Latest news with #El-Sayed
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
"The courage to name what people are experiencing": Abdul El-Sayed says Democrats need to get real
Abdul El-Sayed entered the race to be the next Democratic senator from Michigan earlier this month, earning an endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and promising to drive universal health care back into the national political discussion. El-Sayed ran for governor of Michigan in 2018, losing in the Democratic primary against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. A medical doctor, he served as the director of the Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services for Wayne County from 2023 to 2025 and as a member of the Unity Task Force for Democrats following the 2020 presidential primary. He is the author of 'Medicare for All: A Citizen's Guide,' alongside Micah Johnson. In the race to replace the retiring Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., El-Sayed is currently facing state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and state Rep. Haley Stevens. In a conversation with Salon, he explained why he thinks he's the best candidate to take on American "oligarchy." This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You've talked about creating a politics of "buildings." I'd like to ask what your vision for American politics is and what it is that you'd like to see built. I've been in an ongoing conversation with Michiganders since I jumped into public service, and they're very clear about the pain points in their lives. They're very clear about their frustration that they feel like their lives are simply a money grab for greedy big corporations. They're afraid of the insecurity of losing a job and then losing health care or watching as your employer gives you yet more deductible you have to pay to get the health care you already paid for, garnished out of your wages every two or four weeks. They're worried about PFAs plumes in their ground, poisoning their water, or whether or not their air is poisoned by sulfur dioxide from a smokestack next to them. They're worried about whether or not their kids are ever going to be able to afford a home because the quality of their schools seems like it's been deteriorating over a long period of time. We are the richest, most powerful country in the world. The fact that those are shared frustrations of the vast majority of our people is, frankly, gobsmacking, and our politics needs to be about solving that. And I think there are three things we need to do if we're serious about solving it. Number one, we need to break the way that corporations have had a choke hold on our political system for a very long time, because the power of their money in our politics to dictate who gets elected and then what they do. And that means delivering our democracy up to people so that they have the say, rather than corporations who can pay for 30-second ads to miss and disinform the public. Second thing is, I think we need to address the way that we've been limiting what we are able to do as a function of the interests of those corporations instead of rebuilding government to actually deliver on challenges. I'm somebody who believes that government can be a real part of the solution, and too often what's happened is that you've got a Republican — now MAGA — agenda that has been about deteriorating the power of government so that they can privatize out those services, and somebody can make a lot of money and then return some of that money back into campaign contributions. I think government works best when government's doing that work in the public interest, and so I think we need to build government out so that it can actually deliver on broad mandates in the form of education, in the form of health care, and in the form of broad, sweeping public services like transit and and fundamental civic infrastructure. And then the third thing is, I think we need to heal our politics so that we are having a conversation about who best delivers, rather than this kind of negative partisanship that has taken hold that leaves us more cynical, more frustrated, more angry and delivers points to the the party that can better insult the next one. I think if we can do those three things, I think Americans are going to be happier, we're going to be healthier, we're going to be more secure in the communities in which we live, and we'll be wealthier for it. I'd also like to ask you about your background in medicine. Specifically, I'm wondering how you make sense of RFK Jr. as a phenomenon and whether or not you think his rise and the real popular support for it is a result of Democrats backing away from health care as an issue. They've often positioned themselves saying, 'We fixed health care with the Affordable Care Act, and now all we need to do is protect it.' I really love that question. Look, I just want to use the pandemic as an example here. For a long time, corporatized medicine has pushed public health out of the conversation, and there was a time when public health was built around taking on big fights against corporate interests that were harming the public. Go all the way back to meat packing or swill milk at the turn of the 20th century; go to the fight against big tobacco. But for a very long time, I think public health has become technocratic and it has become cowardly, and there are big fights that still need to be won. You look at the role of ultra-processing in our food, and you take that back to the fact that you have a few very large corporations that manufacture our food in ways that are really built around profit rather than nutrition. You look at the way that Big Tech has fracked our attention space, literally