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'Must Be Done': Sanders Calls for Ban on Super PAC Spending in Democratic Primaries
"I would hope that we can all agree that Republican special interests should not play a role in determining the outcome of Democratic primaries. The time to act is now."
Aug 10, 2026
US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday urged national Democratic leaders to impose a total ban on super PAC spending in primary contests, a change that the progressive senator said is necessary to prevent corporate interests from heavily influencing the party's electoral outcomes.
In a letter addressed to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin, Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote that "what is particularly obscene is not only the outrageous amount of money coming into Democratic primaries from billionaire-funded super PACs, but the reality that these special interests have no particular desire to see Democrats win."
Sanders, who caucuses with the Democratic Party, cited as a telling example the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's $30 million intervention in the Democratic primary for a critical US Senate seat in Michigan. The organization, known as AIPAC, spent heavily to boost Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and attempt to tear down her progressive opponent, Abdul El-Sayed—who went on to win the race despite being massively outspent.
AIPAC is now reportedly planning to spend big in support of El-Sayed's Republican general election opponent, Mike Rogers.
"It is absurd that they spend tens of millions of dollars to try to determine who the Democratic nominee is and, if they fail, then proceed to support the Republican candidate in the general election," Sandres wrote. "That is not democracy. That is not what Democratic voters want."
Sanders emphasized his support for passage of a constitutional amendment to repeal the US Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which paved the way for the establishment and proliferation of super PACs—entities that can raise and spend unlimited sums supporting or opposing political campaigns.
"BUT WE DO NOT HAVE TO WAIT," Sanders wrote in all caps. "Right now, the Democratic Party has the power to prohibit super PACs from participating in its primaries. That can be done. That must be done. I urge you to take action and make clear that the Democratic Party will no longer maintain this corrupt system."
"While there are ideological differences of opinion within the big tent of the party, I would hope that we can all agree that Republican special interests should not play a role in determining the outcome of Democratic primaries," the senator continued. "The time to act is now."
The DNC has repeatedly faced calls in recent years to curb or eliminate the influence of super PACs in Democratic primaries—but has yet to take concrete action.
Earlier this year, the DNC Rules Committee rejected a proposed resolution that condemned the "growing influence" of AIPAC and other organizations pumping huge sums into Democratic primaries. The rules panel instead advanced a resolution broadly condemning dark money and expressing the DNC's "commitment to campaign finance practices that align with the party’s core values."
Nearly a third of all corporate political spending on elections since the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling has come during the 2026 election cycle, according to a June report by Public Citizen.
"Cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, Big Tech, and online betting corporations have collectively spent $294 million to influence federal elections in the 2026 midterm cycle, reflecting a strategic move to spend directly on political action committees to influence federal elections," the report found. "These corporate super PAC political contributions make up 57% of the $517 million that corporations have reported spending on the 2026 midterms so far."
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The Dangerous Corporate-Funded Morons of Third Way
Here's some advice for voters: disregard whatever you may hear from Third Way or any other so-called “leading Democratic centrist group.”
Aug 10, 2026
The statements seem as belligerent as Pete Hegseth on a bad hair day.
“We are preparing for the next war that is coming,” says Jonathan Cowan.
Cowan is president of Third Way, described by The New York Times as a “leading centrist Democratic group.” Cowan’s Third Way is preparing a $15 million war chest to “discredit democratic socialism.”
Pointing to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Michigan Senate primary last week, Cowan warns that “it is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potential presidential swing states.”
Well, I find it deeply troubling that faux centrist groups are declaring war on progressives in the pages of The New York Times, without the Times revealing who they really are.
If you bother to look at the funding sources of Third Way — those that have been made public, that is (Third Way is structured as a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization that’s not legally required to publicly disclose its donors) — you’ll find a Star Wars cantina of billionaire megadonors, Fortune 500 CEOs, corporate dark money bundlers, and giant corporations.
Odd that The New York Times chooses to describe Third Way as a “leading Democratic centrist group” without revealing that it’s simply a Trojan Horse for corporate America.
Third Way senior vice president Matt Bennett has even conceded that “the majority” of Third Way’s donor support comes from the group’s board of trustees, most of whom are from the finance sector. (That’s the same Matt Bennett, by the way, who helped stage the infamous “Dukakis in a tank” photo-op that helped sink Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign.)
Here’s Third Way’s Board of Trustees (the most recent list available):
- Jonathan Vogelstein, chairman of New Providence Asset Management and senior advisor to private equity firm Warburg Pincus.
- David Heller, formerly global head of equity trading for Goldman Sachs.
- Bernard Schwartz (chairman emeritus), chairman and CEO of BLS Investments.
- David Horvitz, chairman of the board and CEO of SouthOcean Capital Partners, LLC and SouthOcean Investment Partners, LLC.
- David Coulter, managing director and senior advisor at Warburg Pincus, focusing on the firm’s financial services practice, and former vice chair of JPMorganChase.
- William Daley, vice chairman of Bank of New York Mellon, former vice chairman of JPMorganChase, former board member of pharmaceutical companies Abbott Labs and Merck.
- John Dyson, chairman of Millbrook Capital Management, Inc. (MCM), a private investment firm that manages a manufacturing company, a vineyard and wine group, and a hedge fund.
- Michael Edwards, deputy CIO of investment adviser Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisors.
- Andrew Feldstein, CEO and Co-CIO of BlueMountain Capital Management, board member of PNC Financial Services Group, former managing director of JPMorganChase.
- Brian Frank, founder and managing partner of Declaration Partners LP, an investment firm seeded by the founder of a large private equity firm.
- David Greenwald, chairman of finance law firm Fried Frank, former international general counsel and a deputy general counsel of Goldman Sachs.
- Derek Kaufman, former head of global fixed income at Citadel and a member of the firm’s Portfolio Committee, former managing director at JPMorganChase.
