Candidates Settle Michigan Senate Race With Competitive Patriotism Breathalyzer

According to a panel of exhausted municipal pollsters, Michigan’s political discourse reached a civilized milestone Thursday when neither Senate candidate attempted to sever the other’s jugular with a rusted license plate. Instead, Mike Rogers and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed spent ninety intoxicating minutes diagnosing each other with varying degrees of ideological organ failure. Rogers accused El-Sayed of harboring an insidious, almost artisanal contempt for the Republic, while El-Sayed countered that Rogers’s lumbar vertebrae had been legally deeded to a Palm Beach golf resort since 2016. The exchange represented a dramatic thaw in relations, as moderators were only forced to deploy acoustic riot sirens twice during a spirited symposium on who possesses more miniature brass eagles. Viewers hoping for remedies regarding groundwater toxicity or municipal bond yields were instead rewarded with an Olympic exhibition in treason-tag, culminating in an unspoken agreement that the highest calling of a Great Lakes statesman is to suspect his colleague of treason until the commercial break.