monetizing our eyes in ways that leave us more anxious, more lonely, more angry and further apart from each other. These are big fights that we should be we should be fighting. And unfortunately, I think public health has been an agent, sometimes in its own marginalization. And so you've got a situation where a guy like RFK Jr. can take the fact that we've left the playing field and then, in effect, monetize it off of conspiracies for himself. And there are things about RFK Jr. that I want to note he gets right, and that's his diagnosis of the problem. I think he recognizes that there is a serious opportunity for our country to be healthier that we are missing. Now you look at COVID-19 as an example, and this is where I was going with this. You have a pandemic in a moment where people are deeply afraid, and all of a sudden they hear from their public health officials about what they cannot do, and then a year later, we're out telling them to take a vaccine that didn't exist a year ago for a disease they don't yet have. Meanwhile, for decades, you've watched as people have been struggling to pay for things like insulin. And so the logic here is, 'Okay, I know I need my insulin to survive, and you all were MIA while I was struggling to be able to afford this critical medication, as the prices went up because corporations were monetizing me because of my disease, and now, all of a sudden, you all show up with a new vaccine that's completely free that didn't exist a year ago for a disease I don't have.' You can understand now how our failure to show up on the issues that people know they face as undercut trust. And I think in that trust gap, you have somebody like an RFK Jr who tries to explain it all via a grand conspiracy theory about the scientists and everybody being in cahoots. So I worry because of the sort of marginalization and the technocracy of the public health infrastructure over the past several years, and the fact that Democrats haven't been willing to actually take on the big gaping issue in our health care system, which is that too few people have access to quality, affordable health care; that we have $225 billion in medical debt collectively; that hospitals keep buying each other up and raising their prices or shutting down hospitals in rural and some urban communities. The fact that we haven't been able to take that on has created the space where somebody like an RFK can come and exploit it, naming the problems and then identifying, like, frankly, bat-shit crazy solutions, and we see what the consequences are. And so the thing we have to understand is that if we're not willing to be bold, if we're not willing to face down a lot of the ways that corporations have left us failing to solve real problems because they're interested in funding campaigns to keep us silent, if we're not willing to do that, it creates a trust gap and then you have charlatans who step in. Frankly, RFK is just one example of a far broader team. I mean, it's exactly what Donald Trump did. He identified and exploited pain that was not being answered by the people who said that they wanted to actually address it, and then he was able to ride that all the way to the White House now twice, and his solutions have been 100% self serving, chaotic and ham handed. And it's the same thing with RFK Jr. I wanted to follow up on that. I know you've written about Medicare for All. I'm wondering what you think the leading policy should be for Democrats in 2026. I know Tim Walz, for example, has said that universal health care needs to be on the table. I'm wondering whether you think that the marquee policy for Democrats should be Medicare for All in these midterms and the next presidential election, and if not, what it should be. So I just want to draw the obvious here, right? A guy commits a heinous crime by shooting a health insurance CEO in broad daylight, which is heinous and wrong and terrible, and the broad conversation isn't about condemning the murder, it's about how angry people are at the industry that that he targeted. That should tell you a lot about just how frustrated people are with health insurance. I wanna be absolutely clear: The murder of anybody is 100% wrong. And the fact that the broad populace brought up a conversation not about how terrible murder is but about how terrible the health care industry is — that should really focus our attention on addressing the underlying glacier of challenges that people face. I mean, you look at health insurance prices, they have gone up and up and up and up. We pay every two weeks, or every four weeks, and then they've created this cost-sharing mechanism, which means that you pay and then you have this deductible, which means you pay again at the point of care, which literally sends millions of people into debt. I mean, $225 billion medical debt that is greater than the GDP of the majority of U.S. states, like that is an insane thing in the richest, most powerful country in the world. So the idea that you would run and ignore that foundational problem that everybody faces, it's either they're facing it directly right now, or they're at risk of facing it or their loved ones are at risk of facing it, [it's] like critical and essential to who we are, because we all have bodies that want to be able to heal if they get sick. That's nuts to me — that it's a question that whether or not this should be on the table. The only reason that we would not lead on health care is because we know that the insurance industry and the hospital industry and the pharmaceutical industry have been writing checks to Democrats for a very long time to buy our silence. So even when we do talk about health care, we talk about it in these vague terms, because nobody wants to dare piss