitution were rejected by Missouri voters. Amendment 4 would have made it much harder for citizen-based ballot initiatives to amend the state constitution; this was an effort by Republican elites to block initiatives they find distasteful - for example, to expand Medicaid or protect abortion rights in the state. Voters defeated it, roughly 82-17%. Amendment 5 would have abolished the state income tax; it too went down in flames, 83-16%.
MSNBC commentators, including the obnoxious Rachel Maddow, exulted over this result. They were delighted that Missouri voters had slapped back at the Republican leadership and insisted on People Power. Fair enough; I agree. This was, however, on Tuesday night, when the results of another closely-watched primary were still uncertain, in Michigan. Here too, party elites and special-interest money had played a major role with the aim of defeating Abdul El-Sayed, who was running against Haley Stevens for the Democratic Senate nomination. El-Sayed is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, but he ran on a strongly progressive platform and is vehemently critical of Israel's war crimes and US support for them. Stevens notoriously said "Israel comes to me in my dreams", is strongly supportive of Israel, and received massive campaign donations from AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups. She outspent Sayed by a factor of 9 to 1. Liberal Democrats supported her and attacked El-Sayed harshly as a communist, an anti-Semite and an Islamist. But he defeated Stevens anyway, though very narrowly, by one percentage point. I don't know whether Rachel Maddow is as happy about this outcome as she was of the one in Missouri, but as a matter of principles she ought to be.
Mainstream Democratic celebrities have moved to pledge support to El-Sayed's campaign. Haley Stevens herself has taken the high road; good for her. Kamala Harris even sent out a fund-raising letter to her list to try to piggy-back on his success. "It is so important that Abdul enters the general election with a strong start," the letter says. This is perhaps unfortunate rhetoric, given that Harris's 2024 campaign also had a strong start, with a huge war chest; I hope that El-Sayed will have learned from Harris's mistakes.
Harris's letter also mentions that Republican attacks on El-Sayed have "already begun." True, but so have right-wing Democratic attacks from the usual scum. CNN aired an attack interview with him. He calmly batted aside the purity-test questions. Comments under that post, ostensibly from Democrats, are the kind of bigoted froth that was aimed at Zohran Mamdani, and at El-Sayed himself during the campaign; "communist", "mandatory Quran classes in elementary school," "Russian agents but little investigation into it due to fear." Some are probably from MAGA and some are bots, but some are clearly from Democrats.
Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman of New York complained: "All three of us who lost in NYC had very progressive records (including supporting Medicare for All) and we all had the overwhelming support of actual working families — labor unions, public housing residents and immigrant communities." That's interesting, because I can remember when supporting Medicare for All marked you out as a radical Marxist, and reasonable Democrats pledged to block it.
It's true, supporting Israel is no longer a safe position for Democrats, and even Republicans are less enthusiastic than they used to be. Now we're going to see how firmly Democrats will hew to "Vote Blue No Matter Who." Some of the terminally online are ready to jettison it and have been since Mamdani won his primary, though I don't know how representative they are. But I've seen enough frenzied accusations that El-Sayed and Mamdani are communists from Democrats I know personally to feel sure that a significant number of them yearn to make common cause with MAGA. MAGA-adjacent? MAGA-lite? MAGA-curious? Whatever you call them, they're a blight in the party, and in the country. Meanwhile, though I'm gratified by leftish victories, most of them are just primaries. The generals are yet to come.
