The Fake Progressive Lane Closes in Michigan Senate Primary

State senator Mallory McMorrow, the kinda-sorta Elizabeth Warren of the Michigan Democratic primary for US Senate, has dropped out of the race. Hopefully this will end the Elizabeth Warren era when feckless and hapless faux-progressives could muddy up primaries by soft-pedaling nearly meh policy ideas and resorting to identity politics when that failed.

She leaves the field to a one-on-one battle between Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, former public health official in Wayne County, and AIPAC-favorite U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens.

I referenced the race previously in March and went more in-depth in April.

McMorrow’s decision came after she dropped to single digits in the polls — after leading for much of the spring — and coming under pressure from the Democratic establishment.

So far she has not endorsed either of the remaining candidates and since El-Sayed has not yet polled over 50% in any major poll, McMorrow’s supporters could be decisive on August 4th.

El-Seyed immediately reached out to McMorrow to ask for her endorsement in the race and quickly took to social media to ask McMorrow supporters for their support.

Stevens, with her usual nimble political acumen, had to be reminded by Politico to put in a call to McMorrow.

McMorrow has previously blasted Stevens for taking so much money from AIPAC so any endorsement in that direction might not be especially convincing.

Her name will remain on the ballot as well, so she may still claim the votes of some low info voters as well as, one presumes, her closest friends and family.

The sitting Democratic Senator Gary Peters applied may have applied the crucial pressure on McMorrow in that inimitable fearless centrist style, almost directly saying what he meant and even mustering up a suggestion that needs consideration, per the WSJ:

Sen. Gary Peters isn’t seeking re-election. While he has remained publicly neutral, he has told associates that he believes Democrats need to coalesce around one candidate to face El-Sayed in the primary and has suggested that McMorrow needs to consider dropping out of the race, according to people familiar with the discussions. A spokeswoman for Peters declined to comment.

No wonder she folded, no one could withstand such a blistering attack.

Peters, a 67-year-old two-termer, certainly knows the campaign business having barely eeked out a 1.7% win over current GOP gubernatorial candidate John James in a $200 million family blog fest in what was the most expensive campaign in Michigan history:

Both candidates raised nearly $50 million, according to FEC filings, with James raising $48.3 million and Peters $49.6 million through mid-November. James raised more than $300,000 that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) categorized as donations for a potential recount, though the campaign never pursued that effort.

Yet outside groups outspent both candidates, with at least $106 million spent between at least 100 organizations advertising on television, radio, social media and by mail. Peters had about $5 million more in outside support than James.

For some reason Sen. Peters didn’t run for re-election this time. I can’t imagine why, surely every Michigander wants more of what he brings to the table.

The Usual Caveats Apply

Just to get this out of the way, I’m covering this in the hopes of providing a one-stop window into a race that has national (and thus international) implications and what it tells us about the American electorate and the forces attempting to sway it.

This is not an endorsement of any candidate, regardless of my (obvious) personal sympathies, or even of the American electoral system which is impossibly corrupt and has led to the bought-and-paid-for US Congress being functionally impotent.

Americans won’t vote our way out of the polycrisis, so don’t get your hopes up.

The Candidates: The Good, the Bad, and the Cringe

El-Sayed, Stevens and McMorrow have dramatic differences in communications styles and skill sets as illustrated below when each addressed the ridiculous situation with the completed but unused Gordie Howe bridge connecting Michigan to Canada:

I actually think it’s really special that all 3 candidates in the MI-SEN Democratic primary did the same bridge video, allowing us to compare their campaigning styles and digital skills side-by-side pic.twitter.com/ul2lR2MmCy

— bryan metzger (@metzgov) July 3, 2026

El-Sayed might be a generational political talent, but I’ll let him speak for himself:

Abdul El-Sayed: “I love Judaism and the Jewish People, because i love People. I love Palestinians and their Rights, because i love People. It’s dangerous to equate antisemitism with criticizing a foreign government and its Leaders.”byu/sovalente inProgressiveHQ

And when asked by the Detroit Free Press about his chances in the general election this is what the good doctor had to say:

No. 1, most people say this (I can’t win) because of my name. I’ve been Abdul in Michigan my whole life and I know that Michiganders are big-hearted. They’re open-minded people. They care less about what your name is, they care that you care to know their name. They care less about how you pray, they want to know what you pray for. And I know that Michiganders are going to look past my name to ask, who out here is actually going to fight for me? I want to get money out of politics, put money in your pocket, pass Medicare for All.

Second, I’m running against an actual guy. This guy voted 60 times to raise prescription drug prices. He helped to architect the legislation that kicked off the opioid epidemic. … And I’m the guy who rebuilt Detroit’s Health Department, eliminated $700 million in medical debt, and put Narcan in 100 different locations. Who better to prosecute the case against him than me?

Finally, think about who we can win back. We lost voters. Arab and Muslim voters, we lost young men, and I feel well-placed to have a conversation with those voters about what it looks like to actually be consistent with our values, and we’re going to need that if we’re going to be able to pull folks back… Imagine what happens when you inspire young people to actually come out for a politics they believe in, and think about how you can change the electorate.

And then the last thing I’ll just tell you is that this man has tied himself to Donald Trump. Donald Trump is about as popular as rotten eggs right now, and he’s getting less popular every single day. And so, imagine what can happen when we’re actually taking the case to Mike Rogers. He’s a beta character at a comedy based in a country club that nobody likes to watch. He’s like the guy who laughs extra hard at the dumb joke that the alpha guy told. And nobody wants that guy as their next U.S. senator… (I’m) looking forward to wiping the floor with him.