- Derek Kirkland, managing director and co-head of the Global Financial Institutions Group at Morgan Stanley’s Financial Institutions Group in Investment Banking.
- Doug Lawrence, CEO of DPL Green Investment and also managing principal and co-founder of 5 Stone Green Capital, formerly a managing director at JPMorganChase.
- Joseph Zimlich, CEO of private family financial manager the Bohemian Group, board member of First Western Trust Bank.
- Mark Spilker, founding member of GPS Investment Partners LLC, chairman of Chiron Investment Management LLC, former co-head of Goldman Sachs’s Investment Management Division, former president of Apollo Global Management, former member of Google’s Investment Advisory Committee.
- Barbara Manfrey Vogelstein, former venture capitalist, former partner at Warburg Pincus and Apax Partners & Co. Ventures.
- William Reeves, co-founder of BlueCrest Capital Management, former managing director at JPMorganChase.
Oh, and Third Way’s honorary co-chairs have included West Virginia’s former Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona’s former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Enough said about its governing structure.
In 2020, Third Way claimed that Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All plan would add more than $13 trillion to the federal deficit, although most other analyses — including one by the Koch-funded Mercatus Center — found that Sanders’s plan would save trillions while providing healthcare to millions of uninsured Americans.
Well, of course Third Way attacked Bernie’s plan. Among Third Way’s donors are pharmaceutical giant Amgen, pharmacy benefit manager CVS Health (which acquired health insurance giant Aetna in late 2018), and health products and drug company Baxter International.
Other corporate donors to Third Way are or have been members of the GOP-aligned American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate bill mill that links lobbyists with state lawmakers. Amgen, Baxter Healthcare, CVS Caremark, DuPont, and trade groups the Consumer Technology Association and NCTA - The Internet and Television Association are members.
Third Way donors have also given money to the Republican Attorneys General Association, which helps elect Republicans who fight federal environmental and other regulations. Among them, Entergy, Facebook, Google, and Reynolds American, according to tax records.
Christopher Leonard, author of Kochland, revealed that Koch Industries secretly funded a report by Third Way intended to promote the Republican free trade agenda to Democrats.
After the Democrats’ 2024 election losses, Third Way argued that the party should reduce its dependence on small-dollar donors. In a five-page memo of “takeaways” from the election, Third Way asserted that small-dollar donors’ preferences “may not align with the broader electorate.”
The memo stopped short of naming alternative funding sources, but the implication was clear: Less grassroots support means more reliance on big checks from super PACs and wealthy donors, which is exactly what Third Way prefers.
The memo also included calls to curb “far-left influence,” adopt a “pro-capitalist” stance, and stop “demonizing wealth and corporations.”
***
So, please, disregard whatever you may hear from Third Way or any other so-called “leading Democratic centrist group.”
And pay no attention to headlines about “Democratic centrists preparing for war” against a “rising Left.”
Instead, focus on what’s really happening.
Voters want people in power who are going to fight for them, and not for the super-wealthy or big corporations and Wall Street.
This is especially true now — when the bottom 90 percent of Americans are struggling to pay the bills, a record portion of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of the richest one-tenth of one percent, big corporations and Wall Street have never been as powerful, Washington has been taken over by legalized bribery and corruption, and there’s no “center” between democracy and neofascism.
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Without the Working Class, There's Only So Much Progressives Can Win
Placing all of our chips on reforming the Democrats is a bad bet, even if we deem it a necessary one in the near future.
Aug 08, 2026
Yes, it should be possible this November to elect enough Democrats to stop MAGA and undo some of the damage Trump et al have done. But without the support of the working class the progressive wish list will remain just that—a series of unfulfilled wishes.
Despite big hopes and a likely small majority, we won’t see Medicare for All, an increase in the federal minimum wage, a green New Deal, job security for working people, labor law reform to facilitate unionization, a billionaire’s tax, elimination of big money from politics, the break-up of mega-corporations, and affordable housing for all, to name just a few.
None of these ambitious and popular reforms will pass as long as the blue-red margins remain narrow, ensuring that there are never enough votes to enact major reforms even if the Democrats control all three branches after the 2028 elections.
Ask any labor leader and they will tell you the sad and maddening 50-year story of failed attempts to level the labor-management playing field, despite Democratic tri-fectas during Obama and Biden. And because of these slim margins one of the biggest recent Democratic victories, Obamacare, is a Rube Goldberg-like contraption relying on corporate subsidies, massive costs, and spotty coverage that has failed to deliver universal and affordable health care.
Bad stuff can be stopped and maybe some of the worst MAGA policies reversed, but there won’t be a progressive majority to win the big stuff even if the Democrats win the House, the Senate and the presidency in 2028.
So, instead of pushing toward a more just economy, we sail in the opposite direction and are increasingly dominated by what Bernie derides as the billionaire class.
We just assume these days that razor-thin blue-red margins are a fact of life, the result of increasing political polarization, money in politics, gerrymandering, and misinformation, etc. But not so long ago there were times, under FDR and LBJ, when progressive political majorities were massive. That’s when the Democratic Party included and could count on most working-class voters (roughly defined as those without college degrees). That is no longer the case.
The numbers are stark, especially among white working people.
- In 1976, Jimmy Carter received 53 percent of the white working-class vote. In 2024, only 33 percent voted for Kamala Harris.
- In a working-class county in the heart of coal country in West Virginia, like Mingo County with its fierce union tradition, Bill Clinton received 70 percent of the vote in 1996. After 3,000 of the county’s 3,300 coal jobs disappeared, Harris got a miniscule 12 percent in 2024.
If a sizable majority of those voters returned to the Democrats’ fold, one could imagine enough votes to enact major economic reforms. Could that happen?
How do Democrats win the working class back?
My comrades at the Center for Working Class Politics have spent years showing that working-class candidates, especially with union backgrounds running on a strong progressive economic program, can win in contested districts. Their arguments are persuasive. But the current handful of successes leave most of the working-class swimming on their own in red America, where the Democratic Party is dead and gone.
