Michigan Senate hopeful Dr. Abdul El-Sayed formally apologized to Jewish Democrats for weaving a jab at Israel in his response to an attack on a Michigan synagogue in March.
Page A2From§Eachthe midnight edition — 31 August 2026
Democrats tell socialists to leave the tent, then welcome back a controversial ally who just apologized.
As it ran on the front
Everybody's talking about the big tent this election cycle, and this week the tent got a little smaller and a little more forgiving, depending on who's standing at the flap. Rahm Emanuel told the socialists to go find their own patch of grass and pitch their own tent — 'run as a separate party,' he said, which is a polite way of saying the seat's not for you, the return on investment isn't there. Same stretch, Jim Clyburn stood up for a candidate who'd just apologized for comments lamenting a terrorist's family after the Michigan synagogue attack, and Clyburn's line was 'all of us deserve second chances.'
Now, I'm not against second chances. Everybody at this bar has needed one. What I notice is who gets offered the chance and who gets shown the door before they even ask for one. The socialists didn't do anything wrong by any count in the paper — they organized, they knocked on doors, they said the quiet part about Medicare for All out loud in public. For that, Emanuel drew a line and told them to go start their own party, like the Democratic tent is a country club with a waiting list and their application got denied on principle. Meanwhile a candidate who needed forgiveness, who'd already stepped in it publicly enough to require an apology, gets the institutional hug and the public defense from party leadership.…
…(cont) That's not hypocrisy exactly — hypocrisy would require the party pretending it runs on one standard. It doesn't pretend that hard. It runs on two: one for people who threaten the fundraising base, one for people who embarrass it but stay loyal to it. The socialists threaten the base because they ask where the money's going, who the donors are, why the checks clear the way they clear. The apologize-and-forgive candidate doesn't threaten anything structural — he just needed a statement and a news cycle to pass, and Clyburn gave him both.
Follow the logic all the way down and you land on the same answer you always land on at closing time: the tent isn't about ideas, it's about the invoice. Who pays in, who gets carried. Emanuel's not wrong that a coalition needs some discipline. He's just telling you, for free, exactly what kind of discipline it is — the kind that tolerates an apology a lot faster than it tolerates a critique of the checkbook. Keep that receipt. It comes up again the next time somebody at a podium tells you the party has room for everybody.
“Guy at the end of the bar knows a tent's got room for one more when the money's right. Rahm's showing the socialists the door because they keep asking hard questions about the checks, and Clyburn's holding it open for a guy who just apologized because that seat was already paid for. Don't let anybody tell you this is about principle — it's about who signs the fundraising email.”
“Look, purity tests kill campaigns, and Congressman Emanuel is just being a pragmatist about coalition math — not every voice needs a microphone in the tent. And the other fella, hey, everybody deserves a second chance, that's just basic decency — wait, did I just defend excluding people and including people in the same breath? That's not... let me circle back on that.”
The receipts
Former Obama adviser Rahm Emanuel said that he doesn’t view socialists as part of the Democratic Party, a rare pushback against attempts to establish a big-tent party that includes its left flank. In an appearance on Fox News Sunday…
Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) on Sunday said he supports Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D) after he apologized for comments he made following an attack on a Detroit-area synagogue earlier this year, with the South Carolina House…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.