Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will in Scottsdale, Arizona on December 1, 2022 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
With the 2026 midterms only three and one-half months away, centrists and progressives are fighting for control of the Democratic Party. On one hand, quite a few self-described "democratic socialists" are winning Democratic primaries; on the other hand, incumbent Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — a rock star in the party's centrist/moderate wing — has double-digit leads over GOP challenger Stacy Garrity in various polls.
Michigan, like Pennsylvania, is a tough swing state that can determine which party controls the White House or Congress. But veteran Washington Post columnist George Will, one of President Donald Trump's scathing critics on the right, fears that Democrats are hurting themselves in a state that is crucial for them in the midterms.
"If you squint, you can see them," the 84-year-old Will writes in his July 22 Post column. "They are signs that the Democratic Party understands historian Robert Conquest's rule, which is: The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies."
On August 4, Michigan will hold its Democratic U.S. Senate primary, and Will fears that if the nominee is progressive Abdul El-Sayed, he will struggle in the general election. El-Sayed is competing for the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-Michigan).
"Three stalwarts of the national party's kamikaze caucus, two of them fresh from telling Maine's Democrats whom to nominate for Senate, are now instructing Michiganders," the conservative Washington Post columnist argues. "They are Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who called Maine's Graham Platner 'my kind of man,' and Sen. Bernie Sanders, another Platner enthusiast. These two, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who flinched from Platner, have discovered a new paladin of progressivism."
The Never Trump conservative continues, "Abdul El-Sayed is 41. In 2018, he lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary by 21 points to a centrist Democrat, Gretchen Whitmer, who is now completing her second term. Today, El-Sayed campaigns with Hasan Piker, a 'Twitch streamer' (yes, that is a job description in today's America) sympathetic to Hamas. Piker has apologized for having said 'America deserved 9/11.'"
Will notes that El-Sayed is up against four-term Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Michigan), described by the columnist as a "centrist liberal."
"She is something that purple Michigan might like," Will says of Stevens. "Donald Trump's 2024 victory in Michigan was wafer-thin (1.4 percent), but Michigan Democrats should remember: He carried it…. If El-Sayed is nominated to replace retiring Democrat Sen. Gary Peters, his Republican opponent will be former seven-term congressman Mike Rogers, who in 2024, lost a Michigan Senate race by just 0.34 percent. In that case, Rogers almost certainly will win. Republicans almost certainly will retain control of the Senate. And Robert Conquest's rule certainly will be validated."