For example, of the roughly 1,211 state legislative seats in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, the Democrats don’t even run candidates in 40 percent of them.
The Democratic Party needs to be reformed dramatically if it is to adopt CWCP’s strategy. But we have just learned from the missing chapter in the Democratic Party’s autopsy report, released this week by its author, that the party’s functionaries have become “generationally wealthy off politics.” Sponging off the status quo, whether they win or lose, the party’s ecosystem of pollsters, consultants, ad agencies, and such has grown fat, rich, and happy. This is not a political culture open to radical reform.
DSA to the rescue?
The Democratic Socialists of America, arguably the most vibrant political organization in America today (though the bar isn’t high), have attempted to reform the Democrats by knocking off establishment Democrats in primaries and replacing them with DSA-backed candidates. They have succeeded this year in heavily Democratic urban areas, such as New York City, but will now be tested in Michigan, where Dr. Abdul El-Sayed gained a narrow victory in the Democratic Senate primary this past Tuesday. Similarly, Francesca Hong, another DSA candidate, is the favorite to win the upcoming Wisconsin gubernatorial Democratic primary in another state won in 2024 by Donald Trump. Can El-Sayed, not a DSA member but a very progressive candidate, and Hong win in purple states?
Ironically, DSA members and the establishment Democrats generally come from the same class – the class of the college educated. El-Sayed reportedly ran “strongest in communities with young voters, college students and educated and wealthy white voters.”
DSA claims to be speaking on behalf of the working class, but according to its own 2021 survey, only four percent of its members are blue-collar workers, and another six percent work in retail, food service, or similar occupations. Roughly 40 percent are teachers, academics, white-collar professionals, tech workers, or students. Of those 25 years old and older, more than 80 percent have bachelor’s degrees, compared to only 39 percent nationally.
Working people did not disappear from the much redder parts of the Midwest and the Great Plains when their jobs moved to Mexico and China, but the Democrats did.
More importantly, what they put forth as their program did not grow out of a dialogue with non-college working-class folks or even union leaders. If they had had those discussions they would have learned that many of their positions, like abolishing “the police and prison system which protects the rich and jails the poor,” would be opposed by the working people they say they champion.
We will learn more this fall about how DSA candidates adapt and fare with working people in red areas. But as DSA is now structured, it is unlikely to recruit many people without college degrees.
The path to a progressive majority?
Clearly, it is essential that the Democrats win back enough working-class voters to disrupt the MAGA onslaught. Let’s hope and pray they do. But unless huge numbers of Trump voters stay home for the midterms, and the working class breaks heavily for the Democrats, the margin of victory is not likely to be nearly enough to produce the political majorities necessary to rework the economic order.
Bad stuff can be stopped and maybe some of the worst MAGA policies reversed, but there won’t be a progressive majority to win the big stuff even if the Democrats win the House, the Senate and the presidency in 2028.
The Democratic Party brand is just too tarnished among working people for them to readily join in significant numbers. Sure, go ahead and run more union candidates, and let’s see if the DSA can overturn the Democratic Party’s establishment and even spread into the working class. But it would be wise to have Plan B—a parallel, not substitute, strategy.
An Independent Workers Party of Their Own in Red America
Working people did not disappear from the much redder parts of the Midwest and the Great Plains when their jobs moved to Mexico and China, but the Democrats did. In red America there is no spoiler problem because in hundreds of state races and congressional districts the Democrats have abandoned ship. That has left an enormous vacuum and few political choices for working people. We can now see a very few working-class candidates trying to fill the void, but there is no organization that ties them together.
A new political organization of working people should be constructed where working people can gather and speak in their own voices about what they want to see changed in America—an organization that recaptures the voice and power they once had in the region.
Building that formation will be difficult, but maybe not as difficult as taking over the Democratic Party. For starters, it will require an anchor tenant, a large union or state labor federation, that realizes that most of its members have given up on the Democrats and want something new. So far there have been no takers, though clearly some labor leaders, like the UAW’s Shawn Fain, share at least some of our analysis of what’s necessary.
But that will change, I believe, as union leaders come to the recognition that they can no longer sell the Dems to their own members. And if one or two unions or state labor federations set up a new independent operation in red America, I think they will be pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm it generates. Our polling suggests that working people just might come running.
If this organization takes off, it becomes much easier to imagine working-class political alliances with enough power to secure substantive economic change. Something working people are sure to need soon as AI and the billionaires take a wrecking ball to what’s left of their livelihoods.
Someone, somewhere, sometime must build something new so that working people can develop their own political voice, just as the Populists did 150 years ago.
Is this the only solution to our problems? Maybe not. I’m wide open to other strategies. I just haven’t heard any that don’t start and stop with reforming the Democrats, whose elites are not about to give up their power and access to riches.
And I don’t see how DSA gets deep enough into red America as long as it’s an organization of college grads talking to themselves about what’s best for the working-class. Even if El-Sayed and Hong win in the general election this year, the wealthy party fuctionairies will still be in power.
By all means, go for it. But someone, somewhere, sometime must build something new so that working people can develop their own political voice, just as the Populists did 150 years ago.
Am I howling in the wind? Maybe. I guess that’s what I do. My contribution is to get you to square up to the problem: We need a serious strategy that leads to serious progressive change.
Placing all of our chips on reforming the Dems is a bad bet, even if we deem it a necessary one in the near future. At the very least, I think, that bet needs to be hedged by building a new independent political organization of working people in red America, an organization that’s responsive to and expressive of their political needs. That’s far better than abandoning working-class families to the next round of Republican charlatans.
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How Israel and Its Lobby Allied With Trump and Damaged the Democratic Party
Pro-Israel PACs finance Republicans, import Republican donor money into Democratic primaries, punish dissenting Democrats, divide the Democratic coalition, and bind Democratic leaders to policies that damage the party’s moral credibility and electoral prospects.
