Whitmer and many other prominent Michigan Democratic officials implored the state’s Democrats to back Stevens. The center-left both in Michigan and nationally leaned into the case it regularly uses to defeat progressive candidates: electability. Stevens, centrists claimed, would have a better chance of winning in a general election than El-Sayed. That that argument didn’t fully resonate in Michigan, the swingiest of swing states, is a huge setback for the center-left. Speaking of November: As I wrote recently, Democrats with fairly progressive records (Barack Obama, Sherrod Brown, Tammy Baldwin) have won in Midwestern swing states in the recent past.