CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins looked across the desk Wednesday evening and gave Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed the softest possible landing. Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, had just publicly demanded that El-Sayed cut ties with left-wing streamer Hasan Piker — a man who has said America deserved 9/11 and openly celebrates Hamas. All El-Sayed had to do was agree.

He wouldn't.

"I'm less focused on folks who are campaigning with me, more focused on the folks I'm campaigning to," El-Sayed told Collins. That's not a dodge. That's a deliberate refusal to distance himself from a guy whose greatest hits include screaming that critics are "unbelievably Islamophobic pieces of sht" and calling people "fcking terrorists" for questioning his worldview.

Collins laid it out plainly: "I mean, he said that you need to renounce people like the left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, who was out there campaigning with you... Do you have any plans to do that?" The question could not have been more direct. The answer could not have been more revealing.

El-Sayed added, "I think it's important to stay in touch with the folks you want to elect you." Read that slowly. The folks he wants to elect him include the Hasan Piker wing of the Democratic Party — the faction that thinks America is the villain, Israel is the enemy, and socialism is the solution. He's not embarrassed by them. He's courting them.

Fetterman, to his credit, drew the line Monday night. "I can't come together with someone if you are willing to embrace people that love Hamas, or that think America deserved 9/11," he said. "I think that's reasonable." It is reasonable. It's also apparently too much to ask of the Michigan Democratic nominee for United States Senate.

Even gun control activist Fred Guttenberg warned El-Sayed directly: "You will need to move on from Piker. Guessing you won't and I won't be surprised when you lose." So you've got a sitting Democratic senator and a prominent progressive activist both telling this guy the same thing — drop the socialist streamer — and he's treating their advice like junk mail.

One-third of Democrats now openly identify as socialists. That number used to be a fringe embarrassment. Now it's a constituency. El-Sayed isn't making a mistake by refusing to denounce Piker. He's making a calculation. He looked at the math and decided the socialist vote is worth more than the moderate vote.

The old playbook was simple: win the primary by running left, then sprint to the center for the general. Everybody knew the game and everybody played along. What El-Sayed just demonstrated on national television is that the sprint is over. There is no pivot coming. The center doesn't have the numbers anymore — or at least he doesn't think it does.

Fetterman can see where this goes. Guttenberg can see where this goes. CNN gave El-Sayed every opportunity to pretend otherwise.

He decided honesty was the better strategy. For once, we should take a Democrat at his word.