Both the Republican Party and the Democrat Party have had prominent supporters who were… shall we say… problematic. But you've probably noticed that Democrats rarely, if at all, distance themselves from the fringe. Instead, they tend to embrace it, because the fringe has become extremely powerful at motivating the base. Well, that may be changing, because one of the fringe's most prominent advocates is becoming a huge problem, no matter how the Democrats try to deny it.
Hasan Piker was the inevitable legacy of a party that really started to embrace the radical left and antisemitism under Barack Obama. Democrats can pretend all they want that they don't have a Hasan Piker problem, but they do. It's giving Republicans yet another opening in an election year that shouldn't go well for them, as they defy history and polling to keep their majorities in both the House and Senate.
Piker has built a following of millions, most of them viewers under 30, through livestreams that swing from standard leftist talking points to commentary critics call antisemitic. He's the one who said America "deserved 9/11," and yet still remains a powerful force in the party.
Michigan is where the theory is truly getting tested. Abdul El-Sayed, the party's Senate nominee, chose to campaign with Piker, despite warnings from party operatives who wanted him to keep his distance.
El-Sayed narrowly beat Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) in the Democrat primary, winning by less than one percentage point, despite heading into primary day with a commanding lead in the polls. He'll face Republican Mike Rogers in November in a race that could help decide who controls the Senate, and based on the polls so far, Democrats can’t be happy about this.
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Even El-Sayed, a radical in his own right, seems to get that Piker is a liability. Asked whether he'd keep campaigning with Piker in the general election, El-Sayed dodged, telling Welker he's "less concerned now with who I'm campaigning with and a lot more concerned about who I'm campaigning to." Of course, after his primary victory, he dismissed calls to disavow Piker as "cancel culture."
“Continue to campaign with Hasan Piker right now. You're in a general election now, I dare you, I dare you." Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) told Fox News's Sean Hannity. He added that if he were a Republican, "I would just dump $20 million for ads." Strategist James Carville even threatened to walk away from the party entirely over Piker's rising influence. Third Way president Jonathan Cowan made the electoral case explicit in a Wall Street Journal op-ed back in March, arguing "no Democrat should engage with him," because the association makes Democrats look "more extreme than mainstream" in the red and purple districts they actually need to win.
Democrats can keep pretending the Piker problem isn't real. At the very least, he’s dividing a party that is struggling to reconcile its desire to pivot hard to the left with its more pragmatic understanding of the electorate and what candidates are viable in general elections. That’s not the distraction the party needs this year.
