Nobody Owns Detroit Revisited
On Sunday, two days before the election, the Michigan Senate race went to church — two churches, in Detroit, a few miles apart. At Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ, Jim Clyburn — the man who has carried the Democratic Party’s Black establishment on his back for thirty years, and who had endorsed Haley Stevens in the primary — introduced Abdul El-Sayed to the congregation. “It was a point of unification to be here,” Clyburn said. Across town at Perfecting Church, Stevens walked in with the Republican, Mike Rogers, her fiancé at her side, and endorsed him. Pastor Marvin Winans read El-Sayed’s name to the Perfecting Church congregation anyway. The sanctuary cheered.
I have spent two weeks writing that nobody owns Detroit — that a coalition has to be asked, not assumed. On Sunday, Detroit proved it in real time, in church, on camera. The candidate who failed in the primary told the world on Friday that she would stand with Clyburn and the nominee on Sunday — and on Sunday she stood with the Republican instead. She was asked to stay away from El-Sayed’s events, true. Nobody asked her to walk into another church and endorse Mike Rogers. The candidate who failed in the primary lied to Jim Clyburn, and I stand behind that sentence. And the coalition she assumed would follow her across the aisle stayed exactly where it was. This is the story of the most expensive assumption in Democratic politics dying in public, on a Sunday morning, in church.
