How the Voters Can Overrule Citizens United

On Tuesday night, when Abdul El-Sayed defeats Haley Stevens in the Michigan Democratic Senatorial primary contest, heads are going to explode.

But they shouldn’t. Because the race is not how it has been depicted by the media or by El-Sayed’s opponents or by Stevens’ supporters.

The media will say it reflects the deep divides within the Democratic Party. Republican Senatorial candidate Mike Rogers, whom El-Sayed will defeat in November, has already begun an ad campaign ham-fistedly suggesting that El-Sayed is a communist because he is a progressive. AIPAC will suggest that anti-Semites have gained a foothold. Establishment Democrats will launch another wave of op-ed writing and social media posting and coordinated TV appearances seeking to argue that candidates like El-Sayed will bring the party down in November because they are “unelectable” in America’s heartland.

In so doing, they will miss the big story behind the victory. In fact, they will miss what could be the biggest story in American politics this year.

Let’s dispatch the misinterpretations of the result that will certainly inundate the airwaves and your daily doomscrolling on Wednesday and later this week before we get to what is really going on.

The media argument that the Democrats are divided is a variation on the tired old “Democrats are in disarray” refrain they love to rely on. Recent polls showing the Democrats are in a powerful position to win control of the House and possibly the Senate in November suggest that, at best, the arguments of disarray are an overstatement. Certainly, the Democratic National Committee is not firing on all cylinders at the moment, but its importance to election outcomes is overstated. (See more on this below.)

Some will make the case that having a diversity of views within the Democratic Party is a weakness. In a great, diverse country like ours, of course, it is actually a strength. This is not a presidential election year. We don’t need to all unify behind one candidate. We need people who can win in their states and districts, and that is what recent primary results suggest we are getting.

Further, the emergence of new voices and ideas and movements within the party is a sign of progress. It may make the establishment uncomfortable. But that is a good thing. Progress and a party evolving to meet the needs of a changing country is critical. We are also, as I regularly point out, at a generational inflection point. It would be disheartening in the extreme if the response of rising new Democratic leaders was, “hey, let’s keep doing it the way it was done 10, 20 or 30 years ago.” Making fossils like James Carville and DNC hacks uncomfortable is a sign the rank and file of the party are leading the way and doing something right.

That is especially true given America’s disgust with a GOP that is seeking to turn the clock back 150 years by undoing the progress this country has made in that time…all to enrich a privileged few. (See more on that below.)

El-Sayed is hardly a communist or a socialist even though he has the support of many Democratic Socialists and has spoken at Democratic Socialist events, facts that will play to his advantage with constituencies that will play an important role in his victory.

The fact is, his views on economics are pretty darned mainstream for the Democratic Party as a whole and right on message with progressives in the party for, say, the past 100 years.

Oh my Gosh, he wants everyone to have health care and dignified retirements and better schools and decent jobs! Communism!

That’s a ridiculous view that is only sold by those who fear giving the American people what they want will force them to dial back the excessive benefits and privileges that have been siphoned off (and sometimes stolen on behalf of) America’s richest and most empowered citizens and corporations.

El-Sayed is arguing the radical positions that Democrats have advocated for decades and that are the mainstream norm in virtually every developed country in the world. There’s nothing radical about him…except that perhaps having a public health professional in the Senate to offset the war on science, medicine, and decency being conducted by the GOP, and having an experienced advocate in the Senate on those issues, represents a big change for the better. (There are six Democratic medical doctors in the House of Representatives.)

AIPAC and related “establishment” Jewish groups have said for weeks that El-Sayed’s criticism of Israel and his opposition to continued blank check funding of the Israeli government make him part of the anti-Semitic cabal on the Democratic left. This is poison they are pumping directly into our system in an effort to maintain support for the Netanyahu government and to suppress criticism of their manifold and egregious crimes against humanity.

If there is any anti-Semitism going on here, it is the anti-Muslim type we have already seen regularly employed against Zohran Mamdani in New York City (and that was attempted against Barack Obama despite the fact that he was not a Muslim) Have we forgotten so soon the degree to which insensitivity to the concerns of Michigan Muslims and those others in the state who opposed Biden’s blank check for Israel undermined support for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election?

As for the idea that progressive candidates will make it harder to win in America’s heartland, that’s an absurd idea. The American progressive movement arguably began in Wisconsin and in cities across the country…but let’s not leave out farmworkers and others, either. Primaries allow voters to pick candidates they feel understand the moment and represent their interests well. Furthermore, the shift of the MAGA GOP to the extreme right and the relative ineffectiveness of the center-establishment to counter their rise has naturally sent voters who want change in search of those with different ideas, who are more in tune with their needs, who will speak truth to power.

That is why this year we are seeing important progressive gains coast-to-coast…with victories not just in New York, California and the Pacific Northwest but in places as diverse as Michigan, Maine, and, soon, very likely, hopefully, in Wisconsin. With about half of voters under 30 saying they are sympathetic to progressive or liberal ideas and almost six-in-ten embracing specific progressive ideas (like healthcare for all), this is the shift you would expect and want to see at a moment of generational transition in America. (And as I have written often here, the reality is that supermajorities of Americans of all parties support key progressive platform planks…including notably healthcare for all and cutting back U.S. support for Israel.)

In other words, El Sayed will win because he is the right candidate at the right time and, while polling shows the upcoming race with Rogers to be close and challenging, I predict he will beat Rogers too because current polls do not take into consideration the likely anti-Trump, anti-GOP wave, the impact that will have on GOP turnout, the strength of El Sayed as a candidate, and the massive defects of Rogers as a candidate.

