Dr. Abdul El-Sayed has been the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s Senate seat for just over a week now, and the Republican response has been sadly predictable, deeply xenophobic, and incredibly racist.
But El-Sayed, an epidemiologist, former public health director, and former Rhodes scholar, has parried their initial salvo of attacks so deftly that Donald Trump and the Republicans are going to have to sharpen their crayons and go back to the drawing board. That shit just ain’t gonna work this time around.
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Abdul’s team had barely finished cleaning up from the primary victory party before the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) dropped their first attack ad against him, and it was immediately clear how ugly this race was always going to get.
“ABDULRAHMAN EL-SAYED…THE MOST RADICAL CANDIDATE IN AMERICA,” booms the ominous voiceover. The image shifts to an out-of-context clip of El-Sayed saying, “I’m damn dangerous!”
The super-scary voiceover continues, trotting out tired Islamophobic othering and patently false accusations, desperately trying to paint El-Sayed, a lifelong Michigander, as “too radical, too dangerous” and “wrong for Michigan,” accusing him of supporting Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood political group.
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Cherry-picking gotcha pull quotes for attack ads is nothing new, of course. Did El-Sayed recently declare, “I’m damn dangerous?” In fact, he did. But context is everything. Let’s have a quick look at what he actually said:
“I’ll just say this. Go ask a child who needed a pair of glasses in Detroit if I’m dangerous. Go ask the folks who could not breathe because of smokestacks spewing out sulfur dioxide if I’m dangerous.
Go ask the parents of kids who are going to school that were leaded if I’m dangerous. Go ask the people flooded in medical debt if I’m dangerous. I think what they’ll tell you is: he’s the best friend you might have if you want government to work for you.
I’ll tell you what: if you’re AIPAC, I’m pretty damn dangerous. If you’re Big Pharma, I’m dangerous. If you’re Big Tech and want to put a data center in your backyard, I’m dangerous. If you’re a big bank that wants to collude against us, I am dangerous. If you’re a monopolist who wants to raise our prices, I’m dangerous. If you’re Chuck Schumer, I’m pretty damn dangerous. And I think it’s about damn time we had Democrats who are willing to be dangerous for all the people rigging our policies against us.”
This quote gives us an understanding of why the Republican attacks have been so quick and so dirty: El-Sayed is naming, shaming, and vowing to take on the entrenched dark-money machine, hitting all the pressure points that speak to disaffected voters — on both sides of the aisle.
Everyone’s healthcare bills are too high. Everyone’s grocery bills are too high. Everyone detests data centers. These are bread-and-butter issues that impact almost everyone, and vowing to confront them head-on is one compelling way to create a winning coalition.
Republicans cannot run on any sort of meaningful track record — unless you find yourself among the one percenters — so they’re tripling down on what they know best: xenophobia, racism, and Islamophobia.
But it’s not 2003 anymore, and that shit is not going to work this time — especially with a gifted candidate capable of dismissing their attacks and reframing the narrative like El-Sayed.
At a recent rally, El-Sayed flipped the script on his GOP opponent, Mike Rogers, for repeatedly Barack HUSSEIN Obama-ing his name — and turned Rogers’ own name into a devastatingly effective punchline in the process:
“Now, Mike, I’m just gonna remind you, if you don’t know how to say the name, keep the name out of your damn mouth. Or just call me Abdul,” said El-Sayed.
“But I’ve got some opinions about his name,” he continued. “See, it’s very fitting for him, ‘Rogers.’ Because that’s his answer every time a corporation or Donald Trump tells him to do something.
“Mike, we need you to put a data center in the backyard. Roger!
“Mike, we need you to hike their prescription drug prices. Roger!
“Mike, we need you to rubber-stamp this war we shouldn’t be fighting. Roger!
“Mike — and this one’s Donald Trump — I need you to lick these boots. Roger!
“And I think I speak for all of us here in Michigan when I say that we are done with Rogers. Go back to Florida where you belong!”
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El-Sayed is not a one-trick pony. The man produces mic-drop moments seemingly on demand. Every time Republicans come at him with a predictable attack, he finds a way to quickly turn it around and seize control of the narrative.
When Trump posted a wildly racist tweet featuring a photo of himself and his third wife, Melania, opposite El-Sayed and his wife of 20 years, Dr. Sarah Jukaku, with the caption “TWO VERY DIFFERENT AMERICAS,” El-Sayed wasted no time dismantling the fraudster’s tired trope.
Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper, El-Sayed said, “He’s right. One in which your overlords are two people who don’t like each other but joined in the interest of making billions of dollars off of you, or two people who genuinely love each other, enjoyed some pancakes together to come together to build the kind of America where they can raise a family and know that that family is going to have the good things. So yes, you’ve got two different visions of America.”
This is precisely the kind of authentic, locked-in messaging discipline that Zohran Mamdani rode all the way to the mayor’s office in New York City last year. And with headwinds already in Democrats’ favor this election year, the same can happen in Michigan with Abdul El-Sayed.
The rising Democratic star exudes an inspiring confidence in himself and his unapologetically progressive message and a palpable, deep-rooted hostility toward the failed policies of a Republican Party that long ago sold itself out to the highest corporate bidder. This gift gives him an aura of authenticity and star power that Mike Rogers, who genuinely seems like he’d rather be back in his adopted home of Florida, simply cannot match.
The bigotry and xenophobia that Republicans have relied on for so long to poison political campaigns and convince voters to cast ballots against their own economic self-interest simply will not work in this race. El-Sayed can take a punch and respond in kind with a flurry of his own.
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That picture of him and his wife is adorable! They're almost snuggling, they look so happy together. How could even someone like Trump find anything wrong with it?
And then Melania and Donald look like comic book villians.
I think Dr. El-Sayed could have left Chuck Schumer out of his statement, but for the rest of it --right on!!