Aug 08, 2026
There are plenty of principled, humanitarian reasons for opposing US support for Israel’s current government. Multiple human right groups, United Nations bodies, international courts, Israeli politicians, and genocide organizations have accused Israel of engaging in war crimes, including genocide, in Gaza and the West Bank. The invasions of Lebanon and Iran are likewise criminal humanitarian disasters.
There are also practical foreign policy reasons for opposing the influence of Israel and the Israel lobby. Jeffrey Sachs and Sybil Fares argue convincingly, in "Stop Netanyahu Before He Gets Us All Killed," that Israel encouraged most of the US foreign policy disasters in the Middle East and Africa:
In 1996, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his American advisors devised a “Clean Break” strategy. They advocated that Israel would not withdraw from the Palestinian lands captured in the 1967 war in exchange for regional peace. Instead, Israel would reshape the Middle East to its liking. Crucially, the strategy envisioned the US as the main force to achieve these aims—waging wars in the region to dismantle governments opposed to Israel’s dominance over Palestine. The US was called upon to fight wars on Israel’s behalf.
The Clean Break strategy was effectively carried out by the US and Israel after 9/11. As NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark revealed, soon after 9/11, the US planned to “attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years—starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.”
The US followed through with military actions against all those countries, which now lie in ruins, except for Iran, which Israel and the US are in the process of destroying. As Sachs and Fares wrote, “Netanyahu was a cheerleader of these wars of choice–either in public or behind the scenes–together with his neocon allies in the US.”
Israel has corrupted US foreign policy, causing the country to fight unnecessary wars and create unnecessary enemies.
Aside from the humanitarian and foreign policy reasons for opposing the influence of Israel and the Israel lobby on American politics, there are also political reasons. Foremost among them is that Israel and the Israel lobby have repeatedly lent their substantial financial and political influence toward helping elect Republicans, including President Donald Trump, and toward electing Democrats disliked by many Democratic voters.
Multiple US presidents, including Presidents Harry S. Truman, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, made efforts to break away from staunchly pro-Israel policies but eventually succumbed to pressure from pro-Israel lobbyists threatening them with electoral opposition.
During the Republican primary debates in 2016, Trump criticized the invasion of Iraq and said that US policy in the Middle East needed more balance: more support for Palestinian rights. But during the general election campaign, Trump had a meeting with Sharon and Miriam Adelson, who promised to help fund his campaign (source). From that point on, Trump has been staunchly pro-Israel.
Sheldon and Miriam Adelson donated approximately $100 million to pro-Trump super PACs during the 2020 election cycle.
You could call this a representation deficit: Democratic politicians become more responsive to a donor network than to Democratic voters.
The New York Times reported in 2021 that the Adelsons’ contributions to GOP campaigns and organizations had totaled around half a billion dollars since 2010.
In 2024 Miriam Adelson donated $100 million to help elect Trump and spent a further $500 million on other Republican causes. According to OpenSecrets, from 2023 to 2024, pro-Israel PACs gave $5.4 million to candidates, almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. The Republican Jewish Coalition spent over $14 million supporting Trump since 2020. The New Republic says that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent $45 million in the 2024 elections.
In 2024, Trump ran as the peace candidate, promising to stop the war in Gaza. Kamala Harris’ support for Israel was a significant cause of her election loss (source, source).
Polls (this and this) have shown that among Democratic voters, support for Israel has plummeted. In April 2026, Pew found that 80% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents viewed Israel unfavorably, up from 69% in 2025 and 53% in 2022. Gallup found in July 2025 that only 8% of Democrats approved of Israel’s military action in Gaza. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released August 4, 2026 found that only 16% of Democrats supported continuing military and economic aid to Israel, while more than 80% of liberal Democrats considered reducing aid important or essential.
The victories of socialist and pro-Palestinian candidates (e.g., Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate primary) during the 2026 primaries—despite tens of millions of dollars spent by the Israel lobby to defeat them—further illustrate the fact that the Democratic base is rejecting mainstream Democrats who support Israel.
Of course, AIPAC does not represent the views of all American Jews. Roughly 7 in 10 Jewish respondents in a March 2026 survey identified as Democrats, and younger Jewish voters have become significantly more critical of unconditional aid.
The Democratic Party’s congressional leadership has continued defending a position overwhelmingly rejected by its own voters. That creates several electoral injuries:
- Young voters conclude that Democratic leaders do not represent them.
- Arab American and Muslim voters feel deliberately disregarded.
- Anti-war progressives see the party as morally compromised.
- Other voters see wealthy donors overriding public opinion.
- Republicans can run as outsiders or supposed “peace candidates,” however dishonestly.
You could call this a representation deficit: Democratic politicians become more responsive to a donor network than to Democratic voters.
In 2024, the Israel lobby helped unseat Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY). Republican-aligned billionaires should not be able to determine which candidates Democrats are permitted to nominate. In 2026 the Israel lobby helped unseat Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.), one of Trump’s biggest Republican critics.
Though the Israel lobby gives to Democratic candidates too, its political strategy is not simply bipartisan support for Israel. Its effect is asymmetrical: It helps Republicans win national power while policing the Democratic Party from within. It supports Republicans directly, then spends heavily in Democratic primaries to defeat candidates who challenge Republican-backed Israeli policies. Democrats therefore bear the electoral cost of unpopular policies while Republican candidates receive both financial support and an issue with which to divide the Democratic coalition.
In short, powerful pro-Israel organizations are harming the Democratic Party. This is not because support for Israel is inherently Republican, and not because Jewish voters are disloyal Democrats—many Democrats strongly oppose Israel’s policies—but because these organizations increasingly enforce a Republican-aligned foreign policy inside a Democratic electorate that rejects it. They finance Republicans, import Republican donor money into Democratic primaries, punish dissenting Democrats, divide the Democratic coalition, and bind Democratic leaders to policies that damage the party’s moral credibility and electoral prospects.
