Haley Stevens

With the August 4 primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin fast approaching, the next week is going to be very exciting for an awful lot of political observers. And both states are offering lots of material for the next chapter in the saga of the Great Democratic Civil War of 2026. Self-designated combatants in the much-discussed progressive-centrist struggle for the soul of the party, along with conflict-addicted pundits and Republicans eager to proclaim a communist takeover of the forces opposing Donald Trump, are watching closely to see what happens in the Michigan Senate primary between Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens, as well as in the multicandidate Wisconsin gubernatorial primary. Whatever happens, you can expect massive overreactions, particularly if the wind blows in one direction across both midwestern states. The fallout is certainly intensified by the stakes: Democratic prospects of flipping the Senate depend heavily on holding the Michigan seat, while Wisconsin is the hyperpolarized state where Democrats were hoping to win a trifecta this year.

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Messy in Michigan

For a good while, the Michigan race offered a range of ideological and generational options to succeed retiring Senator Gary Peters. But then State Senator Mallory McMorrow dropped out on July 5, leaving El-Sayed and Stevens to polarize the contest to an excruciating degree. El-Sayed (a public-health expert whose first political race was an unsuccessful bid for the Michigan governorship in the 2018 primary won by Gretchen Whitmer) is very much a self-identified progressive long aligned with Bernie Sanders. While he is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, his message is DSA-consonant, emphasizing support for Medicare for All; opposition to continued U.S. military aid for Israel (whose government he regularly describes as genocidal); a call for the abolition of ICE; and the need to overturn the Democratic Establishment in Michigan and in Washington. His explicit factionalism (punctuated by a close relationship with socialist influencer Hasan Piker) has made him the perfect foil for Stevens (as she is for him), and she’s the beneficiary of a shocking amount of financial support from AIPAC-affiliated groups. Stevens is being backed by both Whitmer and Peters (and by retired Michigan senator Debbie Stabenow) along with Chuck Schumer; she also enjoys implicit support from national centrist groups like Third Way, who have attacked El-Sayed as “radical” and friendly to antisemites. El-Sayed has predictably won the backing of Sanders, AOC, and Summer Lee.

Prospects for postprimary unity weren’t exactly helped by a new report from Politico Playbook:

During a recent Zoom donor meeting, El-Sayed indicated that a win in the Aug. 4 contest — and another one in November — would give him a platform to push the progressive movement forward. “You put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message, and all of a sudden [it] starts to sound a lot different,” El-Sayed said, according to audio of the meeting obtained by Playbook.

Can El-Sayed pivot to endorse an “ogre” against Republican Mike Rogers (who has gleefully celebrated the possibility he will get to run against a Muslim progressive) in November? And can Stevens’s abrasively anti-El-Sayed financial supporters admit they were wrong? We’ll soon find out.

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What about Wisconsin?

The configuration of forces in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race is different but equally fractious. At the beginning of the cycle, leading Democratic candidates included former lieutenant governor Mandela Barnes, a fairly progressive pol who lost a winnable Senate race to paleo-conservative Republican Ron Johnson in 2022; current Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez, very much a mainstream Democratic pol; Milwaukee County executive David Crowley, a “bridge-building” mainstream Democrat as well; and Madison-based state legislator Francesca Hong, a Democratic Socialists of America member with a good personal story (she’s a former chef and single mom). Meanwhile, Republicans have united around MAGA congressman Tom Tiffany.

To make a long story short, Crowley dropped out of the race in early July, endorsing Rodriguez, who subsequently dropped out herself thanks to a jaw-dropping scandal involving her campaign’s financial accounting (an indicator of incompetence rather than corruption, so far at least). Crowley jumped back into the contest and was endorsed by the previously neutral outgoing Governor Tony Evers. But he was very quickly hit with controversy over crude old Twitter posts from an account attributed to him (he quickly disclaimed responsibility, but the story got a lot of unhelpful circulation).

Meanwhile, Hong has gradually gained strength and has led the Democratic field in every recent poll, with Barnes and Crowley competing to emerge as a nonsocialist alternative (as it happens, both men are Black and share a Milwaukee electoral base). Much like El-Sayed, Hong is identifying her campaign with the national progressive surge that has created so much fear among centrist Democrats and joy among Republicans, as Politico reported earlier this month:

“This is a movement moment,” Hong said in an interview, pushing back on skeptics who question whether democratic socialists can win statewide in a state President Donald Trump carried twice. “More and more folks are recognizing that the system is rigged and they deserve a more democratic economy, where the power and control are with the workers and not the establishment, the elites and the mega corporations.”

Democratic pundits are less enchanted with the battle, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

“The Dem race for governor in WI feels like a slow-rolling car headed for a cliff,” David Axelrod, who was Barack Obama’s chief political strategist and directs the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, said in a July 23 post on X.

A polarized primary electorate, followed by factional cries of triumph and alarm and lots of Republican gloating, seems very likely in Wisconsin as in Michigan. Fortunately for Democrats, nationally and in both states, there remains plenty of time to reestablish party unity before November, and surely Donald Trump will help.