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Transcript12 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hey, everybody, it's Will Salitan from the Bulwark. I'm here with my colleague Jonathan Cohn, who is our House expert in, let's see, healthcare, baseball, Michigan. Am I leaving a few things out
- [00:14]
B
there, dad, music, Billy Joel, things like that.
- [00:17]
A
We'll do that video later today. We got to do Michigan. We got to do Michigan because Mallory McMorrow, one of the Democratic candidates in the Senate race in Michigan, has dropped out. First of all, Jonathan set the table for us. Cause this used to be a three candidate race, is that right? And now it's down to two. What's going on?
- [00:38]
B
That's right. So the Michigan Senate race is one of the key. I mean, every Senate race is important when you're trying to get the majority in such a close call. Michigan has been a state where you've had two Democratic senators going back basically, you know, since 2000 or 98. One of the incumbent Democrats, Gary Peters, announced he was retiring. Three Democrats announced they were vying for it. One was Hailey Stevens, who is a congresswoman from the northern Detroit suburbs. She's been in Congress since 2018. Abdul El Sayed, who is former public health director for the city of Detroit in Wayne county, which includes Detroit. And then Mallory McMurraw, who has been a state senator since 2018. You know, the basic lay of the land, the easiest way to think of it was that, you know, Abdul is a Bernie Sanders endorsed aoc, endorsed progressive. His slogans are money in your pockets, money out of politics, Medicare for all. Haley Stevens is a classic Michigan workhorse, member of Congress. She works for the union, she works for the civil rights group. She is the, you know, listens to every constituency, goes to Washington, finds deals. She plays legislative small ball, has been thought of as very effective by that, but very much a part of the establishment. And then Mallory McMarrow, kind of in between the sort of middle of the road candidate. She is a progressive, identifies as progressive, first became famous for a floor speech she gave pushing back at some of the attacks on LGBTQ kids. And she was accused of grooming, supporting groomers. And she fought back in a very painful, passionate, effective speech that got play all over the country. But she's also, you know, she's part of the state Democratic Party leadership in Lansing. You know, the way I tended to think was partly there was an ideological difference there. She was kind of in the middle. So, you know, someone who was going to said she was going to push hard for universal health care, truly universal health care, but not go all the way to Medicare for all really sort of add a public option to what we have now, as opposed to Abdul El Sayed, who was going to have full Medicare for all, for example. But at the same time, somebody who was, you know, was not the establishment either. She very. When she first started her race, one of the first things she said was, I don't think Chuck Schumer should continue as Senate Majority Leader. So she had that middle of the road, both in terms of ideology and also style. You know, if Abdul. And we all call them by their first names, they're all real young. You know, if Abdul was the guy tearing down the system and Haley was the one working within the system, Mallory was the one trying to stretch the system and take what she could get. But, you know, that middle of the road, it's a hard place to be and turned out to be not that big.
- [03:25]
A
Well, in Texas, we say there's nothing in the middle of the road but dead armadillos. Right. So what you've described sounds like McMorrow was the candidate in the middle. So there was a candidate. Stevens is sort of the candidate of the establishment. El Sayed as the candidate of the outsider candidate from the left, although a former public health official, I think. So what happens now? Because the reason I'm asking is leading up to this decision, there was a lot of pressure on McMurraw to drop out. Coming from people who wanted to stop El Sayed, who was leading in the polls. Is this a move to stop El Sayed?
- [04:03]
B
I don't know the full backstory. You know, there's rumors, certainly there was a lot of pressure on McMarrow to drop out because she had fallen behind in the polls, all the polls. There were some crappy polls out there, but even the good polls showed her falling behind. The. And there was pressure. There was one sign of this was Gary Peters, the retiring senator, who has said he was not gonna endorse anybody officially. But the Wall Street Journal reported, presumably with his approval, that he had been telling people inside the party, mcmorrow needs to drop out. So there was definitely, I think, a sense from a lot of Stephens supporters that if McMurray was not in the race, then that support would go to Stevens. And I would assume they had some polling, some internal polling to suggest that. I will just say I've talked to a lot of the political strategists in Michigan. I am not that convinced that's true. I think this is. McMarrow was pulling from both sides, again, because she had characteristics of both sides. There were definitely some people who liked McMarrow because she was such a visible fighter and she was so charismatic and energetic and she felt like a breath of fresh air. So I don't think it's a given. Her support goes overwhelmingly or even towards Stevens. It might be. We'll see. I just think there's a lot of people talking very confidently about where her supporters go. We'll see. I don't think that's a given.
