Welcome to The Midterms, Actually. Every week I’ll be writing about two things: one big idea or trend I see forming across the 2026 primaries, and one thing I’m hearing from a voice on the ground. Let’s get into it.
One thing I’m thinking about: Electability and identity are intertwined
On Sunday, former President Barack Obama did something most others seemed to avoid: He called out the Trump administration’s targeting of Rep. Ilhan Omar.
The administration, Obama wrote, is “actively trying to deport Congresswoman Omar” over a theory he called unsubstantiated: that she was 18, not 17, when her father was naturalized. The effort, he said, “should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views.”
The statement stands in contrast to the mixed response of Democrats on the campaign trail and the relative silence of the mainstream press. House leadership put out a statement condemning the raid — but there’s been nothing from Senate Democratic leadership and little from the crop of elected officials expected to run for president in 2028.
As The Intercept’s Adam Johnson pointed out, the August 2025 raid on former Trump adviser John Bolton drew scathing editorials from the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal within days. The same goes for other ways Trump has weaponized the federal government against his political enemies, from the cases against James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James to the pursuit of Federal Reserve officials (Obama named all three in his statement). Omar’s raid has drawn much less intense coverage. Last week, I got three requests from cable outlets to discuss “news of the day” — each mentioned fired White House press secretary Katie Zacharia, new midterms polling, and some combination of Pete Hegseth and the war with Iran. None mentioned Omar.
The entire episode has reminded me of Trump’s targeting of Black journalists like Don Lemon and Georgia Fort. Earlier this year, they were indicted after covering an anti-ICE protest that disrupted a service at Cities Church in St. Paul, and both have pleaded not guilty. In that case, there was also a muted reaction from the establishment press, possibly because of mixed feelings about Lemon personally or the lack of solidarity with independent Black media. Still, that silence was shortsighted, as the Trump administration used the incident as a stepping stone to target the wider media apparatus (See: Trump’s September attempt to bar CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House).
With that in mind, I don’t think it’s hard to guess why Omar hasn’t received the fulsome backing of her party. I don’t think it’s the merits of the case: She hasn’t been charged with a crime, and the theory depends on a decades-old immigration filing by a father who died in 2020. It’s likely the fact that the Minnesota progressive has herself had a tense relationship with the Democratic establishment. That dates back to the 2019 fight over comments Omar made about the influence of the pro-Israel lobby in Congress, which some took to be antisemitic. In recent weeks, Minnesota Democrats, including Rep. Angie Craig and Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s office, criticized Omar’s plans to appear at an October 26 event hosted by state Sen. Omar Fateh with Hasan Piker, the controversial leftist Twitch streamer who has become a lightning rod in this year’s primaries.
But there’s another factor that we should also name in this episode: Islamophobia. As I discussed with Mehdi Hasan on Substack Live a couple weeks ago, the rise of the progressive left cannot be untangled from Muslim elected officials who have become its face: Omar in Minnesota, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, and Zohran Mamdani in New York City. And in each case, these candidates have faced attacks that explicitly seek to frame their religion and identity as inherently anti-American, a threat not only to our national values but our democracy itself.
Asked on CBS whether he believed El-Sayed was a terrorist, Republican Mike Rogers said to “look at the data — it’s pretty clear.” In a recent television ad (a seven-figure buy titled “Threat”) launched by Rogers and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, its narrator says, “Abdul raises money from dangerous people who finance terrorist networks,” tying the candidate to the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda. The NRSC’s ads also notably use his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.
But importantly, it’s not just Republicans engaging in overt bigotry. They have also been aided by moderate Democrats and the press, who have used the guise of “electability” to beat the same drum. Think back to the New York City mayoral race, where (Democrat!) Andrew Cuomo spent the final weeks running a campaign virtually indistinguishable from the tactics of the MAGA right. On a radio show, host Sid Rosenberg said Mamdani would cheer if another 9/11 happened, and Cuomo laughed, seeming to agree. Cuomo’s X account even posted, then deleted, an AI-generated ad called “Criminals for Zohran Mamdani,” which opens with a fake Mamdani eating rice with his hands. The campaign blamed a “junior staffer.”
The worst part: In following Republicans down the road of interrogating the Scary Muslims, we perpetrate a form of hate that has real costs. Just this May, two teenagers opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego, killing three people, and left behind a manifesto invoking the Christchurch mosque shooter. Analysts at the Anti-Defamation League found it expressed sweeping hatred of Muslims, Jews, Black and Hispanic people, and the LGBTQ+ community.
And journalistically, we avoid a more nuanced conversation that is the one worth having: the connection between identity and electability.
And journalistically, we avoid a more nuanced conversation that is the one worth having: the connection between identity and electability. The discussion about candidates El-Sayed and Mamdani, to this point, has focused on whether their progressive policy stances can play well in a general election. However, research shows that while candidates of marginalized backgrounds (women, Black and Latinos, Arabs, etc.) face an electoral penalty from voters regardless of ideology or political party, that’s especially true for Muslim candidates. A study of state legislative races in Politics and Religion this year found Muslim candidates were roughly 16 percentage points less likely to win general elections than non-Muslim candidates, and 10–15 points behind other racial minorities. Experiments by the political scientist Nazita Lajevardi, cited in that paper, found voters about 10 percent less likely to pick a Muslim candidate over a white one, with religion rather than race as the trigger.
This would seem to explain some of the reason El-Sayed seems to be running behind other Senate Democrats (if we believe the polling). But you rarely hear that reasoning given by the electability crowd, who more than often cites his progressive beliefs, and are we just supposed to nominate Christian white guys forever?
