Michigan and Missouri voted on the same night, and if you wanted a headline about where the Democratic Party is heading, you got two, and they disagree with each other. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed beat Haley Stevens in a primary that turned almost entirely on Israel — the progressive lane won, narrowly. In Missouri, Wesley Bell beat Cori Bush, again, the identical matchup with the identical result as two years ago, like the state re-ran the experiment just to be sure. One state says the energy is on the left. The other says the left already tried that exact race here and it didn’t work twice. Pick your narrative — the data will happily supply either one, which is exactly why I don’t trust primary-night narratives, including the one I almost wrote two sentences ago.

The quieter story of the night belongs to a Republican. Chuck Edwards dropped his re-election bid in North Carolina after the House Ethics Committee recommended he be censured for harassing two female staffers. The misconduct itself is, sadly, the least surprising part. What got my attention is that the process actually landed a punch. Congressional ethics complaints mostly go somewhere to be filed and quietly buried — I was just writing a few weeks ago about a congresswoman who lived in a senior facility for months without anyone in the building noticing. This time the committee found something, said so on the record, and a guy who probably could have coasted to reelection anyway decided not to test that theory. Learned helplessness is the going diagnosis for institutions this year. Nice to catch one still has a working nerve.

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