off the insurance industry, lest they lose out those corporate checks to fund their campaigns. And so yes, we should be leading on health care, foundationally. We should be leading on the idea of guaranteeing health care for everybody. Medicare for All does exactly that and it also makes our health care system more efficient. It also fights on behalf the public against the sort of tyranny of the healthcare corporations. It puts everybody in America on equal footing when it comes to being a patient and a consumer of health care. It solves a lot of problems, but politically, it's also an obvious solution to an obvious problem, which, if you're a Democrat right now, you really, really want to be about. I also think, though, that it's an emblem of a broader problem. Like we cannot ignore the fact that our economy has been unstable for the majority of Americans for a very long time. And we point to average metrics to say, 'Oh, well, it's performing extremely well.' Yes, when you average out the billionaires with everybody else who's just scraping two dimes together to try and afford their home and their groceries, yeah, it looks fine. The problem is, when you realize that it's a distribution problem, that you have billionaires doing amazingly well while everybody else is falling behind, you start to realize that affordability is critical, and health insurance is part of that, health care is part of that, but it's part of a broader theme. The reason that our system is as broken as it is is because we've allowed the same kinds of corporate welfare policies to abound: whether it's in health care; whether it's in groceries; whether it's in food processing; whether it's in Big Tech and telecommunications. No matter where you turn, you've got a few very large corporations that get to set the rules for the rest of us. They get to figure out how to monetize us on our needs and then everybody ends up poorer for it, except for the folks at the very top of those corporations. And to secure the politics that protect them, they write corporate checks to everybody on both sides of the aisle. Do you think that the political infrastructure has changed enough since, you know, eight years ago when you ran for governor, or when Bernie Sanders ran for president? Are we at a moment where this could break through? I believe so, but let's be clear. We sometimes talk about these things as if there's an invisible hand that dictates our politics, right? It's incumbent on people running for public office to drive a conversation that sources the best, the most important issues they're hearing from their constituents, and to speak publicly, openly, honestly and directly about the problems that they're hearing about. Medicare for All, is it magically going to come back to the top of the conversation unless people are honest, politicians are honest, about what they're hearing from the public, and they're willing to say that openly and honestly? The problem, though, is that too few are willing to actually name the problem, because the problem sits downstream of corporations who are paying in part for those campaigns. And so, you know, I don't take corporate PAC money for a reason, because I want to be free to talk about the real problems I'm hearing about and to name them openly, honestly and directly. It's funny. When I'm out and about in Michigan, people are like, 'It seems like you just say the thing.' I'm like, 'Yes, I do say the thing.' And the bigger picture is not that I'm saying the thing, it's that nobody else is saying the thing. The question is, why are they not saying the thing? They're not saying the thing because they're out knocking on the corporate PACs doors to ask for the money, which keeps them from saying the thing. If we have the courage to name what people are experiencing, if we have the courage to name real solutions to solve it, I think it can break through. Again, just point to an example of the fact that, like the broad conversation that surfaced after a man killed another man in in cold blood, was about the insurance industry that should tell you something about how pissed off people are about this problem, and I think we have a responsibility, if we're serious about being public servants, to solve it. The problem is that too many people cosplay as public servants and really they're just servants for private interests. And that is, in part, a corruption of our politics that we need to be good about solving as well. I have two more questions for you. The first is in regards to something Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., said. She recently advocated that Democrats don't talk about oligarchs and the way that they control the country and back Donald Trump so much. And she also advocated that they once again try to 'retake the flag' and called on the party to shed what she characterized as a "" public image. I was hoping I could get your response to her description of the situation and her plan to fix it. I try to be just to focus on what I'm for, and I certainly agree that anybody who's going to corrupt our Constitution, like Donald Trump has and all of the MAGA acolytes that have gone along with it — literally disappearing people for signing on op-eds or peaceably assembly — that is un-American, and so I think we need to retake the flag. I love my country. I know 100% what my life would have looked like and my parents had not had the opportunity to come here. I love America. I love America so much that I constantly want her to be the best she can be. And so I think what we're doing here is true patriotism. It is doing that thing that is so American, which is correcting, like the thing that America does better than any other place, that we constantly try to get better. And