We find ourselves in the heart of campaign season as we are now less than two months away from this year’s mid-term elections. With the primaries behind us, the national parties are moving quickly to coalesce around their chosen candidates. But it seems as though the primaries have produced some candidates that the national parties are reluctant to back. One of those candidates is Abdul El-Sayed, who is running for U.S. Senate in our neighbor to the east, Michigan. Some of that reluctance has been the kind of company that El-Sayed kept during the primary, most notably Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. While Piker’s support was an asset to El-Sayed during the primary, now that the Senate candidate has to convince Michiganders of all walks of life to vote for him, Piker has become a liability for the Democratic nominee. And while El-Sayed has made an effort to try and distance himself from Piker, the streamer has not made it easy for the candidate.
El-Sayed has tried to tone down some of his firebrand messaging that was his hallmark in the primary, but Piker has no incentive to turn down the heat. Piker isn’t running for public office, he makes his money off of streams, subscriptions, and making content. Toning down the rhetoric wouldn’t be good for his bottom line. And every time Piker says something controversial, he forces El-Sayed to defend him.
For example, just last week Piker said that the United States is worse than al-Qaeda “pound for pound,” telling Axios in an interview that he believes that America conducts more terrorism in the world than al-Qaeda. It’s an especially provocative message right after we just got done observing the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Piker followed up saying that the United States has “caused tremendous terror all around the world.”
The example Piker cited in defense of his claim was the February 28 bombing of an Iranian school, killing more than 100 schoolgirls. International investigators have concluded that it was U.S. Tomahawk missiles that struck the school and that the bombing meets the definition of a war crime due to the recklessness of the targeting. The U.S. is not accused of purposefully targeting the school, which is undoubtedly of little comfort to the parents of the dead girls. But in international law, intent does matter. There is a big difference between the kind of recklessness that leads to civilian deaths and the purposeful targeting of civilians. That is not to excuse or lessen the tragedy of those young girls being killed, but to act like there’s no difference between the United States and al-Qaeda is the kind of take aimed at getting clicks, not having a serious conversation about the consequences of America’s intervention in the Middle East and Central Asia.
When asked about Piker’s comments, El-Sayed said in a statement, “I do not agree with this statement, nor do I give much weight to the statements made by a social media streamer.” He also called Piker a “streamer in California” after comments Piker made in 2019 resurfaced in which he said that America “deserved 9/11.” Except that comes off as disingenuous. Piker was by El-Sayed’s side throughout much of the primary, and now he’s just some “streamer in California?” Americans have a short memory, but not that short. Even goldfish remember the primary season where Piker was everywhere to be found around El-Sayed’s campaign.
El-Sayed wants us to believe that Piker is an irrelevant distraction, but it was El-Sayed who brought that distraction into the spotlight by campaigning with him. The company that a candidate keeps is a legitimate concern for voters who want to know about the beliefs, values, and morals of said candidate. Other candidates seeking office have had to permanently separate themselves from people with whom they were close, but who became political liabilities. President Obama’s relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright comes to mind.
El-Sayed needs to convince voters that Piker is actually just some “streamer in California” and not someone to whom he will turn to for advice if he becomes a U.S. Senator.