Democratic Party leaders and activists should stop allowing a pro-Republican, pro-war lobby to distort its policies and chooseits candidates.
The Israel lobby, for its own sake, should think hard about whether it wants to support a quasi-fascist movement. For more on this, see "Supporters of Israel Will Eventually Regret That They Allied With Fascist Trump."
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Michigan Just Put Medicare for All on the Ballot, and Voters Said Yes
In the Michigan Democratic Senate primary, Abdul El-Sayed put guaranteed healthcare at the center of a statewide campaign and let voters decide. They decided.
Aug 08, 2026
You won’t find “Medicare for All” printed on any Michigan ballot from Tuesday’s primary. What you’ll find is a name: Abdul El-Sayed, the Ann Arbor physician who literally wrote the book on single-payer healthcare and then built his Senate campaign around it.
El-Sayed co-authored Medicare for All: A Citizen’s Guide, with a foreword from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), laying out how the country could guarantee healthcare as a right instead of rationing it by income. He wasn’t a candidate who discovered Medicare for All in a focus group. He ran because of it, and Tuesday night he routed the Democratic establishment’s chosen candidate, Haley Stevens. That’s as close to a referendum on single-payer healthcare as American politics gets, and voters delivered a verdict.
El-Sayed didn’t soften his message for the donor class. He paired “Medicare for All” with a blunt indictment of a country rich enough to end medical bankruptcy but too captured by insurance money to bother. Voters in Washtenaw and Kent counties answered.
What makes this remarkable is who El-Sayed beat and how. Stevens had every advantage institutional Democratic politics can hand a candidate: Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) early backing, a late endorsement from Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and roughly $30 million from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliates, the largest single-race investment in that organization’s history. This was one of the most expensive Democratic primaries ever run, a fire hose of establishment cash aimed at burying a single-payer candidate. It wasn’t enough. Voters weren’t buying what millions in outside spending were selling.
As a practicing physician assistant who has spent years advocating for Medicare for All and working in electoral politics, I've heard the same warning over and over: Don't run on single-payer. Michigan suggests that conventional wisdom deserves another look.
That should terrify the consultant class that has spent a decade telling Democrats Medicare for All is political poison in a state like Michigan, that it scares away suburban moderates. El-Sayed’s night says otherwise: an unapologetic healthcare message is exactly what turns out voters a low-turnout August primary usually leaves behind. Reporting pointed to a young, energized base and a ground game that outperformed expectations where turnout can’t be bought with television ads.
The country is catching up to what El-Sayed put in writing years ago. Over 85 million working-age Americans are uninsured or underinsured, per Commonwealth Fund research, shut out of the system or paying premiums that still leave them exposed the moment they get sick. Millions are one diagnosis away from medical debt they’ll spend a decade paying off. Public patience with an industry that profits by denying claims has curdled into open contempt, visible in viral outrage over coverage denials and a for-profit sector that ranks among the least trusted in America. Strip away the euphemisms, and the arithmetic is obscene. Insurers post billions in profit by finding reasons to say no to sick people, skimming a cut off human suffering as a business model. The United States is the only wealthy industrialized democracy that treats healthcare as a product to be underwritten, means tested, and denied rather than a right owed to its citizens. El-Sayed didn’t invent that anger, and he didn’t just write a book about it. He built a winning campaign on the promise that Democrats don’t have to keep managing that anger on behalf of the industry that causes it.
There’s symbolic weight here too. El-Sayed lost a bruising primary for governor in 2018, written off as unelectable in a state supposedly too uneasy about a candidate named Abdul. Eight years later, running on the same conviction that no one should go bankrupt getting cancer treatment, he built a coalition big enough to beat back one of the most heavily financed efforts to defeat a progressive candidate in recent Democratic primary history. That’s proof of where the Democratic base stands on healthcare, no matter what the party’s risk-averse, industry-funded strategists have told candidates for two decades.
As a practicing physician assistant who has spent years advocating for Medicare for All and working in electoral politics, I've heard the same warning over and over: Don't run on single-payer. Michigan suggests that conventional wisdom deserves another look.
Michigan shows the old fear, that Medicare for All is too risky to run on out loud, was always a story told by people who never tried telling voters the truth about their premiums. Michigan is a battleground state, not a safely progressive one, and El-Sayed won by refusing to hide the ball. He put guaranteed healthcare at the center of a statewide campaign and let voters decide. They decided. That’s not a fluke. It’s a preview of what happens when a candidate treats single-payer healthcare like the popular, morally obvious policy it has always been. AIPAC and the insurance lobby’s allies spent a fortune trying to prove otherwise and lost.
Party insiders will insist this was about mechanics, not Medicare for All. They said the same after every progressive upset this cycle, right up until they had to explain the next one. For one night, the closest thing Michigan had to a ballot question on national healthcare got its answer, and it wasn’t close.
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Author of DNC Autopsy Found Gaza Policy Hurt Harris in 2024—But Never Submitted Finding to Party Leadership
"This is all strange in ways that either suggest dishonesty or stupidity," said one critic.
Aug 07, 2026
When the Democratic National Committee at long last released its "autopsy" report on former Vice President Kamala Harris' loss in the 2024 election in May, one of the most puzzling aspects was the lack of any conclusions related to her and former President Joe Biden's support for Israel's genocide in Gaza.
Holly Otterbein of Axios reported on Thursday that the document's author, Paul Rivera, did indeed look into the issue of Gaza and found it had a role in Harris’ loss. But he did not submit the findings to the DNC for inclusion in the report. Axios did not include an explanation for that decision.
Rivera confirmed Axios’ reporting from back in February that the conclusions had been shared with the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project, a pro-Palestinian think tank, which told the DNC that Harris’ failure to break from Biden’s policy on Israel's US-backed assault on Gaza proved a liability with progressive voters, especially in Michigan.
