Opinion: The Democrats Deserve to Win in Michigan – Not in Ohio.

By Alexander Bihari, J.D. ADVERTISEMENT Growing up in Central Ohio, I have always been deeply aware of the Ohio-Michigan beef. Our two great states have been rivals since the 1800s, when hordes of Ohioans and Michiganders clashed along the state line over who would control the Toledo region. (don't worry – our side won) I grew up in an OSU household, so I always understood that 'if Ohio State beats Michigan, it's a good season.' Now though, I can't help but be a little envious of our neighbors to the north because of one stark difference: our Democratic Senate candidates. Democrats in both Ohio and Michigan are faced with the unenviable task of trying to ward off the election (or in our case reelection) of a generic Republican Senate candidate. A pair of milktoast MAGA Republicans, Mike Rogers and Jon Husted's support amongst even their own voter base appears to be derived more from their proximity to 'The Big Guy' in Washington than any sort of grassroots enthusiasm. In both races, both Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan are leading in the polls. Given how unpopular Republicans are nationally, these should both be slam dunk races for the Dems. But I'm here to tell you, these candidates couldn't be more different. The Democrats have talked in recent years about how to convince young voters that there is still something left for them in the Democratic Party. As a 26-year-old who has consistently voted blue so far, I have no intention of voting for Sherrod Brown again. A multi-term Senator who was voted out in 2024, Sherrod Brown has a positive reputation among the crowd of 70+ year-old white people in my parents' neighborhood. I voted for him in 2018 because he had a positive attitude toward organized labor (shout out UFCW!) during the height of the popularity of the 'resistance liberals.' The Resistance Liberals, for those who don't recall, was a broad term for Democrats and some 'moderate' republicans whose main gripe with Trump was that he was disruptive to the status quo. These people can be identified by their yard signs with slogans like 'Anyone But Trump!' where they espouse a general disinterest in policy, as long as the President doesn't have the last name of Trump. These are the Nancy Pelosis, the Chuck Schumers, the Sherrod Browns of the world. Back then, the voters of America were begging for change by electing leaders such as AOC, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar, and almost universally, the response of the Democratic establishment members was to insist that we needed to wait our turn. The Joe Bidens and Chuck Schumers were going to hold the Republicans at bay, then the Democrats were going to retake the Congress and the White House, we would finally be free from Republican meddling, and then – and only then – could we finally start doing the actual work of pushing for change. So we swallowed our pride in 2018 and 2020; we dropped calls for police reform, we banished the 'shocking' slogan of Defund the Police, we turned a blind eye when the Democratic establishment called Ilhan Omar an antisemite for standing up for Palestinian humanity, and most importantly, we voted. We gave Democrats the House, the Senate, and the White House. And those corrupt politicians squandered it. With control of both houses of Congress and the White House, Democrats had a list of excuses as long as my arm about why they couldn't push through policies. I can't count how many times some Democrat complained about the Supreme Court. I just wanted to scream at them 'SO PACK THE DAMN COURT!' We hired the Democrats to fight fascists, and they turned around and quoted us rules about the Senate Parliamentarian. The Democrats had years to abolish ICE, put Donald Trump in prison for January 6th, and overturn Citizens United, all policies that some number of Dems campaigned for, and yet they did none of those things. Simply 'not being Trump' is not enough, and nowhere is that more clear than with the biggest moral litmus test of our time: the genocide of the Palestinians. According to the organization Track AIPAC, Sherrod Brown has received more than $1.4 million over the course of his political career from Israeli or pro-Israel lobbyist groups. Over the past 3 years, Sherrod Brown has proudly taken that money and stood alongside the Israeli government as it has systematically and openly murdered tens of thousands of men, women, and especially children, in Palestine. In America, support for Israel has been so normalized among politicians that it bears taking a moment to step back and think on what this means: the Democratic candidate for Senate has been accepting campaign donations, essentially lawful bribes, from a foreign government that is currently starving families and targeting elementary schoolers with drone strikes, in flagrant violation of international and United States laws. (See: Leahy Law) All the while, Brown voted consistently to continue sending weapons and money to Israel, even after it was confirmed that they planned to use those weapons on civilians. Everyone has their own red lines, but for me personally, hurting children is one thing for which your reputation should never recover. But, as many readers may now be thinking to themselves, the alternative is the party of Donald Trump. No matter how bad the Democrats were for Palestine, immigration, AI, etc., the Republicans were bound to be even worse. So, once again, my generation of voters sucked it up, swallowed our pride, and we voted for the Democrats again in 2024. But this time there were fewer of us who could hold our noses. We had spent the past year protesting