Interview: Abdul El-Sayed makes his case

My conversation with the Michigan Senate candidate

Today, on the eve of a major election in Michigan, I’m delighted to share a lightly edited transcript of my recent conversation with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who appears to be the frontrunner in the race, according to polls. We talked about his notion of “America first from the left,” whether moderation is a genuine philosophy or a defensive tactic for Democrats, why he believes Israel is an affordability issue that resonates on the Great Lakes, and how he responds to Jews feeling alienated by the left.

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Obviously, every election is a contest between two people or sometimes more. But your race has clearly become one of those that is not just about a choice of two people, two personalities, two histories. I wonder what you see it as.

It didn’t have to be what it’s become. This could have been a competition of ideas, as I think we would hope our democracy would offer us in these elections. What it’s ultimately become is a competition between money and people. We’re raising unprecedented amounts of grassroots money for a Michigan Senate race. And then on the other side, you’ve got $50 million of money from outside super PACs, AIPAC making up the bulk of it, and then PACs representing big pharma, big tech, big insurance, big utilities coming in to buy 30-second ads that are blanketing the airwaves, for a candidate that has not built a grassroots campaign. Could have, but chose not to. This has become a test of whether or not that can truck an honest movement of people trying to take government back.

The kind of moderation you would hear from Haley Stevens, your opponent, do you think about it as a substantive, coherent philosophy that happens to be different from yours? Or do you think about it as entirely an emanation of what donors want? In other words, if those donors were all to disappear tomorrow, do you think Haley Stevens would immediately see the light and share your philosophy and view of the world?

It’s not a moral or political philosophy. It is a tactical philosophy. And the tactical philosophy goes like this: If you would like to win a campaign in the post-Citizens United era, when there’s huge amounts of money that can flow, you need to get money from the people who can flow it fastest. And those are corporations and a few special interests. And so what you have to do is you have to use the specter of moderation as a foil to explain to your voters why you can’t possibly get guaranteed healthcare. You can’t possibly stand up to corporate monopolies, which then excuses you to go get money from the same people who are funding Republican campaigns.

And the hard part about this is that if you actually challenge the system, they bring the full weight of the system against you. To lie about you, to lie about your opponent, to mis- and disinform. And that’s what we’re up against.

Michigan contains America in a way that not every place does. There are Alabama vibes in parts of Michigan, there are Manhattan vibes in parts of Michigan, and there’s everything in between. And ideas like yours, historically — when you go out to places where these ideas are not supposed to have traction or where people are supposed to be afraid of someone singing your gospel — what do you think is happening that is causing a turning in what’s possible politically?

I actually don’t know that these ideas are not or have not been acceptable in Michigan. You know, we have a history in Michigan. Philip Hart is the best-known, most beloved former senator from Michigan. Philip Hart is the reason both your parents got to come here and my parents got to come here. It’s because of the civil rights movement, but in terms of turning that civil rights movement into real legislation. So we have a history of this. I understand that the neoliberal version of the Democratic Party has tried to turn that off. But where it’s been tested — Bernie 2016, for example — it won. And so I actually think there are a lot more people in Michigan who are looking for a common-sense approach to politics.

A lot of the distaste in Michigan for politics itself is the failure to deliver a politics that feels like it’s actually for you. More often, we’re sieving our politics through the acceptable ideas of elites on either side of the political divide. And so when you actually deliver a very clear message of saying, Hey, listen, say what you will about my ideas. I’m not bought off by a corporation who’s raising your premiums, who’s raising your car note rates, who’s raising the price of your groceries, who’s charging you more for utilities than in 46 other states over the last 20 years. Say what you will about me. Like I’m telling you what I really think. Oftentimes, Michiganders are like, OK.

I met a guy, he told me, You know what, I don’t like you very much. I was like, I’m sorry. He’s like, Yeah, but I’m voting for you. I’m like, OK, this is weird, why? He’s like, because I think you really want me to have healthcare. I was like, I really want you to have healthcare. He’s like, Yeah, I know. So then I was like, OK, so why don’t you like me? He’s like, Because you’re Muslim. I was like, Oh, OK.

At the end of the day, I don’t need you to like me. I need you to like you.

I remember when I was covering the Bernie campaign in 2019, and we did a swing state tour. I can’t remember which stop it was. There were a bunch of union guys who very clearly seemed like they had left a factory and come straight to the event, still in work clothes. And I remember watching some other reporter interview them. And they were basically like, Oh, I hate Bernie’s socialism. That’s ridiculous. But he’s fighting for people like me. And I felt like I was watching something happening in real time that was interesting and weird. And it feels like you are downstream of that turning in the culture.