I think it's an amazingly American thing. And I think that we need to dress ourselves up in red, white and blue, because that's what America is. And I think sometimes when we criticize, rather than just saying what's wrong, we need to be all about saying what can be better, and demonstrating our belief. That is such an American ideal of recognizing what can be fixed and fixing it and then being better because of that. At the same time, on the question of what we call Donald Trump and his acolytes, all of us got to go and call this what we believe it to be, and you see what resonates, right? I try not to wade into a lot of these disagreements within the party, my job is to go out, listen to voters across my state and then articulate what I'm hearing from them in ways that capture their frustrations and seek to bring more people together to try and take them on and that's what we're going to be doing. I think oligarchy is a perfectly acceptable word to do that. I think calling Donald Trump, somebody who wants to be a king, is a perfectly acceptable way to do that. I think, regardless of what words we use, we've got to be about naming just what is so broken and wrong about this administration, and probably more importantly, what we fight for to solve it. And I think you know, it's one thing to fight back against Trump and Trumpism and Musk and all of the cowards in Congress that have gone along with their agenda; it's another to tell people, here's what the alternative can be. And I'm really focused on doing that. One more question, and this is specifically about campaigning in Michigan. Democrats did a number on their brand in the state, particularly with the Kamala Harris campaign in regards to her cleaving to the Biden administration's policy in Gaza. Many people have criticized the campaign for sending surrogates like Bill Clinton and Richie Torres to the state, and there has been some evidence that if she had broken with the Biden administration on just this one issue, it could have been the difference. I'm wondering what your approach is to campaigning in the state in light of this and repairing the brand, given the damage that has happened over the past year and a half there. I can't tell you how damaging the failure to just campaign on common sense was. I endorsed Kamala Harris in July. I spent the next three months having very difficult conversations with two groups of people. The first was the Harris campaign, trying to get them to see that there was so much pain in our communities in regard to the disastrous policy when it comes to Gaza. Every president in American history before this guy has agreed that we need a two-state solution. And what that means is that you believe in the possibility of the state of Palestine. Yet we were arming, aiding and abetting the very people who want to foreclose on that possibility. That was a disaster in terms of just public policy. But what's even more disastrous is that people watch as their kids' schools are crumbling, and we're sending billions of dollars abroad to drop bombs on other kids and their schools. It just makes no sense. And Michiganders are particularly focused on the issue, because so many people see it on both sides. They look at their kid's school, and then they look at their distant cousin's school, and both of them are crumbling... How about we don't send those tax dollars abroad to destroy other kids in their schools? Instead, we spend them here. That should seem to be conventional wisdom, right? And for a long time, our party understood that. I remember voting for Barack Obama, who's the second president I ever voted for, because he was the guy who understood that war was fundamentally wrong in terms of American adventures, and that we were best when we obeyed the rules of the rules based international order that we helped to create after World War II. I don't know what happened in the last 17 years where we became the party of war rather than the party of peace, but a lot of my conversations with the party were about trying to get them to see that that is a winning position, and then that means breaking with the disastrous Biden policy when it came to Gaza. And at the same time, I was having really hard conversations with folks across my state about the fact that Donald Trump would simply be worse. About the fact that Donald Trump would try to foreclose on our democratic rights to advocacy, as he has, about the fact that Donald Trump would be worse for people in our state, but you'd also be worse for people living under war in Gaza. And both of those things have come to pass, and I remain deeply frustrated with all that transpired over the next three months... I think a lot of Michiganders could have been won over. But I'll tell you, as I've crisscrossed my state, I'm running to be senator from Michigan, and in Michigan we believe that our kids deserve good schools, that we should have health care, and that sending our money to a foreign military to drop bombs on other people's kids probably isn't the best use of our money, considering all the challenges we should be solving here at home. I've been having that conversation with Michiganders. They agree with me, poll after poll shows that, and so I'm looking to have that conversation now. I know that there are a lot of folks who are looking to accept money from MAGA characters to try and rig our primary here so that MAGA doesn't have to run against somebody who's willing to say those conventional wisdoms out loud. And I just hope that every Democrat running in this primary is willing to step up and say that we should not be taking MAGA money to beat up on other Democrats and that we should be trying to win Democrats on the merits, rather than with Republican money.
