I went to “senior stretch” at the Methodist church this morning so I’m now officially a retiree. My friend Kyle winked at me when I sat down, like it’s a secret club.

Attended an organizing event for El-Sayed on debate night, which meant I missed the debate between El Sayed and Stevens, but I watched on You Tube later.

First, some bio on each candidate. Stevens is 43, divorced and currently in the US House. She flipped a red seat blue in 2018. El-Sayed is 41, married, with two daughters. He’s an MD – an epidemiologist - and was health director for the City of Detroit and then Wayne County health director.

DC endorsements are as follows – Stevens has Schumer, Stabenow, Cortez Mastro, Gallego, Coons, Pelosi and Lauren Underwood. El- Sayed has Sanders, AOC, Van Hollen, Rho Khanna, Rashida Talb, Pramila Jayapal, Summer Lee, Delia Ramirez, Anilia Mejia, Maxwell Frost and Chris Raab.

There are clear differences between these two candidates. El-Sayed supports Medicare for All. Stevens wants to “fix” Obamacare, add a public option and allow Medicare buy-in for 55- to 65-year-olds. El-Sayed believes ICE is fundamentally broken, a rogue Right wing federal police force that sucks up huge resources and provides very little value to the public. Stevens wants more oversight of ICE. El - Sayed wants to halt military aid to Israel (and Egypt, interesting because he is Egyptian) and Stevens wants to maintain current US policy re: Israel.

The debate was probably a draw. Stevens was quite strong, but so was El-Sayed. The debate questions from the moderators were surprisingly good – cost of living, health care, immigration, and data centers. Both candidates followed the debate rules on both time and talking in turn, which I appreciated. Both candidates seemed smart and well prepared. Sadly, the “questions from the public” portion was terrible, as it almost always is, it’s 90% “statement disguised as question” bullshit.

Stevens has an oddly immature presentation – almost girlish- which I think is a problem  but I wouldn’t know how to fix it without turning her into phony Margaret Thatcher. That’s always a problem for women to a greater or lesser extent – our voices and visual presentation are perceived as less authoritative than men’s voices – so I won’t hold it against her but if my experience as a lawyer is any guide, others will.

Worse than the presentation to me was a hesitancy to embrace her own moderate positions. She dodged the ICE question with “more oversight”, she dodged the military aid to Israel question with a single throwaway line about “humanitarian aid to Gaza” – I always love that crazy answer, btw. So the plan is to retain the blank check US funding for Israeli bombs and bulldozers but provide prosthetic limbs to the 4000 child amputees Israel and the US have created? It’s appalling and WTF does it even mean?

I see this hesitancy of moderates to support their own moderate positions as a chronic problem. I get that she’s running in a primary and the Democratic base will be voting, not the swingy middle or Right, but it’s disingenuous for moderates to insist they’re progressives when they’re just not. I also think it leads moderates to attack people further Left than them not on policy, but by using accusations on character – the challenger from the Left isn’t wrong on Medicare for all, he’s an antisemite, or racist, or a misogynist. In Stevens’ case, she’s not actually launching these smears against El- Sayed, but the various PACS who are supporting her are, so she can claim (as she did in the debate) to be running a positive campaign while distancing herself from the lobbyist attack dogs who are supporting her. Again, disingenuous. Just be an out and proud moderate and attack him on abolishing ICE or Medicare for All. Then you won’t need 5 PACs.

I realized about midway thru the debate that Stevens sounds exactly like any moderate Democrat in 2006, focused not on pushing for liberal ideas or values but instead on reducing the harm from Republican policy. I don’t think the harm reduction approach has worked for us, and worse, to me it means we aren’t confident and solid in our own liberal ideology. I think people pick that up and it reads as weakness, and it should. It IS weak. A Party that sees itself as existing to buffer GOP policy and preferences so fewer people get hurt is not a Party anyone will want to join.

Right now my sense is it’s a toss-up. Stevens is a strong candidate who has all the establishment support and much, much more money than El- Sayed. Stevens also has the disadvantage of being a woman in the most sexist country in the non-Muslim West and the disadvantage of supporting the status quo on Israel and Iran. El- Sayed has in laws who are well off and donating to him, he has the hugely popular AOC backing him, and he has positions that are quite popular with the base – ending military aid to Israel, getting out of Iran and Medicare for all. El -Sayed has the disadvantage of being a brown Muslim in the very Islamophobic US and supporting policy positions that are opposed by all US monied interests. I love a good fight,, so I’m all in on this one, win or lose. I’m volunteering for the campaign, and I have a lot more to add. I’ll keep you updated going forward.