Might AIPAC or other big PACs (like those of the far right, of the Elon Musks of this world, of the AI industry and the crypto bros and the gun lobby) write big checks for Rogers in November?

Count on it.

But that is where we get to the big story.

For decades, the right wing in America has sought to give the rich a special advantage in shaping U.S. election outcomes. The Citizens United Supreme Court decision in 2010 and this year’s NRSC vs. FEC outcome both make it easier for the super-rich in America to put their thumb on the scales of our democracy. (Indeed, as I have argued often…perhaps ad nauseum…the fact that things like health care and tax reform and common sense gun control and environmental protection are supported by three-quarters of Americans and they can’t get passed is the clearest sign these efforts are working, corporate elites and oligarchs get their way, and the majority views are buried under mountains of money.

But El-Sayed’s victory…like Mamdani’s and many others this year…are beginning to show that despite the efforts by the right to rig our democracy in their favor, there is still one way they can be beaten—by voters at the polls.

You’ve heard of jury nullification?

What about voter nullification of decisions like Citizens United?

Take a look again at Michigan. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent to try to swing the Democratic Primary outcome to Stevens. AIPAC has spent over $30 million directly. AIPAC related groups’ spending has been estimated at $60 million. That has been augmented by dark money, other super PAC money, and money from corporate sectors and leaders, including those from the tech world, the crypto world, and Wall Street.

And the people of Michigan saw that, and I believe their response to it all on Tuesday will be "Nope.”

There are a lot of reasons for this. We shouldn’t be precipitous in projecting from one or a few races or using a few data points to extrapolate a bigger argument. AIPAC has become a toxic brand in U.S. politics. They are over as a potent force; they just don’t realize it yet. Much of the reason for an El-Sayed victory over Stevens on Tuesday will be linked to the fact that he is an excellent, appealing candidate with a voter-oriented message (amazing how that works…see Mamdani, see Michelle Wu, see Francesca Hong). Further, she was not a very strong candidate, and tactically she made some big mistakes, undoubtedly to say the things her big donors wanted her to say.

But the rejection of big money in American politics will be, I believe, despite the worst efforts of the Roberts court, a theme in this year’s elections and in 2028 for several reasons. Most notably, right now the biggest issue in American politics is the recognition by those across the political spectrum that our system has become rigged to serve the few at the expense of the many.

We have seen the consequences of the rise of the Epstein Class, of Trump’s Golden Age of Corruption, of economic and political inequality, and that the country is suffering grievously as a result.

Candidates who take big money from corporate or special interests will be, as a result, viewed more skeptically than ever. That is not to say they will not benefit from having the money. But organizers are learning to call out these compromising donations and use them as an effective cudgel against on-the-take candidates.

Personally, in my view, the minute Stevens took $30 million from AIPAC, she was disqualified from serving. Both because it led her to promote views that were neither in the interests of U.S. national security nor, frankly, of the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and because it said she was just another pol beholden to special interests.

(Despite what you hear in the media, groups like AIPAC or the ADL are not “pro-Israel.” They are pro-Netanyahu. Being truly pro-Israel is being anti-Netanyahu, anti-war crimes, anti-rogue state, pro-real democracy, pro-two-state solution, anti-Trump, anti-blank check, anti-apologies for genocide or dispossessing the Palestinians of the West Bank. Further, being against Netanyahu or anti-blank check or willing to call out Israeli crimes is not for a minute being anti-Semitic…in fact, it is a set of views embraced by the majority of American Jews. But, perhaps I will devote more to this later as I am seeing a plethora of articles in the so-called mainstream media seeking to suggest that the rise of progressives is somehow anti-Semitic or that opposing war-crimes is anti-Semitic or that questioning how Zionism turned out in practice is anti-Semitic…and these views are not only wrong, but they mask a lot of other agendas of those underwriting them…who seek to use any argument they can to defend their other political positions.)

More to the point, any candidate who takes any big donation of any sort from any special interest group should be viewed as compromised. Until we can put in place the campaign finance laws that will be essential to the restoration of democracy in the United States, what we must do first is act consistent with what we would like those laws to be.

Citizens United gives an advantage to the recipients of big dollars from the Elons and the crypto bros of this world only if we let that spending be an advantage. Sure, the political consultant loves the spending because they get their percentage cut of it. But we, who now get most of our information via social media platforms and not via television or other mainstream media models, have seen how ineffective big spending can be on such platforms (even if you buy the platform itself) and how powerful grass roots use of new media can be for candidates (like Mamdani and El Sayed and Hong…but also like Talarico or N.J. Governor Mikey Sherrill).

I find it ironic that Trump and MAGA are buying up legacy media outlets at just the moment they are becoming irrelevant and that even the tech bros don’t realize that the rich as they are, they can’t buy the outcomes they seek if they are viewed as odious, dangerous, arrogant pricks…which, as it happens, is the way they are currently viewed. (For good reason.)

Will big spending distort outcomes in November? Yes. But will it achieve all it hopes to achieve? Outcomes like we have seen in elections this year (and frankly began to see years ago) suggest that the combination of revulsion at the corruption and abuses and self-dealing of the billionaire class and corporate giants and special interests, generational change, the rise of new media technologies and the emergence of new leaders with a timely voter-centric message can begin to undo the damage of the Roberts court and mainstream elites in both parties.

It is not a sure thing. It is up to us. But results like we are seeing and seem likely to see suggest it is possible…and that should motivate all of us to try to make a difference, pushing the big money out of American politics every way we can.