With the August 4 primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin fast approaching, the next week is going to be very exciting for an awful lot of political observers. And both states are offering lots of material for the next chapter in the saga of the Great Democratic Civil War of 2026. Self-designated combatants in the much-discussed progressive-centrist struggle for the soul of the party, along with conflict-addicted pundits and Republicans eager to proclaim a communist takeover of the forces opposing Donald Trump, are watching closely to see what happens in the Michigan Senate primary between Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens, as well as in the multicandidate Wisconsin gubernatorial primary. Whatever happens, you can expect massive overreactions, particularly if the wind blows in one direction across both midwestern states. The fallout is certainly intensified by the stakes: Democratic prospects of flipping the Senate depend heavily on holding the Michigan seat, while Wisconsin is the hyperpolarized state where Democrats were hoping to win a trifecta this year.

For a good while, the Michigan race offered a range of ideological and generational options to succeed retiring Senator Gary Peters. But then State Senator Mallory McMorrow dropped out on July 5, leaving El-Sayed and Stevens to polarize the contest to an excruciating degree. El-Sayed (a public-health expert whose first political race was an unsuccessful bid for the Michigan governorship in the 2018 primary won by Gretchen Whitmer) is very much a self-identified progressive long aligned with Bernie Sanders. While he is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, his message is DSA-consonant, emphasizing support for Medicare for All; opposition to continued U.S. military aid for Israel (whose government he regularly describes as genocidal); a call for the abolition of ICE; and the need to overturn........

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