Republicans reacted to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Michigan Democratic primary for U.S. senator with predictable Islamophobia.
El-Sayed is a Michigan native who attended the University of Michigan and Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, earned his M.D. at Columbia University and was an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University from 2014 to 2015. He was executive director of the Detroit Health Department from 2015 to 2017, when he quit to run for governor, but 30% of the vote in August 2018 left him way behind Gretchen Whitmer on her way to the governor’s mansion. He founded a political action committee,to help elect progressive candidates and supported ballot initiatives in Michigan, and served on the Joe Biden–Bernie Sanders Unity Task Force on healthcare from 2020 until 2023, when he became director of the Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services of Wayne County until 2025, when he ran for the seat Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) is giving up.
As Kaitlyn Buss noted in the Detroit News Aug. 8, 48 hours after El-Sayed’s narrowly defeated centrist U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens by 14,893 votes — just under 1 percentage point of more than 1.5 million ballots counted in the primary election, Republicans were referring to El-Sayed by his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed. Ads supporting Republican nominee Mike Rogers juxtaposed El-Sayed with imagery from Sept. 11, 2001, and Osama bin Laden, while highlighting Rogers’ role in the operation that killed the al-Qaida leader.
Sen. Ted Cruz (a Canada native) argued on Fox News there is a “green-red convergence” between “communists and the Islamists,” suggesting El-Sayed supports Sharia law and harbors anti-Christian and anti-American views. Cruz also pointed to El-Sayed’s acquaintance with leftist social media influencer Hasan Piker, who has made inflammatory comments about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
President Donald Trump’s dementia was sparked, as he called El-Sayed “a communist” who is “full of sh*t” and ”a man of hate.” Trump claimed El Sayed hates Jewish people “with a passion that burns in his heart.” Vice President JD Vance echoed the rant, warning of “a President El-Sayed” in 2028.
“Apparently, Republicans are betting there is such a thing as bad publicity,” Buss wrote.
As Buss noted, “the broader strategy is unmistakable: define El-Sayed by his religion, his associations and his identity before voters define him by his message.”
If elected, El-Sayed would be the first Muslim in the U.S. Senate, and many Republicans say there is no place for Muslims in U.S. government. But El Sayed, a physician and public health activist, is not backing away from his Muslim faith, which he notes is not far from Christian and Jewish traditions.
Before the primary, El-Sayed met with progressive pastors, imams and rabbis and spoke about how his Muslim faith informs his progressive views, the Associated Press reported.
The public health researcher asked the group of faith leaders ahead of the primary, “What does the inspiration of holding yourself accountable to something bigger than you mean for what you do for the people around you?”
El-Sayed added, “If you can’t eat food and I have something to do about it, I better do it.”
Progressive Democratic politicians have won major electoral victories across the country in recent months amid growing frustrations surrounding inequality, affordability and potential threats to job security posed by artificial intelligence. As the economy becomes a flashpoint for the November midterms, many candidates and voters who support them cite religion as a justification for their positions.
“We’re in an era of historical inequality,” El-Sayed told AP. “Most faith traditions — certainly the Abrahamic faith traditions [which include Islam, Christianity and Judaism] — put a lot more burden on the wealthy.”
Republicans prefer to reduce the burden on the wealthy and let working people fend for themselves. They ignore the Parable of the Sheep and Goats in Matthew’s Gospel Chapter 25: 31-46, in which Jesus foretold the final judgment would reward those who fed the hungry, gave drinks to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, and took care of the sick and prisoners. The righteous would receive eternal life, Jesus said, while the uncharitable would be cast “into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”
El-Sayed has made “Medicare for All” a fixture of his campaign, which indicates he is closer to Jesus’ teaching than Republican leaders who are unfamiliar with the Gospels..
El-Sayed is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, but many of his supporters are members of the DSA or are comfortable with their agenda. Some centrist Democrats are concerned El-Sayed may be too far left to be electable in a swing state, but he got off to a good start with an Aug. 7 unity rally in Detroit, where he reiterated the pillars of his progressive populist campaign: Medicare-for-all, getting corporate money out of politics and taxing the rich to provide more services for the working poor. He didn’t mention Israel, whose military activities he has criticized, or the pro-Israel lobby that spent tens of millions of dollars to defeat him. He also didn’t rail against the Democratic establishment that stood against him in the contentious primary.
El-Sayed called his former opponents, U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who dropped out of the race in July, “incredible public servants.” Stevens and McMorrow quickly and enthusiastically endorsed El-Sayed, with Stevens announcing her “full support” for him,
El-Sayed did well among young voters and college educated Democrats, who are less affected by red baiting, but he needs to do better among Black voters, who appeared to have questions about him. Stevens won Detroit, a majority-Black city, by 28 percentage points in the primary, and she had an eight-point edge in counties with significant Black population. Several Black Detroit residents told The Washington Post they haven’t heard from or seen El-Sayed enough in their community. Stevens said she “had some Black-owned businesses that maybe he’d want to go talk to.”
Third Way, a leading centrist Democratic group, plans to spend $15 million between now and 2028 to discredit El-Sayed and other democratic socialism, Jonathan Cowan, Third Way’s president, told The New York Times.
The Democratic Socialists of America movement poses a “mortal danger” for Democrats, Cowan says.
But Charles Pierce of Esquire.com noted the Third Way people are not “moderates.” “They are conservative Democrats, and El-Sayed’s positions are not ‘far left.’ They are well within the mainstream of Democratic opinion, and most of them are popular in the country at large. It is no longer 1992 [when the Third Way propelled Bill Clinton to the White House]. There is a gathering power within the Democratic party, and there is absolutely no need to be afraid of it or of winning.” We say: Let El-Sayed roll.— JMC
No comments:
Post a Comment