The United Kingdom stood virtually alone against the Nazi war machine in June 1941. As Germany prepared to invade the Soviet Union that month, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a lifelong anti-communist, declared, "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."

Here's the question Churchill was confronting: Just when does politics require us to overlook something that we regard as morally unacceptable?

Sen. John Fetterman has said that some progressive candidates including Michigan Democratic nominee for the Senate Abdul El-Sayed are running "just below the surface of just Jew-hating." Nevertheless, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Jewish Democrat, will support El-Sayed against the Republican Mike Rogers who has Donald Trump's endorsement. She told a gathering of the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus, "We have a moral imperative to place the needs of the world above even our own self-interest and, yes, even our own survival." Nessel suggests that concerns about climate change, nuclear warfare and threats to democracy should outweigh even grave concerns about El-Sayed.

Earlier this year, El-Sayed first condemned the attack on a Michigan synagogue but then seemed to rationalize it, explaining that "hurt people hurt people" and "violence is a cycle." It was as if Middle Eastern violence somehow mitigated what the FBI called a "Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism." Later, El-Sayed issued the type of nonapology apology that's rife in American politics these days: "To anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I'm really sorry."

El-Sayed has appeared with streamer Hasan Piker, who called Hamas "a thousand times better" than Israel. Even when pressed, El-Sayed declined to explicitly condemn the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps over the slaughter of protesters on the streets of Iran last January. According to Iranian health officials cited by Time Magazine, as many as 30,000 people may have been killed in just two days. Asked whether Iran or Israel posed a greater threat to the United States, El-Sayed refused to choose, saying that "Both of them have proven dangerous in their own way."

Whether advertently or inadvertently, El-Sayed's remarks about Israel in the wake of the synagogue attack and his appearance with Piker risk fueling antisemitism. El-Sayed's non-Jewish primary opponent Haley Stevens said of him during the campaign, "Everyone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans." Yet, after El-Sayed won the primary, Stevens, too, endorsed him.

In a recent conversation with Nessel, El-Sayed said he is "committed to having a tent where we march in lockstep on the 95% of things we agree on, and where we continue to have the conversation in that tent about the spaces where we disagree." But what if that 5% encompasses rhetoric that fans the flames of antisemitism and the 95% includes universal government-funded health insurance for all? Is El-Sayed right that Democrats should keep talking about their disagreements, or are there principles at stake that cannot be compromised?

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, also a Jewish Democrat, wrote a book last year called "Antisemitism in America: A Warning." In its introduction, he writes, "It is never wrong to speak out against antisemitism." And yet, like Nessel, he has publicly backed El-Sayed as part of a campaign to restore a Democratic majority in the Senate. Former President Barack Obama has appeared in a campaign ad for El-Sayed without addressing concerns that El-Sayed may have crossed a line into the kind of antisemitism the former president condemned days after the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.

In a country so crunchingly split between parties, voting has long required Americans to make hard choices. In the 1930s, New Deal Democrats voted for Franklin Roosevelt even though his governing coalition depended on Southern Democrats who supported segregation. In 1952, Republicans won control of the House and Senate even as GOP Sen. Joseph McCarthy undermined the Bill of Rights. In 2024, Americans elected Donald Trump, convicted on 34 felony counts by a New York state jury and found liable for sexual abuse by a federal civil jury.

What should a Michigan voter who stands against antisemitism but in favor of El-Sayed's plan for universal healthcare do?

Questions about excusing reprehensible beliefs and behavior are bound to arise in every state. Still, Michigan is a weather vane, having voted for Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024. As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says, "If Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere."

But choosing which candidates and countries to support involves more than partisan devotion. What those Michigan voters, and all of us, need to decide is whether politics can trump the inexcusable.

A renaissance man, Keith Raffel has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started a successful internet software company, and had six books published including five novels and a collection of his columns. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. You can learn more about him at keithraffel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com.

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