Imagine if Donald Trump went all-in endorsing a candidate for the Senate, campaigned for them and helped raise eleven times as much money as their opponent — who then lost.
There would be wall-to-wall media coverage declaring the end of Trump's influence and of the Republican Party as we know it. "Trump's Bitter Defeat," The New York Times would say; "The End of an Era ," The Washington Post would echo.
This actually just happened in Michigan's Senate primary — with one detail glaringly absent.
Basically the entire Democratic Party leadership supported Haley Stevens, who outspent El-Sayed eleven to one amid a relentless campaign of warnings about how bad news bears he would be for state, party, country — but lost. And the media's response? 'He didn't win by that much,' 'Now comes the hard part, the general election,' and so on.
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