Examiner thanks Stevens for the betrayal her own party is still condemning.

…(cont) And late that same Sunday night — not a week later, the same night — she went on CNN and defended it. "This is just a weight off my shoulders," is the quote I have. "Abdul has been getting angrier and angrier." That's a Democratic congresswoman describing the departure from her own party's nominee as relief.

By Monday the Guardian was tracing the whole turn back through Israel, and one line in their piece stopped me: Stevens is the same person who once called Rogers "a rubber stamp for Donald Trump." That was her phrase, before Sunday. Monday also brought the label from the people she left — "a despicable betrayal," the Guardian quotes her own party as saying — and, in that same article, Donald Trump praising the switch. One endorsement. Two verdicts. Betrayal out of the lane she pulled out of. Praise out of the lane she pulled into.

El-Sayed won Tuesday anyway. Two days later she still hadn't moved — the Hill had her doubling down, the Examiner had her standing by Rogers. So the candidate she crossed over for lost the race, and the position held regardless.

Excuse me — before I put the page away. The item that came in this morning isn't about the endorsement at all. It's dated today, and the headline reads, "Thank you, Haley Stevens, for refusing to stay silent." It goes back to that same Sunday morning and fills in a detail the earlier pieces didn't carry: she'd been scheduled that morning to attend a Detroit church service with Abdul El-Sayed. Instead she walked into a different church, Perfecting Church, and sat down beside Mike Rogers. Two churches, one morning, two days before Michigan voted.

So here's what I've got on the page, in order. A congresswoman who told CNN the whole thing felt like a weight coming off. A party that called the same thing a despicable betrayal. A former opponent who called it praiseworthy.

I keep thinking about the toll plaza. Two lanes, two prices, same bridge, same car. A paper that's thanking her for being loud is the same paper that was already standing by the thing she was loud about, back on the first. Which lane does a thank-you note come from — the one that lost the race, or the one that didn't?