Derek Robertson is a news assistant for POLITICO Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @afternoondelete.

The left—particularly the new-school, say-it-loud-and-say-it-proud democratic socialist left inspired by Bernie Sanders’ 2016 primary run—has a tendency toward maximalism. And it’s only natural: The progressive project, as both its subscribers and Fox News scaremongers alike would tell you, is revolutionary, seeking to fundamentally remake the relationship Americans have with their government and that the government has with the economy. If you believe that world is possible, it follows that there must be millions across the country who are hungry for your message, passive non-voters who, once activated by a strong progressive voice, will sweep your tribunes into the halls of power.

That was the thinking going into Tuesday’s Democratic primary elections, with a fair amount of light and heat around one in particular: the gubernatorial primary in Michigan between Gretchen Whitmer, Abdul El-Sayed and Shri Thanedar. El-Sayed, a 33-year-old physician and first-time candidate vying to become America’s first Muslim governor, carried the endorsement of both Sanders and New York socialist wunderkind Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, earning a string of speculative features about the man a Guardian headline even referred to as “the new Obama.”


Unfortunately for his backers, Sayed went down in flames on Tuesday, failing to carry a single county in a nearly 22-point loss to Whitmer, an experienced former state Senate leader. But in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District, where the former Rep. John Conyers Jr. resigned the seat he’d held for more than a half-century after facing allegations of sexual misconduct, another Sanders-backed candidate scored a primary victory that might prove more ultimately instructive: Rashida Tlaib, a former state legislator who ran on a platform of “Medicare for All,” a $15 minimum wage and tuition-free college.

No Republican plans to oppose Tlaib in November. Her presumptive district includes Detroit, the state’s most populous city and the engine of its economy, and the seat she will almost certainly inherit carries a longstanding symbolic importance due to her predecessor’s civil rights leadership. It’s an impressive, prominent position Tlaib will assume, especially considering she will be the first Muslim woman ever to sit in Congress, and just the second Palestinian-American—after her fellow Michigander, Republican Rep. Justin Amash.

So why, then, the breathless hype cycle around Sayed’s quixotic campaign, when another true-blue progressive had a far greater chance to make her mark on the national stage?

For all their criticism of the Democratic Party establishment, the left’s fervor for doomed figures like Sayed and Maryland gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous echoes that party’s history. For years, Democrats have struggled with a top-down, executive-focused approach to electoral politics that has left them with their smallest representation in Congress since the Truman administration—and now, thanks to Donald Trump, no White House to protect them. Meanwhile, Republicans poured enormous resources into taking over governor’s mansions and state legislatures across the country, confining Democrats’ statewide power to a few coastal enclaves and the odd urban-dominated hub like Illinois.

Tlaib, on the other hand, represents the most logical path for the left to claim its seat at the table, both within the Democratic Party and in national politics: a candidate unabashed in her progressivism, politically skilled enough to implement it, and, most importantly, savvy enough to identify a constituency ready for her brand of unapologetic socialist politics. Tlaib is just as passionate as Sayed and Ocasio-Cortez, but far more poised and knowledgeable—and that makes her far readier to make her mark on Washington.



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When Conyers abandoned his seat in one of the safest blue districts in America, a universe of possibility unfolded where once was a thoroughly ossified status quo. Conyers was an icon of civil rights-era Detroit politics, enshrined with the city’s first black mayor, Coleman Young, as a signal figure of an African-American political establishment whose power has grown immensely in the region since he first won the seat, just months after the signing of the Civil Rights Act.

In the immediate aftermath of Conyers’ resignation, it looked like that status quo might continue. An almost-Shakespearian family drama began to unfold as Conyers endorsed his son, John Conyers III, for the seat, despite the fact that the then-27-year-old had never run for office, and at the time was most famous for getting laptops stolen out of his father’s congressional SUV and being arrested on suspicion of domestic violence. That endorsement was much to the chagrin of state Sen. Ian Conyers, nephew of the elder Conyers, who had presumably thought himself next in the family line.

With the American public apparently having lost its taste for dynastic politics over the last few years, it’s not surprising that the Conyers seat was ripe for disruption—or that a half-dozen other Democrats would identify the opportunity and throw their hats into the ring. After Conyers III was booted from the ballot due to a lack of signatures, the field solidified, with a few candidates representing discrete platforms: City Council president Brenda Jones, the presumed frontrunner endorsed by trade unions and Detroit mayor Mike Duggan; suburban Westland mayor Bill Wild, running as a centrist “alternative”; Ian Conyers as the guarantor of his uncle’s legacy. And, because why not, state Sen. Coleman Young II, son of the late mayor.

Overlooked by everyone but the voters was the eventual victor: former state Rep. Rashida Tlaib. From 2009 until she left office 2015 due to term limits, her district included large portions of southwest Detroit, an economically struggling area that happens to also contain one of the region’s major economic pipelines in the Ambassador Bridge to Canada. Tlaib, a lifelong Detroiter who graduated from the city’s Wayne State University, quickly built a reputation as an outspoken progressive who had the skill to back up her tough talk, helping to block bridge owner Manuel Maroun’s plans to demolish area homes as part of a long-standing, convoluted dispute over the construction of a second bridge.

