The Glass Wall

The only piece of the Root interview I had seen was the short one where El-Sayed tries to explain that Mike Rogers is an NPC.

He says the term, then has to define it. Non-playing character. Someone who just goes along with the program. The clip is brief. The explanation takes longer than the insult. That was the only part I had watched.

The rest of the interview is longer. In it he talks about Black voters in Detroit.

He tells Ashley Allison that too many Black Detroiters have had bad experiences with “somebody who looks like me.” Then he describes the glass wall: the party store, the gas station, the distance that is already set before he speaks.

Here's a short clip of the exchange here: [VIDEO]

In the primary he carried the state. He did not carry Detroit. He was outspent. He says the money was aimed at the connection. The connection still needed work.

Current polls put Black support for him in the mid-to-high 60s. Democratic Senate preference in the same surveys sits closer to the low 80s. The gap is the softness. Soft enough that a Republican opening a field office in Detroit is worth noting. Soft enough that he is still explaining the wall in October.

He lists three things Black voters can hold him to: maternal mortality, capital in Black neighborhoods, school funding that still follows old lines. Those are concrete. The glass wall is the part that does not fit on the list.

Rogers is not going to win Detroit. He needs the margin of people who stay home, or the margin of people who decide the name and the face still matter. El-Sayed is the one who named the wall. He is also the one who has to decide whether talking about it in a D.C. interview moves anyone on the other side of it.

Here's the full interview: [VIDEO]