ANN ARBOR, Mich. — As students banged on desks and stomped their feet inside a packed lecture hall at the University of Michigan, someone decades older stood in the back, quietly taking in the scene.
Debbie Dingell, a longtime Democratic congresswoman, was there to watch progressive U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed campaign with Hasan Piker, a popular yet controversial online streamer.
Dingell has often served as an early warning system for her party, cautioning that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was on track to win Michigan in 2016 and 2024. Now she was once again scoping out the shifting political landscape, and something caught her eye…