DETROIT — Democrats gathered here this weekend with a shared premise. “The path through 2028 runs through Michigan,” said Jocelyn Benson, the state’s leading Democratic gubernatorial candidate and sitting secretary of state.
What they couldn’t agree on was something thornier: why, exactly, they had lost it in 2024.
In the absence of a formal election autopsy from the Democratic National Committee — which opted against releasing its analysis of former Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss — leaders effectively performed one of their own at Michigan Democrats’ Endorsement Convention, prescribing solutions they hope will fuel victories in this fall’s senate and gubernatorial races and help the party retake the White House in 2028.
For some, the answer was straightforward: Democrats needed to meet voters where they are. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, the current chair of the Democratic Governors Association and a potential 2028 contender, chided the party for letting “advocacy speak seep into our Democratic language.”
“Sometimes these terms make it feel like we’re talking down to people, like we’re talking at them instead of to them,” Beshear said. “If we want to be the party of the people, we’ve got to talk like we are people.”
Others declined to engage the question at all. Harris, appearing at the Democratic Women’s Caucus Luncheon on Saturday, was characteristically measured. She answered two questions during a moderated conversation with state Sen. Sarah Anthony, and declined to reference her 2024 performance during her brief appearance.
“We are going to win the midterms,” Harris said. “But it’s going to be very difficult.”
Some blamed purity tests for sowing division.
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker — widely considered a 2028 contender — called on Democratic voters who disagree with the party’s standard-bearers on a single issue to prioritize unity, warning that “our kryptonite is division.”
“I saw it with Kamala Harris. There were too many people that say ‘I don’t agree with her on everything,’ Booker said on Saturday. “Well, you may disagree with her on 10% of her views, but you let someone get in office who you disagree with on everything,”
Some rejected that view entirely — framing it as a deflection from the one issue they argued cost Democrats Michigan most: Gaza.
While Booker did not explicitly mention Gaza, to former leaders of the state’s “Uncommitted” movement — which declined to endorse Harris in 2024 due to the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza — the senator’s remarks felt pointed.
“As someone who voted for Kamala Harris and recognizes the urgency of defeating Trumpism, I urge Sen. Booker and our party’s leaders to stop blaming Michigan voters we ought to be trying to win back,” said Abbas Alawieh, the co-founder of the Uncommitted Movement and a candidate for state senate.
That sentiment was echoed by the Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who suggested in an interview with MS NOW on Saturday that Booker was “missing the point” with his analysis.
“This is not just 10%, as if all the things are the same. If your tax dollars are being spent somewhere else to drop bombs on people who are your cousins, you might feel some kind of way. So for us to minimize that, I think we missed the point,” said El-Sayed, who would be the nation’s first Muslim senator if elected.
The stakes of that argument are clearest in places like Dearborn, a typically Democratic Arab-majority city that Trump narrowly won in 2024. Here, voters who spoke with MS NOW said that candidates hoping to win statewide must be more willing than Harris to “reassess” the relationship between the U.S. and Israel, and reject arms sales to the allied nation.
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“Both parties need to reassess their relationship with Israel, and both parties need to reassess their humanity,” Sujood Hamadi, a Lebanese-American Dearborn resident said. “It’s disgusting to see how the lives lost overseas are treated as though they’re just collateral damage.”
Hamadi, who prior to 2024 identified as a lifelong Democrat, voted for Jill Stein over Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. She told MS NOW she does not regret the decision — still reeling, she said, from a decision by Harris’ campaign to not platform members of the Uncommitted movement at the Democratic National Convention.
“I’m very ashamed of Democrats for not producing a candidate that we could all get behind, because the onus was really on them to produce a candidate that was worthwhile,” Hamadi said.
Local officials in Dearborn told MS NOW winning back voters like Hamadi will be key to statewide Democratic success — a challenge that is already rippling through the Senate field.
State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who is also seeking the party’s nomination for U.S. Senate, cast herself as a bridge,
“What I have heard from members of the Arab-American community and Dearborn community was that in some ways, we felt like pariahs and didn’t feel like Americans and Michiganders,” McMorrow said in an interview with MS NOW on Sunday. “My commitment is being the bridge candidate who can bring together all of our diverse communities.”
When Rep. Haley Stevens — endorsed by the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC and opposed to legislation that would block arms sales to Israel — addressed the party’s convention Sunday evening, she was met with audible boos.
Stevens argued that kitchen-table issues will be key to regaining support across the state, including in Dearborn.
“When I’m out campaigning, when I’m connecting with Michigan voters, I’m talking to them about my legislation to say no tariffs on groceries,” she told MS NOW. “I’m talking about my legislation — my Day One plan to stand up to the electricity and utility companies that are causing these cost-increasing endeavors at all of our expense.”
It is an argument Harris made in 2024: that a focus on kitchen-table politics, paired with sustained Democratic opposition to Trump, would be enough to overcome frustration over Gaza in the state.
That bet did not pan out.
Two years later, gathered in Detroit, Democrats were still debating why.
Nnamdi Egwuonwu is a reporter for MS NOW.