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 A3From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 31 August 2026
Democratic leaders shut socialists out of the tent, grant a colleague second chances for mourning a terrorist's family.
As it ran on the front
Watch the hands, not the mouth. This week the Democratic Party's two most quotable figures managed, within days of each other, to draw the line in two completely opposite places, and if you squint you can see exactly what the line is actually measuring.
Rahm Emanuel tells the socialists, in so many words, to take their movement and start their own party — run separate, don't touch the tent, the tent is full. Meanwhile Jim Clyburn is on the record saying a colleague who publicly mourned the death of a terrorist's family, in the direct aftermath of a synagogue attack, deserves a second chance, because 'all of us deserve second chances.' Both statements come from leadership. Both statements land this week. Neither one is describing the same kind of offense.…
…(cont) Here is the trick, and it is not a complicated one: 'second chances' is a resource, same as anything else in this town, and resources get allocated according to who is useful, not according to some consistent moral ledger somebody keeps in a drawer. A socialist primary challenger doesn't get a second chance because a second chance is a cost — it might actually change something. A sitting member who said something ugly gets one free, because forgiving him costs leadership nothing and keeps a vote in the column.
Nobody is hiding this. Emanuel said it into a microphone. Clyburn said it into a microphone. That should bother you more, not less — this isn't the sneaky version of the con, this is the version where nobody bothers to disguise it anymore because they've done the math on who's listening closely enough to mind.
You want to know how a party decides who's in and who's out? Don't listen to the platform. Watch who gets asked to apologize and who gets asked to leave. One of those is a door with a lock on it. The other one is a doormat.
And before anybody tells you this is just politics — sure, that's exactly the point. It's a business decision dressed up as a values statement, and the receipts are sitting right there in the transcript for anybody who wants to go read them. Nobody had to leak it. They said it themselves, twice, on two separate days, and moved on like the rest of us wouldn't notice the pattern.
“You can't offer the socialists a deal they can't refuse and hand a free pass to a guy who publicly mourned a terrorist's family in the same news cycle and call that principle — that's inventory management, deciding who's a liability and who's forgiven. Follow the noise: the tent's plenty big for anybody with a war chest, small for anybody asking where the money's going.”
“This is exactly the identity-politics mess we've been saying for years — Democrats can't decide who they even are, and it proves the whole coalition runs on grudges, not principle. Though, come to think of it, forgiving a colleague for what he said while drawing a hard line on primary challengers is actually just... party discipline. Did I just defend party discipline? That's not where I meant to land.”
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.