How a Squandered Democratic Trifecta Is Pushing Michigan Left

How a Squandered Democratic Trifecta Is Pushing Michigan Left Polls close throughout most of Michigan at 8 p.m. ET tomorrow, and results in the closely watched race between Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens will be coming in quickly. In Missouri, Cori Bush is locked in a rematch with Rep. Wesley Bell, who knocked her out of Congress with a then-record-setting amount of money from AIPAC. In Michigan and also in Washington state and Virginia there are a number of other critical races we’ll be watching. On Tuesday morning at 9:30 am ET, we’ll be hosting our regular livestream on YouTube and Twitter. Then on Tuesday evening at 7:30 pm ET we’ll go live with Krystal Ball at both the Drop Site (youtube.com › @DropSiteNews) and Breaking Points (youtube.com › @breakingpoints) YouTube pages, and we’ll track the results until we have a winner. We’ll have a number of interesting guests coming through, though I don’t want to make any promises, because election nights can be chaotic. Tune in if you can. Either way, we’ll be watching a historic night unfold. As always, we can’t do this without your support. If you haven’t yet become a paying subscriber, please consider doing so. Or you can make a deductible contribution here (dropsitenews.com › ways to give).— Ryan Grim Subscribe now (dropsitenews.com › subscribe?) (substackcdn.com)U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens hosts a campaign event with former House Majority Whip Congressman Jim Clyburn (left) and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (right) at Michigan Conference-Teamsters on July 24, 2026 in Detroit, Michigan. Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images.Story by Tom PerkinsMore than a dozen anti-establishment candidates running on populist economics and Israel policy are threatening to take seats now held by Democrats across Michigan, from U.S. Senate to city councils. A sweep or strong showing by these insurgents in Tuesday’s primary would be seismic, upending Democratic Party power dynamics in an establishment stronghold. More broadly, if the Democratic Tea Party comes for the bellwether state of Michigan, the results would show that a new bottom-up politics is taking root, providing the clearest signal yet that the fundamental shift in the party underway is not restricted to New York or heavily blue cities.(A full list of the races to watch on Tuesday, plus a handful already concluded, is at the end of this story.)To understand the moment here, one needs to look at the night of November 8, 2022, when midterm returns trickling in across Michigan slowly began to reveal a surprise result: Democrats had won a trifecta and gained control over the state government (theguardian.com › michigan democrats state senate house) for the first time in 40 years.To many in the party, it felt like the state was emerging from the darkness after decades of being unable to legislate under one of the nation’s most gerrymandered maps (metrotimes.com), suffering under GOP governors like Rick Snyder, architect of the Flint water crisis.This kind of coverage matters. Make sure we can keep doing it:Rank-and-file Democrats expected that wildly popular proposals they supported would move easily into policy: making corporations pay for pollution, taxing the wealthy, dramatically expanding healthcare, addressing the soaring cost-of-living for the working class, and reining in DTE Energy, among the nation’s most expensive and unreliable utilities.These proposals did not pass. Most of the economic agenda died. No one was held responsible for Flint.Pro-business Democrats in leadership positions (detroitnews.com › michigan house dem