Black voters hate lefty socialists Abdul El-Sayed, back opponent

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Here’s a wake-up call from the great state of Michigan, my home state, where the Democratic Senate primary pits a moderate, Haley Stevens, against a far-left democratic socialist-backed radical, Abdul El-Sayed.

And like other far-left radical socialists, El-Sayed’s base of support is — wait for it — affluent, highly educated whites, not working-class people and minorities.

Every time we look at one of these races, the evidence presents itself. What was true for Graham Platner and Darializa Avila Chevalier is also true for El-Sayed.

According to polling data from The Detroit News, in the Democratic primary, college-educated voters back El-Sayed by 7 points. Non-college educated voters prefer Stevens by 22 points. Then there is the white vote, which El-Sayed, an Arab Muslim, is winning by 12 points. Stevens, who is a white woman, is actually winning Black voters by, get this, 46 points.

That’s because Black voters are a moderating force within the Democratic Party. It’s hard for some people to understand, but among Democrats, Black people tend to be much more moderate than white people. It’s not true overall, because there are a lot more white Republicans than there are Black Republicans; most Black people are, in fact, Democrats. But white people who are Democrats tend to be well to the left of Black people who are Democrats.

This matters because the socialist left is perpetually claiming that theirs is the agenda of the working class. And yet their voters are not the working class. Their voters are elite people, and people who control elite institutions. The activists who picked Platner to be the candidate in Maine were nepo babies and elite college graduates who thought that a gruff-sounding guy would be perfect to appeal to blue-collar voters in Maine, and there was no need to scrutinize his platform or check to make sure he didn’t have any, say, sexual assault accusations against him.

As Derek Thompson points out on X, “It seems the populist left revolution is creating a kind of leftwing party-within-the-party that might accentuate the benefits and costs of Democrats over-performance among college grads rather than fix it.”

And that’s precisely Democrats’ problem — a problem that’s going to be even more glaring once we actually get to the general election match-ups.

Meanwhile, here’s El-Sayed’s opponent. I actually saw a lot of elites dunking on her on X, to which I say, knock it off. That’s what a working-class Michigander actually sounds like. The far-left socialist elite should try meeting one sometime.

Robby Soave is co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising” and a senior editor for Reason Magazine. This column is an edited transcription of his daily commentary.

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Abdul El-Sayed

Haley Stevens

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Michigan

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