Tlaib was even for #AbolishICE before it was cool. In early 2011, amid reports and complaints that ICE agents were conducting illegal searches in her heavily Hispanic district, Tlaib stood with protestors and accused the agency of illegal searches and seizures.

“Without warrants, they stalked parents from across southwest Detroit,” she declaimed, according to a Detroit News report at the time.

When Koch Carbon began dumping massive amounts of pet coke on a Marathon site along the Detroit riverfront in her district, smothering houses and cars in noxious dust, Tlaib found little recourse among regulators. So she took matters into her own hands, as she described in a campaign video, trespassing onto Marathon’s property and collecting samples in Ziploc bags. The headlines that followed in the stunt’s wake spurred more protest, and Detroit mayor Duggan eventually ordered Marathon and Koch to remove the piles.

Steve Tobocman, Tlaib’s predecessor in her seat at the state house and her political mentor, described the relentlessness and willingness to sidestep convention that made her such an effective advocate for progressive causes.

“Most of us would have stopped and told the residents there’s nothing they could do,” Tobocman said in an interview. “Maybe they would have introduced a bill that would go nowhere in [Michigan’s] Republican[-controlled] legislature, but she went above and beyond, and figured out a way.”

After leaving office Tlaib went to work with the Sugar Law Center, a liberal nonprofit that “seeks to empower low-income individuals, families, and communities.” Her most high-profile appearance as a civilian before this year’s primary was getting kicked out of a Detroit Economic Club luncheon in 2016 for heckling their guest of honor—then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

“He doesn’t love Detroit,” she told the Detroit Free Press afterward. “He doesn’t love no one who isn’t Donald Trump.”

Tlaib would eventually beat her closest contender, Brenda Jones, by fewer than 1,000 votes in the primary Tuesday. Curiously, Jones won the simultaneously held special election to run out the remainder of Conyers’ term—meaning that she’ll be the one to hand over the seat to Tlaib after November’s election. Despite the tight race, the fact that a Palestinian-American woman will likely soon represent what has historically been a black political stronghold is an enormous achievement, and proof of the appeal in an ultra-liberal district of Tlaib’s left politics and indefatigable campaigning style.



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Not every progressive challenger is going to have the combination of experience, charisma, and a friendly political climate that Tlaib enjoyed in her first shot at national office. The experience part of the equation may not even be desired—there’s a reason why one of the most prominent progressive campaign groups of 2018, started by a group of former Sanders staffers and supporters, calls itself “Brand New Congress.”

But if you look at some of the most prominent elected leaders on the left today, they’re proof that the kind of dues-paying, ladder-climbing political trajectory long scorned by much of their base might be the best way to make sure their reforms actually see the light of day. Progressive congressional leaders like Washington’s Pramila Jayapal and the now-departed Keith Ellison were able to develop effective power bases by working their state legislatures relentlessly, building both the political skill and the trust with their base they needed to rise to national prominence—much the same way Tlaib has.

An oxygen-hungry, national-facing “outsider” candidate like Cynthia Nixon in New York, on the other hand, has precious little at their disposal aside from a willingness to tweet the party line and paint themselves in caricatured opposition to their establishment opponent. And should they end up in office, a season-long campaign of bridge-burning may mobilize the base, but also leave them with precious few of the tools and relationships needed to govern effectively. (They also have the unfortunate disadvantage, in the case of gubernatorial candidates like Nixon and Sayed, of having to sell “abolish ICE” and other hot-button progressive causes in the Finger Lakes and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, not just the Park Slope food co-op or leafy Ann Arbor.)

Left organizers have done an admirable job since 2016, to be sure, of correcting course and avoiding the excessive focus on national politics that’s hobbled Democrats in the past. “Progressives view 2018 as a valuable opportunity to put different pieces into powerful positions on the chessboard,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, in an interview. “That includes building the bench locally that will eventually grow into future members of Congress, and even presidents.”

And the wind is clearly in progressives’ sails, much to the chagrin of establishment Democrats scrambling to formulate a response. But there’s no denying that high-profile losses like Sayed’s, and high-profile gaffes like those of Ocasio-Cortez, are damaging in their own way—own-goals that reinforce the perception in some quarters of progressive politics as the domain of overweening, presumptuous zealots.

Meanwhile, experienced hands like Tlaib, Jayapal, and Raul Grijalva in Arizona plug away for the cause, no less uncompromising than their more camera-ready peers but far more productive, and resistant to missteps at that. It takes all kinds, and someone needs to be the mouthpiece of a movement, of course—but by elevating steady pols like Tlaib in districts that are ready beyond a doubt for the socialist full monty, the left can prove that it’s ready to play in the big leagues.