Both the middle-class left and liberal press have pointed to the narrow victory won by Abdul El-Sayed in the Aug. 4 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan as part of a surprising socialist swing in U.S. politics. For their own reasons — smelling a greater chance for their own candidates in the coming general elections — Republican spokespeople are also speaking overtime about these results.
But the fact is the primary victory of El-Sayed and other electoral gains by similar Democratic Party candidates point to the weakness of these forces and the widespread distaste for their politics in the working class.
El-Sayed, who now says he’s not a socialist, proudly enjoyed the backing of the socialist wing of the Democratic Party. He and like-minded political figures, from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who is preparing for a 2028 presidential run — to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, combine some self-professed “sewer socialist” reforms with a heavy dose of opposition to the Jewish state of Israel and diatribes against Donald Trump as a “fascist.”
While preelection polls showed El-Sayed sweeping the election, he only defeated Rep. Haley Stevens, who was promoted by the party establishment, by less than 1% of the vote. He got the vote of just 17.5% of registered Democrats in the state. Far from being enamored with El-Sayed, most sat out the primary, not convinced either candidate was worth voting for.
Of those who did vote, he got the majority in only 30 of Michigan’s 83 counties. Importantly, he didn’t win a single county in the heavily Black metro-Detroit area. For a radical “peoples” candidate, to lose the Black vote in Detroit speaks volumes.
Many workers weren’t convinced this former health official — a Rhodes scholar who attended Oxford and graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons — had any real clue about what their lives are like, let alone offered a road to help them protect themselves from the worsening impact of the capitalist crisis.
El-Sayed focused on tours to college campuses, where he appealed to aspiring middle-class layers that fear the crisis will push them down into the working class. He got 70% of the votes in the Ann Arbor area, home to the University of Michigan, and strong support in East Lansing, home to Michigan State. Along with thousands of students, both areas are home to large communities of young professionals.
In what some might consider a surprise, he also carried some Michigan counties with the highest median incomes.
Since the election, Democrats of all stripes have raced to embrace him in the name of party unity, from Kamala Harris to Sen. Chuck Schumer to former President Barack Obama, and he has embraced them back. He said he hopes Obama campaigns with him, adding, “You really should meet your heroes.”
“I don’t need you to like me,” Schumer told El-Sayed bluntly. “I just need you to win.”
This doesn’t mean El-Sayed backs all other Democrats. He now says one of his first tasks will be to try to defeat Sen. John Fetterman from Pennsylvania. Fetterman’s crime? He supports the existence of Israel as a refuge from Jew-hatred.
“Put one ogre on a pike,” El-Sayed said of Fetterman, “and then everyone else gets the message.”
The primary result didn’t represent any significant political shift in the working class.
A campaign against Israel’s existence
The “message” from El-Sayed is that Israel must go. He has vowed to end all military aid to Israel, calls its government “bloodthirsty,” and has repeatedly claimed its war to defend its very existence is “genocide.”
El-Sayed claims he’s not a Jew-hater, but had no problem doing multiple interviews with Hasan Piker, a video streamer who tries to justify Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
One indication of El-Sayed’s attitude toward Jews was his response to a March 12 attack on a Jewish school at Temple Israel in the West Bloomfield Township in Michigan. Ayman Ghazali had rammed his booby-trapped truck, loaded with weapons and gasoline, into the school after posting a video saying he wanted to “kill as many of them as I possibly can.” Thanks to quick action by security guards no one was hurt.
El-Sayed denounced Ghazali’s attack, but he couldn’t condemn it without also trying to excuse it. He said, “Hurt people do hurt people.”
In sharp contrast to all the capitalist candidates, from El-Sayed to Donald Trump, Socialist Workers Party candidates around the country start from the need to organize working people independently of the bosses and their parties, to see all politics from a class point of view, and to build our own party to lead millions to fight for our own class interests. The SWP offers workers the opportunity to join and build a party that is capable of taking political power into our own hands.