The New York Times: “Moderate” and “Electable” Aren’t Synonyms

ICYMI: NYT Columnist Michelle Goldberg’s take on Michigan Senate race

MICHIGAN – This evening, New York Times Opinion Columnist Michelle Goldberg published a column examining the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan, arguing that the party’s longstanding assumptions about electability may no longer match the political moment. 

In the piece, Goldberg makes the case that Haley Stevens’ reputation as the “electable” candidate could largely be a myth. She argues that the Congresswoman’s ties to the establishment, support from AIPAC, and acceptance of corporate PAC money could weaken her in November, while highlighting polling that shows Dr. Abdul El-Sayed performing best against Republican Mike Rogers.

Goldberg writes:

“So all things being equal, an air of moderation is likely an advantage in purple states. But in Michigan, all things are not equal. Stevens is not a particularly adept politician. Many of her views are out of step with both Democratic and independent voters in ways that could hurt turnout. She’s a creature of the Democratic establishment at a moment when that establishment has never been more reviled.

In 2022, Stevens defeated Representative Andy Levin, a Jewish liberal Zionist targeted by AIPAC for his support for a Palestinian state. AIPAC spent heavily in the race, and when Stevens won, the group crowed, “Being pro-Israel is both good policy and good politics!” In office, Stevens has been a consistent champion of the Jewish state. “Israel comes to me in my dreams!” she shouted in a viral 2023 speech.

Whatever your views on policy, however, it’s increasingly hard to argue that being pro-Israel is good politics. A February Gallup poll found that, for the first time since at least 2001, more Americans — including more political independents — sympathize with the Palestinians over the Israelis. In Michigan’s Senate primary, AIPAC is once again spending lavishly on Stevens’s behalf, but its support could become a liability, particularly in a state with the country’s highest share of Arab Americans. It’s not hard to imagine that some of the voters who declined to back Kamala Harris in 2024 because of the war in Gaza might also refuse to vote for Stevens.

This month, a poll done for Common Defense, a progressive veterans group that has endorsed El-Sayed, tested each of the three Democratic primary candidates against the presumptive Republican nominee, Mike Rogers. It found each of them narrowly ahead, but Stevens’s margin — 43 percent to Rogers’s 42 percent — was the thinnest, a result of weak support among the most left-leaning voters.

Obviously, polls by interest groups need to be taken with several grains of salt. But Adam Carlson, whose firm Zenith Research conducted the survey — and who had been a vocal supporter of McMorrow on social media — insists that he doesn’t shape his research to fit his clients’ narratives. (If clients don’t like his results, he says, they can refuse to release them.) His poll for Common Defense showed El-Sayed faring best against Rogers, with 45 percent of the vote. It was a finding in keeping with what he’s witnessed in focus groups nationwide. “I have never seen this level of anger, frustration, discontent and anti-elite, anti-billionaire populist sentiment,” he said.

Stevens is on the wrong side of this sentiment in several ways. Unlike El-Sayed and McMorrow, she accepts money from corporate PACs, including those in the finance and insurance industries. While both of her opponents have released ambitious plans to regulate artificial intelligence, Stevens offers optimistic bromides about the technology. “We know that we’ve got to compete against China, and the way we are going to win the future is from a place called Michigan,” she said during a debate last month.

It makes perfect sense for people who agree with Stevens about salient issues to vote for her. What makes less sense is the conviction that she’s uniquely well positioned to win in November. Michigan currently has six Democrats in the House. As the writer Matt Yglesias, usually a strong advocate of centrism, pointed out, in 2024 Stevens had the worst wins-above-replacement rating — a measure which uses partisan dynamics to compare candidates’ expected margin of victory to their actual performance — of any of them. “I think moderation and policy positioning are incredibly important, but they’re not all that matters in politics and Stevens is literally a worse performer than Rashida Tlaib,” the left-wing congresswoman from Detroit, he wrote last year.

It’s perfectly understandable for mainstream Democrats watching this race to be anxious. I’m anxious. But when the electorate is this unhappy, it’s not necessarily safe to stick with the status quo.“

Read the full column here.