At a Wednesday town hall in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Rep. Debbie Dingell stood at a podium next to Rep. Jamie Raskin, stumping for Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, and told the room she would no longer answer questions about socialist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker.

"I am done, so don't any reporter ask me again about Hasan Piker," Dingell said.

That's the sound of a politician who knows she's standing next to a live grenade and is furious that people keep pointing at it.

Piker, for those lucky enough to have avoided him, is the far-far-left-wing political influencer who once declared "America deserved 9/11" and called for streets to run with "red capitalist blood." He's become a political liability for Democrat candidates like Michigan's El-Sayed. El-Sayed appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" earlier this month to try to manage the damage, calling Piker's 9/11 remark "a dumb statement."

Dingell's spokesperson, Matt Krack, confirmed the congresswoman's position after the event: "Congresswoman Dingell made clear this afternoon she will not answer any more questions about him." Which is a very specific kind of non-denial. Not "she disagrees with everything Piker has said." Not "Piker has no role in this campaign." Just: stop asking.

Dingell herself offered this during the town hall: "I don't agree with Hasan Piker on a lot of stuff." A lot of stuff. Not all of it. Not even most of it. A lot. Which leaves a mathematically interesting amount of Piker's worldview that a sitting congresswoman apparently finds agreeable.

The frustration from Dingell was real, and that's what makes it useful. "It's not what November is about," she insisted. "Republicans are trying to make it." The argument is that talking about Piker is a distraction from healthcare, affordability, and hunger — the issues Democrats want to run on in Michigan. But Republicans aren't making Piker an issue. Piker made himself an issue when he celebrated the worst terrorist attack in American history, and El-Sayed made it worse by refusing to fully cut ties.

Here's the pattern. A Democrat associates with someone whose views are genuinely radioactive. The association becomes public. The Democrat tries the half-distance — "I don't agree with a lot of stuff" — because a full disavowal would alienate the base that loves the radical. Then a senior party figure gets asked about it on camera and melts down, which becomes its own story.

Dingell didn't defuse anything on Wednesday. She confirmed that the Piker question has no good answer. Disavow him completely and lose the online left. Defend him and lose everyone who remembers September 11th.

She chose option three: refuse to talk about it and hope it goes away. That strategy has a name in politics. It's called losing.