Newsweek
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
Bernie Sanders-Endorsed Abdul El-Sayed Sees 'Opportunity' With Young Men
Democratic Michigan U.S. Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed believes Democrats have an "opportunity" to win back young men, while also focusing on speaking to the pain many voters are feeling throughout society. The former public health official, who has been endorsed by progressive Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, announced his campaign on April 17, joining an increasingly crowded primary field of Democrats aiming to replace Michigan's outgoing Democratic Senator Gary Peters in 2026. State Senator Mallory McMorrow announced before El-Sayed, and Representative Haley Stevens of Michigan's 11th District threw her hat into the ring on Tuesday. Former Michigan state House Speaker Joe Tate is also expected to run. As for El-Sayed and his campaign, he plans to focus on the economic issues and pain many Americans are feeling. Similar to Sanders, he's taking aim at the billionaires and "oligarchs," while elevating the issues facing American workers. "We have to see people's pain, understand it, and then help them to believe that it can get better and then make it better," El-Sayed, former director of Wayne County's Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services, told Newsweek this week. "That's a tough thing to do. But it starts with being able to see that pain." Having previously run unsuccessfully to become Michigan's governor in 2018, El-Sayed, 40, is familiar with voters' concerns across the Midwestern state. In particular, he sees young men as a key constituency Democrats need to work to win back, after they were seen gravitating toward President Donald Trump and Republicans in the 2024 election. "They're disaffected for a lot of reasons. I think we have an epidemic right now of feeling like you don't belong, and I think that hits young men hardest," he said. El-Sayed spoke with Newsweek for an exclusive interview about his campaign via Zoom on Tuesday. The interview transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity. Abdul El-Sayed, who has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders, is running for U.S. Senate in Michigan. Abdul El-Sayed, who has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders, is running for U.S. Senate in Michigan. Photo Illustration by Newsweek/Getty/Bill Morée Newsweek: As you're starting this new campaign, what is the main reason that you're running now? And what's the main message that you're trying to promote for Michigan voters? Abdul El-Sayed: It just shouldn't be this hard to get by in the richest, most powerful country in the world. I started a conversation with Michigan voters a decade ago when I started my career in public service. When you talk to them, they're talking about feeling like they are stuck on the outer edge of an economy that they're about to get kicked out of. They're worried about whether or not they're able to afford groceries, whether or not their kid's school is preparing them for a future that they want. Whether or not they can afford health care and not get smacked in the face with a huge debt simply because they went and saw a doctor when they got sick. That has caused so much pain in our state, and the people who've exploited that pain to get elected, people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk who came in on his coattails, they've just made it worse. They're exploiting that pain to deliver for people like them: billionaires, oligarchs, corporate CEOs. They're doing it in ways that are just brazen. Whether it's tanking the global economy to pass stock tips to your billionaire buddies—billionaires made $300 billion off of the most recent downturn of the economy while people are watching their 401(k)s turn into dust. You're watching as they are literally gutting parts of our government that are some of the best things government does, [such as] funding cancer research. There are literally people who are going to die in the future because research didn't get done that would have cured their cancer. Or it's the fact that they're literally gutting things like the VA [Veteran Affairs Department], a solemn promise that we made to our veterans. When I ran in 2018, I said something that people weren't quite ready to hear. I said that Donald Trump wasn't the disease—he was just the worst symptom of the disease. And the disease was