Anybody who knows me knows I’m not an ideologue. I’m too much of a scientist to be an ideologue, unfortunately or fortunately. Maybe it’s just that I got my brain pickled in medical school. If there’s faith, there’s faith, but everything else requires evidence. So show me evidence. And, you know, I have this unfortunate habit, like you, of trying to read about the things that I talk about. So I read about capitalism. And it turns out that the biggest risk to capitalism, if you go to the original texts of the people who even coined the idea of capitalism, was not government regulation, as much as Ronald Reagan and his friends want to tell us that. The biggest risk to capitalism was always monopoly. And we live in an era where you have basically algorithmic monopoly.

So you’ve got a couple of corporations, they use algorithms that basically tie them together and they say, we’re not colluding, it’s just the algorithm doing what it does. And then all the prices ratchet up in a particular way. And then when you have a few enough producers in a particular market, then they can squeeze downward and squeeze all of their workers in what’s called monopsony. All of that is to say that if you’re a worker in any industry, you’re getting squeezed. And if you’re a consumer in any industry, you’re getting squeezed. They make more from what we have to buy from them, and they pay less for the work we do. And so I don’t need anybody to agree with me on any ideology, because I don’t agree on any ideology. But my job is to go and narrate what’s happening in people’s lives and tell them what I think we could actually do to solve it.

That’s my job. That’s the work. That’s what political persuasion is about. You wrote a whole book about it. It’s about being able to say, Hey, listen, Remember, I ran in 2018, I said this thing that I think folks weren’t ready to hear, but that’s just proven more poignant now, which is that Donald Trump’s not the disease. He’s just the worst symptom. The disease is the system, and it allows the richest folks to buy politicians to do their bidding. I mean, that’s exactly what’s happening in the trade. $50 million doesn’t just fall off a tree. They don’t give it to you because they think they’re nice. They give it to you because they know that there’s going to be a pro quo on the back of the quid.

So if I’m out there being like, hey, look, your utilities are getting more expensive. Your groceries are getting more expensive, your healthcare is getting more expensive. And it’s all getting worse, by the way. And it’s all because of the money that’s coming into these elections to defeat anybody who wants to stand up to it. And then all of a sudden, guess what happens? $50 million materializes into this race and attack ad after attack ad after attack ad. And I’m like, what did I tell you all?

So if you like the system as it works, you got two options. The other Democrat I’m running against or the Republican, because guess what? They’re all being bought and paid for by the exact same companies. I’m the only one who doesn’t take their money.

I wanted to ask you about the war in Gaza and the way that argument has become central to this race and so many races, where you might not expect it to be as central as it has become. I heard Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, say something in a New York Times interview that was striking, and I thought might explain this from one angle. He said, We’ve learned in the past that if politicians are willing to make one exception in their advocacy of human rights, they’re likely to be willing to make others. Is that how you see the connection between something that may feel very far away for some voters in Michigan — of course, feels very close to other voters in Michigan — and issues like the price of eggs, wages, healthcare, these kitchen-table things?

What is the link in your politics on Israel and Gaza and those very bread-and-butter issues in Michigan?

I think there’s two things. Number one, you know, Israel is an affordability issue. Every time you want to put glasses on kids’ faces or give people healthcare or fix a school, somebody pops up and is like, Well, how are you going to pay for that? I don’t know. Maybe we should keep our money here instead of sending it there to drop bombs on people’s schools or their hospitals. That’s our money. You just saw $3.3 billion voted to send abroad to a foreign government that, by the way, has guaranteed healthcare and can guarantee college education without debt. We can’t. And you want to send my money over there? That’s insane.

People are calling this America first from the left.

Yes, I have no problem saying America first. Yes, America first.

Here’s the other point. If I tell you I want to fight for more affordable healthcare and I want to fight for better schools and I want to fight for union representation, voters are asking two questions. One is explicit and one is implicit. The first question is, What are you going to fight for? And then the second one is: How do I know you’re going to fight for it?

Where Democrats often fail is the “How do I know you’re going to fight for it?” part. So if you can’t call a genocide a genocide, which is like obviously happening, everyone’s seeing it on their phones, and you can’t call it a genocide — because why? Well, it turns out that if you call it a genocide, someone’s going to drop $30 million on your campaign and end your campaign. What that tells me is you’re probably not going to show up and fight because everyone else is going to spend money, too. So you care more about you being in office than you care about you fighting for the thing.

