Haley's Vomit

 So, Michigan Senate runner up, Haley Stevens, has endorsed Mike Rogers, the Republican. This take does a bit of bothsidesing it, but I understand why Chait would have qualms about El Sayed. He has said he doesn't share the venomous antisemitism of some of his high profile supporters, but it always comes with a weird lack of enthusiasm. There was the moment when a GOP plant asked him to disavow the Muslim Brotherhood, and he did immediately, but then pivoted to nailing down his interlocutor. I get that, and he's good at it. To a certain degree, he's not humoring those attacks on his Muslim faith and identity. 

There's still a glibness to his dismissals that can cause people some pause. Cenk Uygar and Hasan Piker are very much beyond the Pale in their antisemitism and AES has disassociated himself with their ads without entirely calling them out for their antisemitism. 

I get it.

Still, Stevens moving towards Rogers is - as Chait notes - to exchange some implied anti-Jewish bias or lack of vigor in denouncing antisemitism with virulent islamophobia. Naked, seething bigotry. And frankly, if you're going to call out AES for his lack of energy in denying Piker, what are you to do with the entire GOP's embrace of people like Tucker Carlson? Carlson's antisemitism is just as rankling as Piker's. 

With Stevens, there was always a weird manic energy behind her eyes. I remember when the preferred candidate of normies, Mallory McMorrow, failed to catch fire - perhaps because of the ratfuckery of Wedgewood polling fraud. I wanted to see in Stevens a legitimate alternative to AES, who despite some real political skills also has some real liabilities, as noted above. But man, Stevens always gave off a really cuckoo energy. 

Now, it sure looks like her fiancé - who is already mostly a Republican - has leaned on Stevens. This sure feels like "choose me or choose El Sayed." She chose him, which isn't a powerful rejoinder against the antisemitic argument that Jews are controlling American politics from behind the scenes. 

Weirdly, I agree with some commentators that this might actually unify the Democratic Party behind El Sayed. Stevens weird behavior and self-immolation - whoever named her Fetterwoman deserves a Pulitzer - is likely to repel more people from her than drive people to Rogers. 

I, like many others, are sick to fucking death of the internecine online flame wars between "the Left" and the "Democrats." I hated it in Maine with Platner, and this is just a new flavor of the same old bullshit. I imagine El Sayed will win, but underperform relative to the climate. Whitmer or even McMorrow would be ahead by 15 points. The incessant taking of sides, the digging in, the hatred that multiplies over multiple versions of the same tiresome fight is just so sadly typical of leftist politics and really, really not helpful at this moment when the future of American democracy is at stake. 

Anyway, I hope El Sayed wins, and Stevens can fuck all the way off.