- 1 day ago
Category
đź—ž
NewsTranscript
00:00Much of the nation's attention has focused on the Great Lakes State, Michigan's Democratic Senate primary.
00:05With us now from Detroit, Bloomberg Opinion columnist Ron Brownstein, Nancy Kaffer with us as well.
00:09She's the editorial page editor for the Detroit Free Press.
00:11Nancy, let me start with you.
00:12Today, as I understand, the last day for early voting in the state of Michigan,
00:16and I look at the number from the Secretary of State's office,
00:18more than a million voters have cast their ballots already.
00:22Just underline for us here the importance of this race, yes, for Michiganders,
00:26but for Democrats across this country as well.
00:29You know, the control of the Congress, I think, runs through Michigan here.
00:34We've got a hugely consequential Senate race that's going to tell us a number of things.
00:38We've got progressive candidate Abdul El-Fayed, far more centrist candidate, U.S. Rep Haley Stevens.
00:45So those are two sort of ideological choices, Democrats say.
00:48But we're also facing a test of what exactly money can do in a primary.
00:53I mean, Representative Stevens has $52 million in outside spending in this race.
00:59And it's just it's a 12 to 1 spending advantage over El-Sayed, who has, I think, a stronger ground
01:04game,
01:05more of an organic kind of viral support.
01:08And so we're looking at not just a choice in ideology, but then how money can communicate that ideology or
01:15the desirability of each candidate to voters.
01:17I mean, Ron, I'm wondering what your take is on that, because we talk a lot about how money doesn't
01:21always equate to votes.
01:22We see a lot of times, especially candidates spending their own money on races.
01:25That's almost never successful, even though that's not necessarily the case here.
01:29But give us a rundown.
01:30Compare and contrast these two candidates for us, if you will.
01:34Who's supporting whom?
01:35And, I mean, the polls are not that close at the moment.
01:38The latest Michigan Democratic Senate poll has Abdullah Sayed 54 percent to Haley Stevens 39.
01:44Yeah, I mean, look, this is the culmination of an extraordinary year in Democratic primaries.
01:49I mean, I've been covering politics since the early 1980s, and I can't recall a year when I've written so
01:54many stories about Democratic primaries,
01:56or for that matter, Republican primaries.
01:58You know, we have seen a kind of systematic series of conflicts between left and center in House races, some
02:06Senate races.
02:07And this is really the kind of the main event.
02:09I mean, both sides are kind of treating this as, to use the World War II analogy, a battle of
02:14the bulge.
02:14I mean, enormous effort on the kind of the party establishment, Senate Majority Leader Chuck, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer,
02:22the governor, Gretchen Whitmer, Gary Peters, the outgoing senator that they're hoping to replace.
02:27They've all endorsed Haley Stevens.
02:29And then kind of the constellation of leftist luminaries have have a line behind El Syed, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren,
02:37AOC, the squad.
02:38So it is very clear on that.
02:40I think, you know, the ideological dimension is important.
02:43But in many ways, I think it is a reflection of the depth of alienation of rank and file Democratic
02:49voters from the party establishment above all.
02:51I mean, you can't overstate how completely the final months of the Biden presidency and the inability to stop Trump
02:58from returning
02:58and the inability to slow him down once he did has discredited Democratic leadership with Democratic voters.
03:04And so their warnings about electability in El Syed's case, which may be very well justified, I think are falling
03:10on, largely falling on deaf ears.
03:12Nancy, I want to ask you about an article Bloomberg published this week centering on black voters in the state
03:17of Michigan.
03:18And this is a pool, I gather, of about a quarter of voters.
03:21Black voters will play a crucial role here in this primary.
03:24And Haley Stevens has the backing of the Congressional Black Caucus of the Michigan Democratic Party Black Caucus as well.
03:30How hard fought is this demographic here in this race?
03:34You know, I think it is.
03:35It's a key voting demographic.
03:37I think it's all sort of a key moral demographic.
03:40A lot of progressive politics center around economic justice.
03:44And if progressive candidates, as we have seen, can sort of fail to connect with the black community, it's a
03:50little bit of a challenge to continue to make that argument.
03:53So, no, it's a very desirable voting, both for loyalty and, again, for what it means about the causes that
03:59you're endorsing.
03:59So, we'll see.
04:01I mean, I think that Representative Stevens has been pulling a little bit better with black voters, specifically in Detroit,
04:07where most black voters are centered.
04:10We'll find out on Tuesday whether those efforts were successful or not.
04:15You know, Al-Sayed's been here a lot trying to get those votes as well.
04:18It's going to be – I mean, I've been doing politics here for 26 years, and I generally feel like
04:22I have a sense of what's going to happen.
04:24And this is the first race in as long as I can remember that I really am not sure, and
04:31I'm very eager to see what happens.
