"The Senate race in Michigan... will test moderate and independent voters’ appetite for a combative brand of unalloyed progressivism."

"The party’s activist class believes Dr. El-Sayed’s success next week would establish a proof point that left-wing populism is a winning message, even in swing states. He has embraced an economic agenda that sharply attacks the billionaire class and taken a clear stance against Israel. Centrist Democrats fear that a potential El-Sayed triumph in an otherwise favorable climate for Democrats could be badly misinterpreted as a mandate."

That's how the NYT puts it in "The Most Important Race Shaping 2028 for Democrats Is Happening Now in Michigan/The fate of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive candidate in the race, will serve as a litmus test for the left’s potency heading into the next presidential contest."

I suspect the Times wants El-Sayed to lose. 

There's this quote from Matt Bennett, an executive vice president of the centrist Third Way think tank: "The danger is that the triumphal stuff coming from the left will take hold as a narrative that 2028ers believe. I think he will win despite — not because of — the fact that he has campaigned mostly to the left."

Which "narrative" is more true — because of or despite? Good luck with the "despite" side of that narrative flogging.

From the comments over there: "Why on Earth does this article bill this contest as a test of the left's potency when the real story is that the candidate is under assault from the right on the basis of islamophobia and xenophobia and from the candidate's primary opponent on the basis of sour grapes and the ongoing Democratic establishment's delusion that only centrism can win? This race is a bellwether for those things, not for the viability of progressivism."