This news led to speculation that DNC chair Ken Martin, who had resisted calls to release the autopsy in full, was doing so to avoid publicizing findings that portrayed Israel as an albatross around the party's neck.
Rivera alleged earlier this week that Martin and top DNC brass withheld other portions of his report from public view, including a chapter criticizing the party's overreliance on “self-enriching” consultants and party operatives out of touch with voters. Rivera claims to have handed Martin a three-ring binder containing the report, but Martin denies that this occurred.
Rivera, who was fired from his advisory role at the DNC following widespread public backlash to the release of the autopsy, has since published his own 564-page report on the 2024 election, which includes several pages examining the role of Gaza.
As of Election Day 2024, more than 43,000 Palestinians had been killed, including at least 13,300 identified children, according to figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health, and protests had swept the nation demanding that Biden cut off military aid to Israel.
While Rivera's report does not conclude that Gaza alone cost Harris the election, it found that it had a clear role in alienating voters who would have otherwise supported Harris.
It found that in Michigan, one of the key swing states that handed victory to Trump, the losses in heavily Arab and Middle Eastern communities like West Bloomfield, Sterling Heights, Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, and Hamtramck, were significant.
In these communities, Harris received 30,850 fewer votes in 2024 than Biden did in 2020, while Trump gained 14,874, a swing accounting for nearly 20% of the 234,291-vote shift that handed President Donald Trump the state.
Rivera noted that the Uncommitted Movement, which garnered more than 700,000 votes nationally in the 2024 primary, originated in Dearborn, where Harris lost nearly a third of the support Biden had received in 2020. In nearby Hamtramck, her support tanked by 39% from Biden's in 2020.
Notably, many of these voters did not flock to Trump, but to Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who received more than 12,000 votes across Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, and Hamtramck.
"The political analysis is simple," Rivera wrote. "The electoral results and voting shifts in Michigan and elsewhere demonstrate the impact the crisis had on the Harris campaign."
He concluded that the issue could not simply be boiled down to "messaging" but to concrete policy.
“For many voters whose family members were displaced, subject to violence, or killed, the inability of the administration to effectively intervene was unacceptable,” he wrote. “In 2024, absent a real end to military action and restoration of civilian control in Gaza, many voters in Michigan and elsewhere would not be satisfied.”
Asked by Common Dreams to elaborate on why he did not provide these findings to the DNC, Rivera did not immediately respond to a request sent through his website’s press contact.
Zeeshan Aleem, a political columnist at MSNOW was puzzled by the decision by Rivera not to provide the Gaza findings to the DNC.
"This is all strange in ways that either suggest dishonesty or stupidity," he said. "The author of the DNC report said he did conclude that Gaza hurt Kamala, but didn’t include that finding in the report he submitted to the DNC. Why?"
The opacity and conflicting narratives surrounding the autopsy's release continue to befuddle critics and onlookers.
Dave Weigel, a political reporter at Semafor, described the idea that Gaza cost Harris votes as "a water-is-wet finding guarded like the Ark of the Covenant."
"Martin could have just admitted that, yes, this issue that got Harris protested everywhere and helped Trump win Michigan hurt the campaign," he said. "Instead, it became a secret that Holly pried loose and generated an extra year of negative stories."
The exclusion of Gaza from the official report released in May became ammunition for some commentators seeking to downplay the idea that Democrats' support for Israel is an electoral liability or to accuse the IMEU Policy Project of spinning a false narrative.
Responding to the release of Rivera's report, media critic Adam Johnson mocked those who framed it as a "conspiracy theory."
"What’s so important to understand is that anyone denying Gaza harmed Harris’ chances is a rank propagandist. Nobody believes this in good faith," he said. "Obviously it did. We can debate the degree of harm it had, but clearly it was significant and had many downstream deflating effects."
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Democrats’ Affordability Message Misses a Key Expense—Student Debt
The largest bill increase any single person may get this year is a student loan bill, so why have Dems left it out of their messaging?
Aug 07, 2026
With just 100 days left until the midterms, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared on CNN to deliver Democrats’ closing message. “Life in this country is far too expensive,” said Jeffries, rolling out a new "Fighting for an Affordable America" tagline. Americans do not have “enough food on the table, not enough gas in the tank,” and they’re “unable to actually regularly and consistently afford to pay the rent or pay the mortgage.” Jeffries blamed President Donald Trump’s costly war of choice in Iran, tariffs that have cost everyday Americans thousands of dollars per year, and the largest cut to Medicaid in American history.
Later that afternoon, in a steel workers union hall in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Jeffries joined Gov. Josh Shapiro at a joint campaign event for Bob Brooks, a LeHigh Valley firefighter running for Congress in Pennsylvania’s seventh Congressional District. Together, the three Democrats pointed to both the corruption plaguing our national politics and the high financial cost Americans have been forced to bear since Trump took office as causes of the affordability crisis. They implored voters in the “swingiest swing state in the country” to shift the tides of Washington, DC by voting against Republicans’ cost-raising policies and for Democrats’ cost-lowering solutions in November.
Democrats are right to highlight the impacts of giant cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, along with the rising cost of gas and utilities fueled by wars abroad and billionaire-backed corruption schemes at home. Uniting a broad electorate around an “affordability” agenda, akin to the messaging and policy success of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, will bode well for Democrats around the nation going into an intense midterm election where the winds of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s terror, mobilization against AI data centers, and widespread opposition to war is at the left’s back.
But mysteriously missing from Democrats' messaging about costs that have gone up as a result of Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a key expense that 40 million Americans are battling in the shadows—student loans. For many student debtors, the increase in their monthly student loan bill will be their largest bill increase of the year by a significant margin. This leaves a massive hole in Democrats’ messaging cadence that must be filled immediately. A successful affordability message requires engaging with the true reality of Americans’ purses, and holds a mirror to the specific financial burdens that working people lose sleep over each night.
