Your Huddled Masses Yearning To Wreck Free

Continuing on with the theme for the past few days, we can check in on what "Nonnegotiable" is up to in Michigan. For those who don't remember, Nonnegotiable is a group of Michigan Jewish Democrats who responded to Abdul El-Sayed's primary victory by sending him a list of five ultimatums nonnegotiable demands that are absolutely not ultimatums but only brook no argument or discussion and must be agreed to unconditionally before a conversation can even begin. This, unsurprisingly, did not engender a positive response, and Nonnegotiable has spent the ensuing weeks complaining about how they're being overlooked and marginalized while also promising to take their movement national.

Anyway, what they're proposing is that Jews cast a protest vote by writing-in "Emma Lazarus" on their Senate ballot. This is an interesting gambit, in large part because I can't see any universe in which it doesn't blow up in their faces. Let's run through the plausible outcomes.

Possibility 1: As polling predicts, AES wins handily in spite of this maneuver. People learn Nonnegotiable was all bark and no bite. Moreover, because Nonnegotiable helpfully suggested an identifying mark for its protest votes, we can see just how irrelevant they were when the final results come in and "Emma Lazarus" has some 850 votes out 4,500,000 cast.

Possibility 2: Mike Rogers wins, and Nonnegotiable gives him his margin of victory. It is subsequently showered with all the adoration and praise that flowed from Democrats to Ralph Nader and the Green Party in 2000 after they provided the margin that let George W. Bush win Florida and the presidency. I'm not sure how people haven't internalized this lesson yet, but "we're the reason why your mortal enemies are in office" does not result in Democrats wanting to appease you, it results in Democrats hating you with an incandescent fury and wanting to put your heads on spikes outside the castle walls.

Possibility 3: Mike Rogers wins by more than the "Emma Lazarus" margin. Then we're going to get some weird two-step where they simultaneously insist that they mattered to the outcome, but also that it's totally unfair to blame them for the outcome. This incoherency will not go well for them.

The broader point, and this something Scott Lemieux (I think, I can't find it) has argued, is that in broad coalition politics a faction gains influence by showing it can win races, not by sabotaging other members of the coalition and thereby losing races. "[T]hrowing a tantrum and 'withholding your vote' by refusing to support democrats just makes everyone mad at you and diminishes your influence." The near-uniform Democratic reaction (including by very pro-Israel Democrats) to Haley Stevens of "screw Haley Stevens"? Nonnegotiable can expect a similar reception, ameliorated solely by the fact of their comparative irrelevancy.

Likewise, one might also learn a lesson that engaging with fellow coalitional stakeholders via ultimatum (protestations notwithstanding, yes, that's what Nonnegotiable did) is not a good strategy either. Nonnegotiable, in particular, made the especially counterproductive choice to frame its ultimatums in the most confrontational language possible, and expressly sought to evade the possibility of agreement by preemptively deriding any plausible steps El-Sayed might take to try and create consensus or reassurance as a sort of cheating ("cleverly worded arguments"). Of course El-Sayed was not going to talk to these people, and I don't blame him -- they've made it quite clear they're uninterested in having a conversation on anything other that purely supplicatory terms.