Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Evan Cobb for the Washington Post via Getty Images, Win McNamee/Getty Images, Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images, Sarah Rice/Getty Images, Emily Elconin/Getty Images, and Getty Images Plus.
On a hot and smoky mid-July Saturday night at the Detroit Opera House, the front-running campaign in Michigan’s Senate Democratic primary had little to say about the Republican Party. But it offered no mercy for the Democratic establishment.
It was the kickoff event for Abdul El-Sayed’s biggest swing of rallies to date in what has become the country’s most-watched primary. The left-wing populist has come a long way. When he launched his campaign last year, he was speaking to small groups, and he would now be speaking to crowds in the thousands alongside the two most famous leftists in the country: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the godfather of progressive insurgent campaigns, Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Sanders, 10 years out from his campaign that opened the breach between the Democratic establishment and a progressive movement that seeks to bury it, laid out the grand stakes in the Aug. 4 primary. It was no longer, he said, a race just between El-Sayed, a public health official who has never held elected office, and Rep. Haley Stevens, a moderate four-term congresswoman.
