There is a 6-3 supermajority of conservatives on the Supreme Court, and a sitting Democrat is tampering with the party’s odds of winning a Senate majority. As if it were not bad enough for party Democrats that retired West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin decided to campaign – in person – for his old friend and fellow “moderate” Senator Susan Collins, on Sunday, Michigan Democratic Senate candidate, Haley Stevens, who narrowly lost the primary to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed Republican Mike Rogers. The November surprise came two days before Election Day after Stevens and Rogers appeared together at a Black church in Detroit.

Black Michiganders wanted Stevens to win the primary. Now she wants Mike Rogers to win the election. As popular as President Barack Obama still is, the homestretch joint appearance for Stevens and Rogers and subsequent endorsement video feels like it’s worth more political capital than the former president’s appearance last week for El-Sayed. The savvy, dynamic and perhaps a little too self-assured good doctor now needs to hope that Black voters stay home. Because if they do not, the chances of this senate seat staying Democratic have gotten as uncomfortably small and tight as a wool sweater put through the dryer. They likely depend on young voters showing out in force for El-Sayed.

This was a mercenary move: no feelings, no big-picture consideration, just get the job done. Republicans are usually the ones that look like mercenaries, with attack ads like Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis, the Swift boat crew against John Kerry, and robocalls about a Black love child against Republican presidential primary opponent John McCain. They play to win. The Stevens move feels like that.

The alleged final straw was over a left-wing PAC ad that related high prices in the U.S. to the government’s military aid to Israel. The ad endorsed El-Sayed. Stevens asked El-Sayed to denounce it, and he publicly said he has nothing to do with it and disagrees with its contents. Were his words not strong enough for Stevens? Is that all it takes to undermine your party’s power position? Something stinks here. It looks like an awfully mercenary move.

The country will find out on Tuesday whether she is successful at settling the score she felt she had to settle, but Stevens found out immediately that she may have ended her career as a Democratic politician, assuming that a lobbying job isn’t already in the works. Every Democrat of any power and persuasion has condemned her Rogers endorsement, while President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson have publicly praised it. Stevens has staff members resigning too, after blindsiding them with Sunday’s change-up.

Will an El-Sayed loss be worth it to her and a fiancé who has characterized as antisemitic every El-Sayed assertion that there should be less U.S. military aid? What if the collateral result is that the balance of the Supreme Court remains 6-3 or worse, and the country keeps getting decisions that reinterpret executive powers in dangerously undemocratic ways? What if El-Sayed just wins anyway?

What if?