“Abdul El-Sayed’s Campaign Is a Test for Leftism in the Midwest,” New York Magazine declared.
That was on Sunday.
On Monday, ThinkProgress called El-Sayed’s campaign one to prove “Democratic socialism can win in the Midwest.”
On Tuesday, socialism and leftism failed the Midwest test.
Bernie Sanders, socialism’s confused grandpa, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, socialism’s new model, had flown out to campaign for El-Sayed’s gubernatorial campaign in Michigan. A Guardian article sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation had dubbed the Muslim socialist candidate, “The New Obama”.
El-Sayed had run on socialized medicine under its current misleading brand of “Medicare for All.” It had proven financially unviable everywhere from Vermont to California. And Michigan’s finances make it an especially terrible candidate for socialized medicine. But socialism is having a moment. Or is it?
Bernie Sanders, Linda Sarsour and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the entire left, couldn’t manage to drag El-Sayed over the finish line in a state with a large Muslim population. And El-Sayed didn’t just lose.
He lost badly.
The media had been trying to build up El-Sayed as another Ocasio-Cortez while repeatedly claiming that there was a tight race. The election showed that there had never actually been much of a competition.
El-Sayed isn’t socialism’s only Midwestern misfire. A few days ago, the New York Times was touting Cori Bush as the woman to pull off Ocasio-Cortez’s playbook in the “heartland”. Like El-Sayed, Cori Bush was running on a $15 minimum wage, “Medicare for All” and free college.
Bush was a Black Lives Matter organizer. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came to campaign for her. Like Cortez, Bush was supposed to beat Rep. Lacy Clay, a CBC hack welded to his seat by identity politics, by applying the same insurgent tactics that had allowed Cortez to beat Rep. Joe Crowley in New York.
There was just one huge problem. Cortez had beaten a white guy who lived in Virginia in a Latino district. Clay is black. And so Cortez’s playbook of running against a white guy proved utterly useless.
Cori Bush lost by nearly as high a percentage as Abdul El-Sayed.
Bernie’s people supported Bush. And she had the endorsement of Democracy for America. The left had tried to turn El-Sayed and Bush into the poster candidates for socialism. Despite socialism’s supposed moment, its candidates have been consistent losers outside of a few super-lefty enclaves. That was why the media had built a cult of personality around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Had El-Sayed or Bush won, there would have been three examples, two in the heartland, instead of only one New York fluke.
Mainstream Democrats had argued that socialism wouldn’t appeal to the average American.
Read the full story from Front Page Mag
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