A willingness to ignore such a massive systemic cost increase reveals that Democrats, at least in this moment, are not taking their own "affordability" messaging seriously—posing grave electoral problems.
Take a typical student debtor in a family of four who earns a median US household income of $81,000. Under former President Joe Biden’s SAVE plan, their monthly student debt payment was $36. Under Trump’s Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) plan, that payment would increase to $440—well over 1,000% more than under SAVE. In an internal Debt Collective survey of more than 1,500 student debtors on the SAVE plan, 50% of student debtors reported an average expected payment increase of $500 a month—just a few bucks shy of the average monthly payment for a newly used car. Yet despite this grave expense, of which Trump and his Republican allies are solely to blame, student loan bill increases have seldom made it to Democrats’ November stump speeches. Except for a few sparing moments of attention—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has used his platform to showcase the absurdity of rising student debt for seniors—student loan bills have largely fallen off the radar for congressional Democrats. But for the millions on the receiving end of the Department of Education’s confusing and frightening emails, student loans dominate workers’ ability to make financial decisions.
Massive errors have rendered the student debt system dysfunctional at an unprecedented level. Millions of debtors have payments gone uncounted by their servicer, inaccurate balances, are awaiting cancellation for relief programs they’ve been eligible for, or are in limbo to simply enroll in a repayment plan that works for them. Weeks ago, Secretary Linda McMahon’s Department of Education admitted to a massive glitch in which thousands of student debtors were wrongfully told their monthly payment would be $50 a month, only to find out weeks later that the plan they’re now stuck in requires a monthly payment hundreds of dollars more. In recent days, debtors serviced by MOHELA were wrongfully sent delinquency notices asserting that they owed back-payments for the months in which courts have legally paused their payments. Separate ongoing litigation moving its way through a DC district court has called out a “shadow repeal” of the REPAYE plan, asserting that the Trump administration's refusal to allow student debtors to enroll in a repayment plan that may be their best option is illegal. Today, no member of Congress has called on the Trump administration to reopen the plan.
Worse than remaining quiet on student debt, some Democrats have seemingly regressed on the issue. In July, a dangerous student debt bill that would exempt—yes, exempt—state-based lenders from transparency laws passed in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. If the vote advances further, the new law of the land could give schools a financial incentive to push predatory loan products onto desperate students seeking to use private loans to pay for school. Nine out of 11 Democrats sided with Republicans on this measure, ensuring bipartisan support for deepening the student debt crisis and worsening the lending system.
Democrats' silence on the rising costs of student debt will fall flat with voters in November, many of whom are already dejected from the Biden administration’s botched attempt to cancel student debt broadly and the Supreme Court’s decision to side against debtors. A willingness to ignore such a massive systemic cost increase reveals that Democrats, at least in this moment, are not taking their own "affordability" messaging seriously—posing grave electoral problems.
The Debt Collective—the nation’s first union of debtors whom I organize with—is calling on Congressional Democrats to step up to the plate. At this moment, Democrats could call for an immediate pause on student debt payments—which Trump was the first to administer through executive authority in 2020—amid significant administrative errors, a costly rise in payments amid a worsening economy, and ongoing litigation. Without mentioning the one monthly bill that, for millions of Americans, rivals their mortgage, the blue wave Democrats will need to take back the House may resemble something more like a small splash.
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Forced Out of DNC for Criticizing Party Leaders, David Hogg Speaks Out: 'I Wasn't Wrong'
As progressives notch win after win in Democratic primaries, the 26-year-old activist said it shows that the party "didn’t lose Gen Z; they just needed candidates to vote for."
Aug 06, 2026
Just over a year ago, David Hogg, then the newly-minted vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, found himself unceremoniously pushed out after he called on the party to back primary challengers to unseat members of a moribund establishment.
Now, as progressives notch victory after victory against the party's conservative old guard and are once again galvanizing young voters thought to have been lost, the 26-year-old reformer says it proves he was right all along.
"A year ago, I was removed from my position as vice chair of the DNC for daring to suggest that we needed to challenge geriatric, corrupt, and asleep-at-the-wheel Democrats in safe blue seats," Hogg wrote in an op-ed for Zeteo on Thursday. "The establishment kicked me out for those 'radical' views, and the establishment is losing."
His missive came days after yet another triumph for the left in Michigan, where the progressive Dr. Abdul El-Sayed overcame more than $60 million in outside spending in the Senate primary, more than half of which came from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), to upset a candidate backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and other leading figures in the party establishment.
Hogg—a survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting who co-founded the gun control advocacy group March for Our Lives— noted El-Sayed's victory as one of the latest in a "hot streak" for the organization he formed in 2023 and has continued to lead after being forced out of the DNC.
The group, known as Leaders We Deserve, is predominantly funded by small-dollar donors and has boosted young progressives to challenge the party status quo, running on policies like Medicare for All, increased taxes on the rich, expanding public services, and an end to aggressive foreign interventions and military funding for Israel.
The group was a major outside supporter of a super PAC that helped fuel democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani's unexpected ascent in New York City last year.
It has also backed a number of progressive challengers who've gone on to defeat well-funded, establishment-backed candidates this cycle, including community activist Donavan McKinney in Michigan, labor organizer Claire Valdez in New York, and professor Randy Villegas in California, who've each claimed Democratic nominations for the US House.
Hogg wrote that state-level candidates backed by his organization have an 18-1 record in their races this cycle.
He argued that the success of these candidates served as a counterpoint to the conventional wisdom following the party's losses in 2024, that Democrats needed to chase young voters to the right after they opted in unexpectedly huge numbers for President Donald Trump.
"As we saw in Mamdani’s race, and in races with progressive candidates across the country," Hogg said, "young voters are turning out in record numbers, proving that we didn’t lose Gen Z; they just needed candidates to vote for."
And contrary to the establishment's fearmongering about "electability," Hogg said the left's recent wins show that "progressives aren’t just electable; they’re a dominant force."
