People in the midwest know what a livestream is

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed officially beat Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Senate primary last night. It ended up being the most expensive primary in American history, with super PACs dumping more than $60 million into the race to support Stevens.

As I wrote last week, the 2026 Democratic Civil War is a rats nest of different schisms happening simultaneously. It’s young versus old, labor versus capital, progressivism versus the status quo, populism versus elitism. Perhaps more than anything, though, it’s a conflict between the Democrats that are willing to accept money from pro-Israel organizations and those who aren’t.

But there is a media story nestled in there, as well. As Rob Flaherty, the deputy campaign manager for Vice President Kamala Harris and also former digital strategist for President Joe Biden, told us on a recent episode of Panic World, the Democratic establishment views the internet as secondary to the world of TV and print. And 2026 seems like the year that idea finally gets flipped on its head.

On one side of this debate you have what right-wingers have somewhat correctly identified as the corporate media establishment. It’s creaking with age and largely consists of cable news hosts talking at empty waiting rooms and airport lounges, but it does have some clout still. I would also include The New York Times, the much-hobbled Washington Post, and digital outlets like Politico and Axios here, as well, along with all the former Obama and Biden staffers with podcasts, Substacks, and X accounts. This amorphous blob, propped up by big brand deals and liberal-ish donor money, is still holding out for a slingshot back to the “normalcy” of managerial democracy once the Trump era finally ends.

On the other side of the Democratic Civil War, you have a vastly different media environment. One that sees this year’s midterms and the 2028 election as a chance for a true economic reset. It’s led by leftist streamers like Hasan Piker, YouTube essayists, dark woke podcasters, journalists like Ryan Grim and Drop Site News, Bluesky users, shortform video content from Democratic Socialists of America members, and random shitposters. I should say here that a lot of these people do not get along. Both the Republicans and establishment Democrats love to point this fact out. To which I can only say, welcome to leftist politics, baby!

The assumption among the liberal establishment is that this other side is smaller. Super PACs like the United Democracy Project (UDP), which is funded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), believed that there was no possible way that El-Sayed could compete with a traditional media blitz. Per The New York Times, UDP spent over $30 million on ads in Michigan. When The Michigan Advance asked Stevens about the optics of getting so much support from an AIPAC-based super PAC, she said that people were getting the “campaign finance zoomies.” Can’t believe such a serious candidate lost!

And even though Democrats believe that the very online leftist insurgency is much smaller and less effective than them, they are also pathologically obsessed with what they’re doing. An anonymous “Democratic operative” whined at length to Politico about El-Sayed going to a pool party with Piker on Monday. “These guys are unbelievably cocky,” they said.

But there’s a funny contradiction here that the liberal establishment doesn’t see or doesn’t care about. They believe that all these socialist and socialist-ish candidates popping up across the country are not popular and do not speak for the average voter and cannot win general elections. And they believe that the online media ecosystem that supports them is irrelevant because it’s digital. Our politics are means-tested and sensible, yours are ridiculous and dangerous, they say time and time again. And our media is real because it’s expensive and requires a TV studio, and your media is not because it’s filmed in your bedroom or on your phone. But if that’s true, that they are so powerful and so politically aligned with the national zeitgeist and so relevant, than why do they continually spend millions of dollars to make us aware their candidates exist? (And still lose lol.)

But the contradiction goes even deeper than that. You’re going to no doubt see all kinds of posts this week claiming that Piker and socialist creators like him are not only small and irrelevant, but also coastal elites that are only watched by coastal elites. As if voters in a state like Michigan don’t have the internet. As if working class people couldn’t possibly watch completely free livestreams on their phones or whatever. This was a big Dem talking point after the DSA upset in New York City back in June. That something like that could only happen in New York because, uh, only people living in cities know about Twitch? Only people in cities would vote for a person of color?

It’s a ridiculous notion that’s only going to feel more ridiculous the further we trudge our way into the midterms, but I’ll just put this link here for posterity: While campaigning in Wisconsin this week, a guy recognized Piker on the street and gave him a tomato from his backyard. So, yeah, I’d say this stuff is breaking through.