- [05:28]
A
Personally, I think that they should listen to you, all these people in Michigan, because I believe you are wearing, do I see correctly, a Michigan National Championships sweatshirt. T shirt.
- [05:37]
B
Yeah, I am. I am. I forgot to button my shirt. So, yes, you.
- [05:42]
A
It's. It's very authentic. We can trust you on this. Let me ask you about McMorrow. So far as we record this, has not endorsed anyone. She in particular, if anyone thought she was going to endorse Haley Stevens, she has not done that. I don't know what she wants to do, but I kind of wonder whether if she thought about doing it, there's a reason not to do so. Which is, if I Recall correctly, previously, McMorrow confronted or challenged El Sayed about some of his position, some of the stuff he has said that she thought was incendiary and it backfired. Is that correct? And that therefore, if she were to endorse Stevens, that might backfire too, and consolidate support behind El Sayed.
- [06:23]
B
I like how your brain is cycling through 4th and 5th order effects here and absolutely correct to do so because there's all kinds of permutations going on. I don't know. I mean, it has been remarkable. There have been a number of attacks lodged at El Sayed, this campaign on, you know, he changed his position here. Allegedly, you know, or, you know, his. You know, there was a big thing about the fact that, you know, this may be the one you were thinking of, the near, you know, an attack that McMorrow endorsed, which was, you know, he is a doctor, he has a medical degree, but he also has a PhD in epidemiology and became public health director. He's never, you know, except when he was in medical school. He's not been a practicing physician. And he has sometimes described himself as a physician or he's used the word a few, you know, and some people said he's lying. He's talking like he's, you know, taking care of patients. He really isn't. He's just the public health director. Well, number one, he did go to medical school. I mean, he completed medical school, you Know, and he is and has been in the business of, you know, overseeing healthcare for people and actually overseeing. Overseeing healthcare for poor people, a lot of them in Detroit, helping kids to get eyeglasses and such. Now, exactly what he did is his actual record in office, I think is an interesting topic to explore. What he did get done, what he didn't get done. He's made some posts that maybe don't quite. He said, we got so many millions of dollars, and it was only some of it's been spent already. But at the end of the day, if you're going to attack someone for inflating their credentials because allegedly they say they're a doctor and they are a doctor, it just turns out they're not seeing patients. Instead, they're getting health care to the city of Detroit. I mean, that's not really a good attack. I mean, we had an episode like this. Will you probably remember, when the embattled and eventually withdrawn surgeon general nominee from Trump, who was someone who dropped out of residency and really wasn't seeing patients anymore and was just. Had become an influencer. Now, that's a good attack. That's not a person who's got experience delivering healthcare. But, you know, I mean, El Sayed's been doing healthcare. So, yeah, I think there's a. It's possible, you know, she endorses. There is already a perception out there that this is the establishment ganging up on El Sayed. So I don't know if she endorses Haley Stevens, if that just gets people more riled up.
- [08:48]
A
The issue that I was thinking of in particular was El Sayed defending, campaigning with and defending Hassan Piker, who has spoken, obviously is perceived as too pro Hamas. Michigan is just a minefield because of Jews, Muslims, a combination of constituencies in that primary. But in particular, I think didn't it backfire and help el Sayed when McMorrow criticized El Sayed for not renouncing or distancing yourself from Hasan Piker and his comments?
- [09:25]
B
I think if you'd ask political professionals in Michigan, they'd all say yes. I think the following things. There are two parts of that that I think are absolutely true. There's a little bit of a step in that that I kind of. I wonder about sometimes, which is, first of all, if you think of as a lot of us, a lot of people are, and I forget who coined this phrase, but if you think of campaigns as like the most valuable commodity being attention, right early on, the Piker thing was a win for Abdul Al Said because he got all this attention. He was the focus. Everyone was like, oh, who is this guy? What's going on? I think for these progressives in the race, the younger progressives, a lot of whom listen to Hasan Piker, they're like, great, we love this guy. And that really soured them on McMurraw, who, again, if you're in the middle of the road, you're gonna have to pull from both camps. That poisoned her, I think, with a lot of that base. Part of that is in a two way race where she basically get. Because there are a lot of people who are very offended, upset by Hassan Piker. And remember, it's not just what he said about Hamas. It's things he's, you know, there's a whole list of things he said that are.