"Voters see clearly that many of our politicians are serving their largest corporate donors instead of the working class. Younger voters cannot fathom voting for a status quo that has never served them," he said. "It turns out that a focused affordability message, moral clarity, and a commitment to not being bought motivates voters across the political spectrum."
"A year ago, cable news pundit panels, elected officials, campaign strategists, and the entire establishment told me I was crazy for daring to challenge our party to do better," Hogg said. "Today, I say: I wasn’t wrong; I was just early."
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Corporate-Funded Third Way Plans to Spend $15 Million Waging 'War' on Progressives
"Instead of going to war against the left, why not attract votes by going to war against insurance companies gouging patients, against employers busting unions, or against polluters?" said one critic.
Aug 06, 2026
Abdul El-Sayed's victory in the Democratic US Senate primary in Michigan this week was just the latest example of an insurgent progressive challenger defeating candidates backed by the Democratic establishment.
The establishment, however, is vowing to not go down without a fight.
In an interview with The New York Times published Thursday, Jonathan Cowan, the president of the corporate-funded group Third Way, revealed plans for a $15 million campaign to counter the influence of organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which he described as a "mortal danger" to the Democratic Party.
"We are preparing for the next war that is coming," said Cowan, who added that "it is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potentially presidential swing states."
The Times report noted, however, that big moneyed interests, most notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), spent tens of millions of dollars attacking El-Sayed, who nonetheless emerged triumphant in the race.
Some critics fired back at Third Way, noting that the group only appeared interested in attacking progressives rather than promoting a positive agenda to improve people's lives.
Maurice Mitchell, the director of the Working Families Party, told the Times that groups such as Third Way are "missing a point of view" and are not seeing the "populist insurgency taking place in this country."
Mitchell was far from alone in criticizing the group's plans.
Jon Favreau, co-host of Pod Save America, remarked in a social media post that Third Way's $15 million investment would be better spent "building a movement and coming up with a vision that actually excites voters."
Favreau's comments were echoed by journalist Nathan Newman.
"Have moderates thought about presenting compelling policies more appealing to voters?" Newman asked. "Instead of going to war against the left, why not attract votes by going to war against insurance companies gouging patients, against employers busting unions, or against polluters?"
Even some critics more in line with Third Way's politics expressed skepticism of its proposed campaign.
Derek Thompson, co-author of Abundance, a book that critiqued progressive governance, argued that Third Way's efforts would only reinforce progressives' narratives about big moneyed interests trying to squash a grassroots rebellion against the status quo.
"People should do what they want with their money but moderate Democrats' deficits relate to candidates, messaging, organizing, and enthusiasm... not money," said Thompson. "Plus, I hope people see the risk in a headline about moderates raising millions of dollars to attack a popular left insurgency that attracts support in part... by representing themselves as a bulwark against moneyed interests."
New York University School of Law professor Chris Sprigman was similarly dismissive of the Third Way campaign, predicting that "centrists [are] likely to be no more effective against their own democratic left than they’ve been against the authoritarian right."
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, argued that Third Way and other neoliberal organizations needed to look in the mirror when it comes to placing blame for the current state of US politics.
"The reason we are in this mess is because the biggest risk we face is market fundamentalism," Owens wrote. "That's what broke the country and voters know it. That's why they are turning against Third Way corporate Dem-style candidates. That’s the thing to fix."
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Khanna Introduces 'Data Center Bill of Rights' For Communities Seeking to Oppose Them
The congressman from Silicon Valley said his resolution aims to give communities "the right to oppose data centers instead of having them shoved down their throats by state governments."
Aug 06, 2026
The congressman from Silicon Valley, Rep. Ro Khanna, is introducing one of the first comprehensive federal frameworks to give seething communities the right to fight back against Big Tech and its breakneck expansion of artificial intelligence data centers.
Khanna (D-Calif.), who announced the plan on Thursday, referred to it as a "Data Center Bill of Rights" and said it will aim to give communities "the right to oppose data centers instead of having them shoved down their throats by state governments."
Opposition to data centers has become a central plank in some progressive campaigns that have seen success in recent months, most recently the Democratic primary victories of Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and House candidate William Lawrence in Michigan.
They and other candidates have called for moratoriums on the construction of these facilities, which have come with soaring utility costs, dwindling water supplies, and pollution.
A nonbinding resolution introduced by Khanna earlier this week emphasized that developers have often made deals with state and local governments under a shroud of secrecy, with nondisclosure agreements that hide information about the ownership and potential costs of data centers until it's too late for the public to fight back.
Among other provisions, the resolution calls for Congress to give communities the right to:
- Ban the construction of data centers within 2,500 feet of homes, schools, childcare facilities, hospitals, or nursing homes;
- Reject any proposed data center through a transparent community process;
- Prohibit or regulate data centers without being overridden by the state government;
- Receive independent assessments on a center’s electricity and water demands, pollution dangers, and potential effects on utility bills, rents, and housing availability;
- Demand that centers do not raise electricity rates for households and businesses; and
- Require that data center owners pay their fair share of taxes and that any exemptions come with strong labor standards and transparency.
Khanna's proposal comes as he says the developers seeking to hyperscale data center development are "losing the country."
A Gallup poll from May found that more than 7 in 10 Americans would either somewhat or strongly oppose the construction of a data center near them.
And while the Trump administration has pushed hard for rapid development, opposition is bipartisan. Three-quarters of Democrats say they don't want the facilities in their communities, but so do nearly two-thirds of Republicans.
Khanna's resolution is one of many legislative pushes by Democrats on Capitol Hill to regulate data centers, an issue on which they are eager to build credibility ahead of this November's midterms.
Also on Thursday, Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, proposed an excise tax on data centers and to stop them from benefiting from tax-advantaged "opportunity zones," which Republicans extended last year.
Other proposals have gone further than Khanna's. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced legislation earlier this year for a nationwide moratorium on new data centers until national safeguards can be put in place.
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