On Sunday, the first of November, Stevens attended a service with Rogers at a Christian church in Detroit called Perfecting Church, whose congregation is mostly Black, and then declared in a video posted on X that she would give Rogers her vote. This took place, UPI writes, two days before the elections. Two days earlier El-Sayed had publicly removed her from his own rally, which he was to hold that same Sunday at another church in the city alongside Jim Clyburn, her mentor. The cause was an outside advertisement concerning money given to Israel, which Stevens had demanded El-Sayed condemn. The Free Beacon says the advertisement was made by Cenk Uygur and calls it antisemitic; UPI says it linked high grocery prices to aid for Israel, and that some regard it as antisemitic. El-Sayed, according to UPI, refused to disavow it; according to the Free Beacon, he wrote instead against Stevens and the lobbying body AIPAC. UPI adds that Stevens received millions of dollars from pro-Israel lobbying groups in the primary, and that El-Sayed wishes to turn that aid to domestic purposes.

Stevens told reporters that El-Sayed had made it plain to her that she was neither wanted nor admitted in his camp; that one must stand with the country, not with hate; that she could not stand with Hasan Piker, who speaks daily to audiences over the internet and assists El-Sayed. Against her, Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani and Curtis Hertel, the party's chairman in Michigan, charge her with betrayal; Sanders asserts that she was moved by a fragile and swollen ego. At the same time Justin German, for eight years her chief of staff, and Logan Basch, her communications director, left her, as The Guardian reports on the word of Manu Raju; German wrote on behalf of the whole staff that they would follow El-Sayed. El-Sayed told reporters that he would gladly answer questions about the state's affairs, and less gladly about this quarrel.

Caesar was not surprised that things fell out so. The trigger was the dismissal; the cause, an old dispute over money for Israel which splits the faction in two: those who are backed by pro-Israel lobbying groups, and those who wish that aid abolished. Each side has its pretext ready: Stevens' friends speak of loyalty to the country, her opponents of the sting of defeat. For men generally believe what they wish to believe. What passed between the two over the advertisement the reports do not agree; nor has anyone yet reported on whose advice Rogers came to that church.

When the civil war began, Caesar saw Titus Labienus, his legate through the whole Gallic war, go over to Pompey. He did not pursue him with abuse; he sent his baggage after him and held his own men the more firmly. At Corfinium he released his captured enemies unharmed, to make useful men of adversaries. Caesar therefore judges that a general who, before the battle, publicly throws out of his camp a defeated rival, one who carried the Jewish and Black vote in the primary, as the Free Beacon writes, does nothing other than hand the enemy a cohort together with its auxiliaries.

Yet Stevens is not free of blame. An officer who, having accepted defeat, followed the victor's standards and then, two days before the battle, goes over to the enemy has chosen the moment when she could do the most harm. Rogers understood this at once, and so did Donald Trump, who is said to have praised her. Her centurions, however, stayed with the standard, not with the officer: German and Basch left the officer, not the faction. Discipline in the lower ranks is therefore intact; in the highest it is broken.

The remedy is at hand, and it is not new. A prudent general settles his quarrels with defeated rivals before the battle, with terms agreed and pledges taken, not with announcements to the press; the defeated man who wishes to be useful swallows his defeat and holds the line. But Fortune, whose power is great in all affairs and above all in war, brings about great reversals by small turns. Tomorrow the ballots will show how much weight this quarrel carried. Caesar meanwhile settles this much: he who dismisses an ally before the battle makes the enemy a gift of a cohort; she who crosses over before the line is drawn finds no trust even with the victor.