Here’s what is undeniable: Republicans have become quite adept at putting minority communities against each other in the Trump era, and they’re running that playbook in Michigan. Whether it’s telling Black communities that emerging immigrant populations are taking their jobs or telling immigrant communities that Democrats are too focused on Black issues, the strategy has been to exploit the racial tension at the heart of the Democratic base. And to some degree — it’s working.
In an August interview with Clay Cane at The Grio, a Black-focused outlet, El-Sayed said “mistrust among Black folk in Metro Detroit is well-founded,” pointing to what he described as tensions between some Arab and Muslim business owners. And the skepticism runs the other way too — as part of the difficulty El-Sayed has faced in Black communities is tied to the Islamophobia among that voting block. One example: At a July campaign event for Haley Stevens, a Farmington school board trustee told a Michigan Chronicle reporter, “Don’t just come in here speaking Arabic,” remarks the Council on American Islamic Relations condemned as anti-Arab racism and many read as aimed at El-Sayed. At an August 19 press conference, an older Black man in Detroit shouted at El-Sayed, “He’s an Arab — he don’t care nothing about Black folks.”
The layered nature of this issue should not be hard to grasp. Ask liberals about the 2024 election, and they are quick to point out the racism and sexism faced by candidates like Kamala Harris, and rightly argue that impacted her “electability” just as much as her refusal to break from President Joe Biden or embrace a clear ideological lane. But they conveniently leave out the importance of identity when it comes to Omar, El-Sayed, Mamdani, or even candidates like Francesca Hong in Wisconsin or Angie Nixon in Florida. As Zaid Jilani wrote recently, establishment Democrats are “effectively denying that prejudice exists in the United States if they’re really going to argue that Abdul El-Sayed will perform a few points behind other Democrats because of his PolIcY ViEwS rather than the GOP hating Muslims for 25 years.”
But we should be clear: “Hating Muslims” is not a prejudice that’s limited to the GOP, just as issues like racism, sexism, or antisemitism aren’t housed on one side of the aisle either. And in selectively ignoring the central role that prejudice plays in electoral politics — yes, even with progressive candidates — electability-focused Democrats aid the GOP’s desire to sow discord among their base.
The main reason for Democrats to stand up for Omar or El-Sayed is because it’s right, and they, too, have a place in American democracy. But at minimum, Democrats should see that in ignoring explicit Islamophobia — on the campaign trail or in the White House — they are being rather shortsighted. Trump’s campaign of retribution is unlikely to spare any enemy. Muslims may be the focus right now. But there’s no telling who’s next. You’re either for a multiracial, multifaith coalition — or you’re not.
One thing I’m hearing
This week, we talked to Christian Paz, a Vox correspondent covering national politics and American religion. He’s been reporting from Kansas for an upcoming story on pastor and Democratic Senate candidate Adam Hamilton, whose race has emerged as a major campaign battleground in the final stretch. I wanted to ask him how Hamilton’s faith is shaping his campaign, what he is hearing from voters, and what the race could tell us about the Democrats’ ability to compete in long held Republican states.
How is Adam Hamilton’s background as a pastor shaping his pitch, and what is he doing differently from other Democrats?
Watching Hamilton on the trail, it was remarkable to me how much his Methodist faith was at the heart of everything he talked about: about healthcare, climate, immigration, and foreign policy, about how his personal views either conflict with or bolster his policy stance, about how Trump and the GOP have failed Kansans, and about why he even decided to run (after he spent time dwelling on the Sermon on the Mount). He tailors his stump speech to different audiences, of course: At a progressive book shop, he leaned into a more anti-Trump speech; at a senior center he talked up his more conservative viewpoints on immigration and climate; at a Republicans for Hamilton rally he talked about the political center and why he wants to build a big tent; at a chapel, he led the audience in singing a hymn and quoted extensively from the Gospels as he shared his personally “pro-life” views — but it was all not just tinged, but immersed in Christianity.
“The race already tells us a few things, regardless of who wins or loses: Democrats should be creating opportunities to elevate religious people or clergy who want to run for office.”
It’s something I’ve only seen people like Rev. Raphael Warnock do, when speaking at churches on the campaign trail in 2020 and 2021. And it was different from James Talarico too — this guy leads a megachurch, and at times can slip into a kind of evangelical tone. That’s all pretty different than any other Democrat I’ve watched this cycle.
Hamilton needs to win over Kansans outside his party to have a shot. What were you hearing on the ground talking to voters?
The faith pitch is a huge part of why it does seem like he has a shot at winning: It doesn’t seem like he’s adopting or borrowing the language of the faithful, or their aesthetics, to talk politics, or just pitching the political center as a way to persuade voters. It’s that he’s adopting the tone and language of politics to talk about his faith — not the other way around. And the result is that when he talks about building a big tent, holding heterodox views, coexisting with people you disagree with — people trust and believe him.
I think I talked to more actual independents and Republicans who are backing Hamilton than actual die-hard Democrats over the days I was in Kansas. Some of these folks have voted at the local level for Democrats before, but tended to vote Republican at the national level. What unified those conversations was the sense that they think Hamilton is authentic, is a moral man with good character, and seems to be truly independent.
Others, including Democrats, said they appreciated how much time Hamilton spent talking about freedom of religion and diversity of thought — they liked that he would preface his religious talk with assurances that he wasn’t trying to convert anyone or force religion into people’s lives, but would also say he wasn’t going to compromise on it because of how genuinely he believes those things.
What could this race tell us about Democrats’ ability to reach religious voters in other Republican states?
The race already tells us a few things, regardless of who wins or loses: Democrats should be creating opportunities to elevate religious people or clergy who want to run for office. Those who aspire to run for office should also feel more comfortable talking about their faith if it’s actually a part of their lives. And Democrats shouldn’t feel beholden to the secular/atheist/none of the above/nothing in particular segment of their base because that isn’t big enough to actually win elections.