There are easier, better lives to live that don’t involve me spending days and days away from my little kids. As Democrats, we’ve got to recognize that if you don’t pass the moral Rorschach test of being able to show up and say the obvious thing, at some point, there is this — to use economic terms, there’s a moral hazard in every vote. And at some point, you say you’re going to do a thing, like it’s a commitment I’m making to you by giving you my vote that you’re going to do the thing that I expect you to do, and you fail the moral hazard. Because you can’t even say the obvious thing because you’re more afraid of somebody else’s money than you are of disappointing me, the voter, who is counting on you to fight for you.

You live in a state that has a large Muslim population — and a significant Jewish population. So there’s one group of defenders of Israel who are really militant. Let’s set them aside. There’s another group of Jewish Americans who I think has huge problems with the current leadership of Israel, problems with this war, reservations about it. And, at the same time, feels a lot of fear and anxiety right now around Israel. There’s a synagogue in Brooklyn that I’ve been to a few times. The rabbi of that synagogue is one of the fiercest critics of Israel in the American Jewish rabbinate. And on the stage at her synagogue is an American flag and an Israeli flag. No matter what she says, that’s still the other flag there. How do you talk to Jewish Americans who might agree with you on some of the substance of Israel’s behavior, but do feel like there’s a dangerous turn in the left that makes them not sure if they belong?

So I grew up in a community where about 40 percent of our community was Jewish. And I’m really grateful for that, for folks who know Bloomfield Hills in Michigan. I grew up about 15 minutes away from Temple Israel. I’d been to Temple Israel before. I grew up going to bar and bat mitzvahs, going to shul, going to seder. And I learned so much about the Jewish faith, about Jewish culture, Jewish history, Jewish traditions, Jewish contributions to American life. I’m really grateful for that. I love and revere Judaism and the Jewish people, no doubt about it. I also recognize that Judaism and the Jewish people are different from AIPAC and Israel.

And I say that as an Egyptian American. My folks came from the place that gets the second-most contributions in foreign military aid in the world from the United States. I love Egyptian history, tradition, and culture. Even when I’m elected to the U.S. Senate, I will be the chief critic of the Egyptian government. That doesn’t make me anti-Egyptian. That just makes me anti-Egyptian government. And I would hate if somebody were to assume that I agree with the Egyptian government because I happen to share the same ethnicity with the majority of people who live in Egypt.

And for folks who say, Listen, the role of Israel is critical to me in my political opinions, I would say then you and I are just going to disagree on that. But I also think it’s important for us to ask the bigger meta question about the role that AIPAC has inserted itself in our politics. If one super PAC can spend $30 million trying to annihilate the character of a candidate because that candidate opposes sending military aid to Israel, if one super PAC can do that, that on its own terms is what we’re talking about when we say we should end Citizens United.

Look, I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis alike. And a lot of people ask, Well, do you believe in one state, two states? I’m like, that’s not my role. Actually, as an American policymaker, part of the problem is that we’ve had too much hubris to think that we get to dictate what the outcome should look like. I actually think that it’s about a process. I want a free Palestinian people and a free Jewish Israeli people to be able to come together and decide what the ultimate peace should look like in the region. And the problem is that right now, under the guise of a two-state solution, we are allowing our government to aid, arm, and abet the very people trying to foreclose on the possibility of Palestinian self-determination.

Most importantly, the money that we send trying to foreclose on the possibility of Palestinian self-determination — doing genocide, doing apartheid — that is money that should be spent here, providing for children here to do and have the things that they need and deserve in terms of schools, in terms of healthcare, in terms of infrastructure. So it’s not about hating anyone. It’s not about wanting any less for anyone. It’s about loving everyone. It’s about believing that Palestinians and Jewish Israelis have rights.

It’s about believing that kids in Michigan have rights to their tax dollars before anyone else has those rights.

If you win, what will it prove to be true about the world?

That we can have democracy of the people, by the people, and for the people. That people-powered movements can beat a lot of money. That money can’t foreclose on the truth and that we have an opportunity to build a government. Look, my vision at the end is simple. What would America look like if we behaved as though all of our kids were all of our kids? What would we build? What would we have? How would we make decisions? That’s what I want to see.

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