04:33Fair enough.
04:34And, Ron, there's another group that's been very important in this debate, and that's – there's been a lot of
04:40focus on Israel and support of AIPAC.
04:42It's become a bit of a sticking point.
04:43We've got some sound we want to play you really quick.
04:46Ask yourself why it is that we are paying $5 gas, why it is we can't seem to get out
04:50of this quagmire.
04:50It's because for too long our foreign policy has been handed to us by the likes of the state of
04:55Israel and AIPAC,
04:56who has made sure that Democrats and Republicans are doing their bidding.
05:00I don't take that money.
05:01What I will work for in the United States Senate, we need long-term peace.
05:06Donald Trump has failed us.
05:08The prime minister of Israel has failed in that regard.
05:12So what do you do with this?
05:14I mean, is this an issue that voters are really making the decision based off of how important is this,
05:20given where this race is,
05:21and the history of how people voted in the state, especially it was an issue in the presidential race,
05:25and perhaps an outsized one that Democrats weren't expecting?
05:29Yeah, look, I mean, in polling, you know, there's no question that issues of affordability and standing up to Trump,
05:34you know, are more Democrats cite that as major factors in their votes than Israel-Palestine.
05:40But I think it's become, you know, here and elsewhere a symbol, particularly the APEC support,
05:45of kind of whether you are kind of going along with the way Democrats have traditionally done things,
05:51or whether you're someone who is going to push for new directions.
05:55And I think that is above all what we're seeing among Democratic voters here.
05:58Not to understate how completely support for Israel has crumbled in the U.S.
06:03I mean, in Gallup polling, the share of Americans expressing a favorable view toward Israel is close to 30 points
06:09lower than it was five years ago.
06:10I mean, that's comparable to what we saw for Russia around the invasion of Crimea.
06:14And it's not, you know, it's not confined to Democrats, although it's most extreme among Democrats.
06:19You're seeing it among Republicans, too.
06:21I mean, there is no question that what we are watching here is a significant backlash against the way Israel
06:28behaved
06:28and the way its defenders in the U.S. have behaved.
06:32And I think Stephen's aligning so closely with APEC.
06:35If she loses this race, I think that is a signal to Democratic voters that they have to have at
06:41least a more skeptical—
06:42it doesn't mean you have to, you know, oppose Israel or view the security relationship as fundamentally a negative for
06:49the U.S.
06:49But kind of that unmitigated, unqualified support I think is extremely problematic in a Democratic primary at this point.
06:57Nancy, I've got a two-part question for you.
06:59The first is, tell us a bit about Mike Rogers, the former congressman against whom the winner is going to
07:03have to run.
07:04And the second is, we see Ron Brownstein not in front of his amazing bookshelves in Los Angeles.
07:08He's in Detroit. He's on a reporting trip there.
07:11What's one thing he needs to know or something he should check out while he's on that reporting trip
07:14to get a holistic sense of the state of this race?
07:18Okay, so Mike Rogers, you know, he was a U.S. rep for a while in the aughts.
07:23He is a longtime Michigan politician.
07:25He's an extremely conservative Republican.
07:28He has said that he wants to roll back key provisions of the Affordable Care Act.
07:32He wants to—he wants people to pay for preventative care.
07:36He has suggested that sick people should pay more for insurance,
07:39which, again, are kind of key things that the Affordable Care Act tried to resolve.
07:44He is—he's a career law enforcement agent.
07:47He was in the FBI.
07:48He endorsed Trump for the first time after January 6th, which is an interesting choice
07:54for a law enforcement—a law enforcement person.
07:56And in an editorial board endorsement review with the Free Press in 2024, he, you know,
08:03he was a lot more Mugger-oriented than he had been, you know, in his previous iteration
08:08as a Republican candidate.
08:09He suggested that people who were incarcerated should not be released from prison if they were
08:15literate until they had learned to read, which is a pretty dramatic statement.
08:18And so the biggest thing about Mike Rogers is that Michigan Democrats are really tearing
08:22themselves up right now over this primary.
08:26But every Michigan Democrat aligns far more with Haley Stevens or Abdul-Fayed than they do
08:33with Mike Rogers.
08:34And it's going to be fascinating to see if the party, whoever wins this primary, can
08:38become a coalition because Michigan is a purple state, and it's going to take a full Democratic
08:44coalition, every Democrat falling in line, not necessarily falling in love, and getting
08:48out to vote in November.
08:49So that is—that's what you need to know about Mike Rogers.
08:52And what do you need to know about—
08:54Very quickly, yes.
08:55We've got about 10 seconds left, so—
08:56I normally tell people to go get tacos in Mexican town, but I'm not sure that's—
09:00I think that's good enough.
Comments