Stevens to El-Sayed: ‘Thank you for clarifying that you didn’t call me an ogre’
By Alma Cordero · Reporting from El Paso ·
The spectacle of Michigan’s Democratic primary debate was less about replacing Senator Gary Peters with competent governance and more about the ritualistic performance of who is…
When a Political Rivalry Becomes an Accusation Machine
The spectacle of Michigan’s Democratic primary debate was less about replacing Senator Gary Peters with competent governance and more about the ritualistic performance of who is most willing to point fingers. The central exchange—Abdul El-Sayed stating that "Ideally you put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message"—is not merely an instance of poor taste; it is a perfect illustration of how political suspicion functions when policy fails.
The facts are stark: El-Sayed clarified to The Guardian that his original comments were aimed at John Fetterman, describing him as someone "throwing those values in the mud." Yet, Haley Stevens seized on the ambiguity, delivering the perfectly calibrated jab: “Thank you for clarifying that you didn’t call me an ogre.” This exchange, reported by both yahoo.com and newsbreak.com, encapsulates a profound failure of political discourse. The moment El-Sayed attempts to pivot—blaming Stevens for AIPAC-funded ads or declaring his focus on "national politics"—the debate collapses into the familiar language of internal threat management.
Pointing Fingers Instead of Building Infrastructure
What these candidates are doing, what they are mastering in front of a camera, is not policy; it is accusation. It is the art of defining an enemy—a non-existent or manufactured one—to solidify their own position. This mechanism has deep, ugly roots. We must name it: McCarthyism. The shared mechanism here is the use of public suspicion and targeted investigation to define internal enemies and manage perceived threats within a group. Whether you are accusing a rival of being an "ogre" or suggesting they harbor anti-American sympathies, the playbook remains identical.
The political practice of using accusation as currency—of declaring who belongs inside the tent and who must be publicly exposed—is nothing new. It echoes the era of McCarthyism, where suspicion was weaponized against perceived ideological rivals to silence dissent and consolidate power. The difference is merely the costume: today it’s "national politics," tomorrow it might be a border enforcement budget or a wage floor that can actually feed three kids.
The Shared Language of Suspicion
The fact that El-Sayed, who has called Israel's campaign in Gaza a “genocide,” and Stevens, whose support comes from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), are locked in this mutual performance of suspicion only proves the point. They are both operating within a shared political language where the perceived threat—whether it is "monopoly," "chauvinism," or simply being an ogre—is far more useful than discussing how to run Michigan’s infrastructure, its hospitals, or its economy.
The system rewards those who know how to point fingers and who can maintain the longest memory of past slights. They are not building a platform for change; they are merely practicing the historical art of political exclusion. The border region knows this language well: it is always about suspicion, always about who is crossing illegally, never about what work needs doing on either side of the river.
This entire spectacle confirms that in modern American politics, accusation has replaced accountability. Until candidates are forced to debate the granular realities of labor and migration—the wage floor a housekeeper can raise three kids on, the infrastructure needed for a working community—they will continue to default to the oldest trick: pointing at an internal enemy and demanding we all fear what they might be doing next.