Political Journalists in Disarray

Midterms missteps, a notable apology, and a sturgeon rescue.

Now and then, the anonymous, sardonic NYT Pitchbot account will post a “Dems in Disarray” message on social media. Sometimes there’s a news peg for it, but just as often, it comes out of nowhere. Pitchbot can now retire the phrase, because our political media pick it up just as frequently, under the guise of something they might call “news analysis”—as we saw in the Michigan Senate campaign.

You’ll recall that last weekend, Haley Stevens, the Democrat who had narrowly lost to Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s primary for the United States Senate, endorsed the Republican in the race, Mike Rogers. Stevens said she had been snubbed by El-Sayed’s campaign, and that she was troubled by his stance on Israel. That followed days of sniping between the Stevens and El-Sayed camps.

The conflict led our press to tell the public that This Very Important Issue Is Throwing the Democrats into Disarray. El-Sayed “went so scorched earth on Haley Stevens that he’s having a lot of trouble putting that coalition back together again,” said Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark. “Democrats are still struggling to unite behind El-Sayed,” reported PBS. Their “fragile truce is shattering as El-Sayed and former primary rival Rep. Haley Stevens reignite their fraught feud,” warned Politico.

Then, on Tuesday, El-Sayed thrashed Rogers by 7 percentage points. He coasted in Democratic strongholds like Wayne County (which includes Detroit), where his margin of victory was around 44 percentage points, and Washtenaw County (which includes Ann Arbor), where he beat Rogers by 50 points. His margins there even exceeded those rung up by Elissa Slotkin, a Democratic Senate candidate, who beat Rogers in 2024.

And this shouldn’t have come as a huge surprise. In a Marist poll a few weeks before Stevens’s announcement, El-Sayed was getting the support of 95 percent of Democrats.

Recency bias is a powerful drug. Our political press ought to read the warning label before delivering their hot takes.