Edward Hand

An Open Letter to President Donald J. Trump Mr. President, I write to ask you to consider something that has nothing to do with party and everything to do with a human life. Congresswoman Haley Stevens of Michigan did something rare in American politics today. She stood beside your Senate nominee, Mike Rogers, and endorsed him against Abdul El-Sayed, the man who narrowly defeated her in August. She did not do it with a press release or a quiet phone call. She did it on camera, at a church in Detroit, with her fiancé beside her, and she explained why. She said the Democratic nominee told her she was no longer welcome in his campaign. She said she does not stand with Hasan Piker. She said ninety percent of her votes still go to Democrats — but not this one, not for Senate, because, in her words, we cannot stand for hate. That is not the behavior of a traitor. That is the behavior of a Democrat who refuses to let her party be defined by hate. She is not leaving. She said it herself — “I’m still a very proud Democrat. I still very much believe in everything I voted for and said.” Ninety percent of her votes still go to Democrats. What she isolated is one race, one nominee, and one line she would not cross: an outside ad blaming Jewish support for Israel for Michigan’s grocery bills, and a campaign surrogate whose rhetoric she has called out since the primary. Her words were not an attack on the party. They were a defense of it. “Who we are as Michiganders is not hate,” she said, “and is not what we are getting from our Democratic nominee right now.” That is a woman protecting the brand she spent her career building, not burning it down. Here is the part that makes the timing matter. If El-Sayed wins Tuesday, the sting of her endorsement fades into a footnote — a Democrat who broke on one issue in one race. But if he loses, and her endorsement is what tipped a seat that decides control of the Senate, the story changes completely. Then she is not a dissenter. She is the reason. The entire Democratic leadership, the donors, the operatives who spent tens of millions trying to seize that chamber — they will need someone to blame, and she will be the most visible target available. That is when the abstract rage becomes specific, and specific is what gets people hurt. My concern is what happens to people who do that. You know better than anyone what the climate looks like when a political figure breaks with the machine. You stood on a stage in Butler with blood on your face, and two months later a man with a rifle was caught waiting outside your golf course in Florida. The people who cheered those attempts did not come from nowhere. They came from the same climate that now surrounds Haley Stevens. And here is the part that should give any president pause. When Barack Obama was president-elect in two thousand eight, Valerie Jarrett was initially the name coming out of his circle for the Senate seat he was leaving. Rahm Emanuel pushed her in calls with the governor's office before Obama told him to stop naming one candidate. When Jarrett stepped aside for a White House role, Emanuel sent over a list of alternatives. Blagojevich didn't play along the way they wanted, and within weeks Patrick Fitzgerald — Comey et al. — had collected wiretaps for the purpose of selecting snippets to take him down. That is how this faction handles a Democrat who won't fall in line. Now consider what Haley Stevens faces. If El-Sayed loses, as I’m inclined to believe he very well may, the anger will not stay inside the Democratic Party. It will seek targets. Some of it will come from operatives and proxies of the Obama-Bush machine — people with resources, organization, and a demonstrated willingness to weaponize institutions. Some of it will come from lone actors in the base, the kind of supporter who doesn’t need a handler to act on rage... -- Continued below in the message thread --