against the worst evils imaginable, and in response the leaders of our own party spread the false and harmful conspiracy theory that young people weren't actually mad at the Israeli government for violating genocide laws, but that instead we must have been angry at them for their religion. Sherrod Brown called us antisemites for standing up against genocide, and yet still I voted for him because I felt the need to support the lesser evil. That morning in November of 2024, when everyone woke up and realized how much the Republicans had absolutely trounced us, I was horrified and disgusted. But a small part of me in the back of my head couldn't shake the thought that we brought this on ourselves. In a cruel, twisted way, the karmic justice to a Democratic Party that refuses to accept change is the presidency of Donald Trump, a man who will change everything he touches, but always for the worse. ADVERTISEMENT That being said, it brings me no joy to see the Democrats flounder as they currently are, because the truth is that we the people still need the party's infrastructure if we're going to effectively mobilize against our new MAGA-led fascist administration. We're faced then with a question: what now? Michigan and Ohio are demonstrative of the two main approaches that we've been seeing in 2026. Sherrod Brown, for his part, seems to be in a ground hog day scenario where he is recycling the exact same campaign as in 2024 with a few messaging tweaks here and there. At its core, the message is 'Sherrod Brown is not Donald Trump.' He is still pro-Israel, he has expressed no interest in abolishing ICE and prosecuting ICE agents, and he generally appears to have no awareness of why he lost in 2024 at all. The people, it seems, are losing interest in the hand-selected party candidates and would rather choose their own guy instead. Unlike in Ohio, where the party made it clear even before the primary that they would be choosing Sherrod Brown, Michigan had a competitive and ideologically diverse primary. Two pro-Israel liberal candidates squared off against a Medicare-for-all style progressive, and for the first time in a while, the voters actually got to choose, opting for Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. As someone who has no faith in my own state's Senate candidate, believe me when I tell you that I am absolutely thrilled at the prospect of a Senator El-Sayed. If it sounds like I have less to say about El-Sayed, it's only because he is doing almost everything right. I have no serious complaints about El-Sayed, because unlike other candidates, he's a person who I can actually respect. As a young, law school-educated progressive, I obviously agree with him on most of his policy positions. But what's impressive about Abdul's campaign is that it seems to be resonating with people across the ideological spectrum. In the past, Dems have tried to reach across the aisle by offering policy concessions, basically promising to moderate their positions on policy to be more in line with right wing ideology. This sounds strategic in theory, but in practice all it does is validate in the minds of voters that the Republicans are correct about policy. If both parties are claiming that immigrants are dangerous, why would one vote for the more moderate of those two anti-immigrant parties? ADVERTISEMENT What's smart about Abdul El-Sayed's campaign is that he seems to finally be doing what I and others have been begging candidates to do for years – instead of pretending to believe what the other side believes, hold firm on the fact that left-wing policies will help everyone, including the other side. Rather than apologize for criticizing Israel, double down on the fact that our tax dollars should be used for building hospitals in rural Michigan rather than blowing up hospitals in Gaza. Instead of cowering at the accusation that Medicare for all is 'woke' or socialist, stand by the fact that the fat cats in Washington owe the average hardworking American a decent health insurance plan. Too often we as Democrats talk in terms of what policies we could pass right away with little pushback, but people like El-Sayed think bigger than that. If we can start replacing the old guard, one by one, with 'our guys,' we can change the entire playbook. Five years ago, running as a pro-Palestine candidate that wants universal healthcare would be seen as a risky move that could endanger a candidate's electability. Nowadays, it's the exact opposite. Abdul is electable because of the fact that he is further left than his opponent, not despite that fact. In the literal sense, Sherrod Brown and Abdul El-Sayed are not running against each other, and technically as a Democratic voter I should be rooting for both to win their races. There is nothing to be gained by electing any Republican. But the fact that I can look at these two candidates and instinctively conclude that they are on opposite sides of the most important issues of our times underscores the choice that the party has to make: listen to the voters and move left, or keep trying to salvage a status quo that is already gone. Sources: Information on Israel's genocide: https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/06/1167790 Reporting on Polls for Senate Elections: https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2026/08/31/latest-2026-senate-polls-el-sayed-leads-rogers-by-4-points-in-michigan/ AIPAC Donations to Brown: https://www.trackaipac.com/states/israel-first-candidates Brown's Support for Israel: https://ajpaction.org/democratic-scorecard/sherrod-brown/ Leahy Law: https://www.state.gov/bureau-of-democracy-human-rights-and-labor/releases/2025/01/leahy-law-fact-sheet