Haley Stevens endorses Mike Rogers, ditches far-left Abdul El-Sayed

With the hours counting down before tomorrow’s midterm elections, there was a huge development in my home state of Michigan this weekend. Exhibiting a stunning rejection of leftist Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed, Rep. Haley Stevens has unexpectedly endorsed Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate, in that Senate race.

Her announcement, posted to X on Sunday afternoon, followed days of escalating hostilities with El-Sayed, who defeated Stevens in the Democratic Senate primary. She initially endorsed her fellow Democrat, but then Stevens’s fiancé, Jason Turkish, stated last week he could not vote for El-Sayed, citing the candidate’s insufficient distance from Hasan Piker, Cenk Uygur and other unrelenting progressive critics of Israel.

That prompted El-Sayed to disinvite Stevens from all future campaign events; Rogers clearly sensed an opportunity, and secured Stevens’s support after reaching out to her.

Unsurprisingly, Democrats are furious, and are roundly denouncing her as a traitor. Her congressional staff is resigning en masse , apparently blindsided by the reversal. Even moderate liberal commentators who had preferred Stevens over El-Sayed in the primary are furious with her. Neera Tanden, a Democratic consultant who often feuds with the left wing of her party, accused Stevens of betraying “all of her supporters.” Activist David Hogg wrote that everyone who had backed Stevens over El-Sayed should apologize and condemn her . And commentator Matthew Yglesias wrote that he was very mad at Stevens.

And you know what? This all strikes me as a bit much. Take a chill pill, Dems: You are not owed the enthusiastic support of Haley Stevens when you select a candidate like El-Sayed.

And I get it, it of course matters a great deal which party controls the Senate, and thus individual races have extremely high stakes. Pro-Trump Americans want Republican majorities to protect them from bad Democratic policies, and anti-Trump Americans want the reverse. The country’s extremely defective two-party system, in which we are constantly called upon to compromise our own personal values and select the lesser of two evils, is on full display here.

But everyone slamming Stevens as some kind of traitor should know this: unshakeable, ironclad loyalty to one’s own political party is not a virtue. I would much prefer to live under a system in which Republicans and Democrats were more likely to buck their own parties and say that supporting such and such a person is outside the bounds of what can reasonably be expected.

It’s encouraging, for example, that Karl Rove has refused to vote for Bo French, the nominee for Texas Railroad Commissioner and an unapologetic anti-Indian racist . It would be better for the country if more Republicans followed his example — and if they similarly punished their Senate nominee, the manifestly corrupt Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

I said all last week that I wanted Vivek Ramaswamy to get his comeuppance over that terrible ad, even though I largely agree with his policies. Well guess, what. The same should be true for Democrats.

And I know that El-Sayed does not appear to be corrupt or racist, and some of the allegations of anti-Semitism leveled against him are unfair : criticisms of the government of Israel are not synonymous with attacks on Jewish people. That said, he is an extremely far-left political candidate — a socialist in all but name — who thought it was a good idea to campaign with Piker, a communist sympathizer with a long track record of evincing support for terrorist groups . El-Sayed previously derided President Obama, who enacted an extremely progressive policy agenda, as “ fairly centrist, middle-of-the-road .” Democratic primary voters are free to pick leftists to be their candidates, but normal Democrats should not feel bound by those choices. Socialism, even socialism-lite, should always be viewed as a bridge too far, because it is a ruinous ideology that produces poverty and authoritarianism .

Now it’s true that Stevens appears to be doing this largely for reasons of personal spite rather than some ideological opposition to El-Sayed’s economic agenda, so I wouldn’t exactly nominate her for a Profiles in Courage Award. But the tendency to lash out at political figures who exercise a degree of independence and brand them as traitors is melodramatic at best. And it always goes only one way. Liz Cheney is celebrated for betraying the Republican Party, and Stevens is denounced for betraying the Democratic Party. That doesn’t seem right to me.

Now, as for El-Sayed: He is running well behind the Democratic Party’s gubernatorial nominee, Jocelyn Benson, which suggests to me that Stevens is not the only Michigan Democrat feeling uncomfortable about him. We will find out tomorrow. Or maybe Wednesday, depending on how the counting goes.

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.