Last one, El-Sayed goes after AIPAC:

Abdul El-Sayed on AIPAC: “Why does an organization that wants to send our money abroad to drop bombs on women and children, to back a genocidal foreign government, why are they attacking me? Well, because they know I want to keep our money here, to invest in women’s health here… pic.twitter.com/sIVBC0wtYx

— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) July 5, 2026

What can I say, I like the cut of his jib.

As for Haley Stevens, we’ll let two graphics do 2000 words of work:

pic.twitter.com/zQems85ZQ3

— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) July 6, 2026

pic.twitter.com/fEVdSQgfeh

— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) July 6, 2026

Here’s a collection of headlines to kick her while she’s down and dirty, rolling around in AIPAC money:

pic.twitter.com/lXP5UBKy35

— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) July 6, 2026

Can you say, bought and paid for?

While El-Sayed was racking up endorsements from the mighty United Auto Workers (UAW) union, NY Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and Indivisible, Stevens gained one notable backer, the truly loathsome outgoing Dem Attorney General Dana Nessel.

One of Nessel’s grossest moves may be relevant in this race:

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is continuing to target student activists supporting Palestinian rights, despite mounting criticism in recent weeks, through what the TAHRIR Coalition — a broad coalition of student organizations at the University of Michigan — describes as an ongoing campaign of intimidation and repression. According to the coalition, police and representatives from Nessel’s office visited the homes of two activists earlier this July.

So yea, all the good guys are getting together on this one.

Stevens owes her whole political career to AIPAC, having benefitted from millions of foreign lobby money to crush Rep. Andy Levin in the 2022 congressional primary. NBC documented the atrocities at the time:

In an unusual twist, Levin, who is Jewish, was forced to defend his record on Israel-related policies against attacks from supporters of Stevens, who has been more hawkish on the issue despite not being Jewish. A super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent $4.2 million on ads boosting Stevens and hitting Levin, while J Street, a progressive pro-Israel group, paid about $700,000 for ads backing Levin.

Let’s close our look at Stevens with a brutal compilation of Stevens in her own words, is she the Ted Cruz of the Dems?:

pic.twitter.com/qIdbUXyGi2

— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) July 6, 2026

I’ll transcribe the most over the top of the Stevens’ statements looped above:

Rep. Haley Stevens: I will continue to fight for the people of Israel. I will continue to fight for Israel’s existence. Israel comes to me in my dreams. I see Israel’s future and I know Israel will continue to exist for the Jewish people.

And then there’s her voting record:

Haley Stevens voted to: pic.twitter.com/z3r7AHSjCR

— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) July 5, 2026

Alrighty then, that’s enough of her.

McMorrow was the candidate of the mushy middle. This endorsement from the Detroit Free Press — made just last week, lol — sums up her ersatz appeal:

McMorrow combines the best of El-Sayed’s impassioned activism and Stevens’ technocratic policy chops. She understands that change happens incrementally, but that the path toward progress doesn’t end after the first step. And in this race, she is uniquely capable of representing Michiganders who don’t fall neatly into El-Sayed’s progressivism or Stevens’ centrism.

The update they added today is the perfect cherry on top, epitomizing the MSM’s lack of political acumen in 2026:

Update: State Sen. Mallory McMorrow suspended her U.S. Senate campaign on July 5. Because ballots were mailed on June 25, her name still appears on the Aug. 4 primary ballot.

Many believe it was McMorrow’s decision to attack El-Sayed and the enormously popular streamer Hasan Piker in an interview with Jewish Insider that doomed her campaign.

The NYT Times is in that category:

Long adept at cable news interviews and creating viral moments online, Ms. McMorrow began to bleed support in public polling after she condemned Dr. El-Sayed for campaigning in March with Hasan Piker, the left-wing streamer who has defended Hamas and called Israel “an apartheid state.”

The move backfired quickly. Her remarks helped burnish Dr. El-Sayed’s claim that he was the lone progressive candidate in the race and the one most willing to criticize American funding of the Israeli military. And she won little support from moderate voters as millions of dollars of pro-Stevens advertising poured into the state from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other groups.

Others think it was this video from an April state party meeting which Glenn Greenwald called “one of the most traumatizing things I’ve ever witnessed in politics”:

Mallory McMorrow’s downfall began right in this clip and I’m being so serious. It was the crunchy dancing with the token mfs who decided to hype her up. pic.twitter.com/hUzQ5xaGDJ

— adri ♡ (@socialistadri) July 5, 2026

The Swamp Gas Will Only Heat Up From Here

Now that McMorrow is out of the way, Stevens’ supporters (ie the entire bipartisan establishment) will be pulling out all the stops, spending unbelievable amounts and flooding the zone with slurs, cheap shots, backhanded compliments, patronizing BS, hand-wringing and concern trolling.

Lots of this kind of stuff from the oh-so-credible centrist establishment:

Battleground Director for the Harris-Walz 2024 campaign says Haley Stevens has the best chance of defeating a Republican for the US Senate seat. 🥴 https://t.co/gz7QhBVD8x pic.twitter.com/RiGb0oTXNv

— gato fumante (@KweenInYellow) July 6, 2026

FWIW here’s what the Freep had to say about El-Sayed, the current front runner in the primary:

Farthest left of the trio is former public health official Abdul El-Sayed. He’s a proponent of policies like Medicare For All, an 8% tax on billionaires, abolishing U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and halting U.S. arms sales to Israel. He doesn’t accept campaign contributions from corporate political action committees, and says that any candidate or elected official who has is compromised. El-Sayed is banking on populist anger against systemic failure, rising oligarchy and America’s bellicose posture abroad, and elevated turnout among young voters ‒ historically, a risky prospect ‒ to carry the primary.

I could dunk on these dumbasses and those like them all day but shooting fish in a barrel just gets lead in your breakfast so let’s look at the Polymarket odds in the race and call it a post: