With Abdul El-Sayed On The Ballot, Michigan Democrats Are At A Crossroads

Political and sports commentator Clay Travis recently suggested that Michigan Republicans should cross over and vote for Abdul El-Sayed in the Democratic Senate primary. His reasoning: El-Sayed is a far-left radical who can’t win in November, and his securing the nomination would help Republican Mike Rogers win the all-important seat.This is seriously bad advice — not just because it’s tactically risky, but because it asks Republicans to do something they should be unwilling to do: lend their votes, even instrumentally, to a candidate who represents a newly imported and genuinely dangerous ideological project.Primary meddling is a stupid game that typically produces stupid prizes. Anticipating that some conservatives might start floating this ill-advised idea, I wrote about it recently for this site.Democrats were eager to see Donald Trump win the 2016 Republican presidential primary, convinced he would be a gift to Hillary Clinton in November. That failed calculation reshaped American politics. Closer to home, primary meddling has occasionally “worked” in narrow tactical terms, elevating weaker nominees who go on to lose. But those cases are the exception that seduces people into ignoring the far more dangerous reality: sometimes the candidate you boost actually wins.But the bigger issue here is that the