a politics that was corrupted by the most powerful in our society: billionaires and oligarchs and corporate CEOs. We're watching as that symptom has just come back even worse. We need somebody who can fight back against Trump and Musk, but also who can build out of the ashes they're gonna leave behind. And I feel like that is the promise that I've been making to Michiganders since I started in public service. And it's a promise that I hope to be able to fulfill as their next senator. Michigan is kind of an interesting swing state. In 2016, it went for Trump, then in 2020 for Biden, and then in the 2022 midterms, Democrats did incredibly well. And then Trump won in 2024. So what do you think made the difference in 2024? Why did Trump make a comeback in the state? If you look at his voters, he, of course, won the MAGA heads and he won over a large proportion of country club Republicans. But there's a group of people that he won over that I think all of us who believe in an America where we can come together and build something that's greater than the sum of its parts should be really alarmed at, which is young men. They're disaffected for a lot of reasons. I think we have an epidemic right now of feeling like you don't belong, and I think that hits young men hardest. There has been a whole cadre of people who have emerged to try and blame other people for why so many young men feel like they don't belong in their societies. I think that we have an opportunity to bring them back. I don't want to raise my two daughters in an America where their brothers think that their lives are worse because people like my daughters do better. As a young man who's felt somewhat disaffected in our politics for a long time, I'm hoping that I can have a conversation with young men, right? What is strength about? What does it mean to be strong? To me, I think being strong means that you provide, it means that you protect, it means that you promote. You look at Trump and you look at Musk and they have this very fragile sense of what strength is. Strength is beating up on people who are weaker than you. I don't think we want to live that way. And I don't think we have to. My hope is to be able to inspire them back off the brink of this sort of politics of cynicism and hate to a politics of hope and aspiration and investment in oneself and one's community. I think if we do that, not only will we have won an election, but more importantly, I think we'll have done something really important for our society. Because we will have addressed some of what's worst in this moment and how people are taking pain and compounding it. I saw your recent comments about [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer and how you wouldn't necessarily rule out backing him as leader. I'm just curious, how did you actually assess Schumer's recent decision, which led to so much backlash, to support the GOP funding bill moving forward? And if you were in the Senate, how would you have handled that moment differently? Let me be clear. I deeply disagree with the idea of supporting the CR [continuing resolution]. I think one of the challenges that we have in our politics is when people get elected, they mistake the leadership part of the job for the procedural part of job. I think obviously when you're a senator or a congressperson or a governor or a mayor, you think about the things that you uniquely can do because of that role and they become the most obvious things. So being able to vote on a CR is something a senator can uniquely do. But this is a moment for leadership and people elect you because you are part of a broader conversation about who we are and who we wanna be. I think right now, as we're watching Trump and Musk and frankly Republicans in Congress, just completely decimate some of the greatest values that we hold dear, this is a time for courage, it's a time for leadership. Even if the procedural decision-making looks one way, I think it is time to step up and lead. I will support anybody who can help to address the challenges and the pain that Michiganders feel. I'm very clear about the fact that I want an economy that works for working people, meaning where we step up for workers' rights, meaning where we make this the best single place to build and grow a small business. I believe in guaranteeing health care through Medicare for All. I literally wrote the book on it. I believe, in protecting our air and water rather than watching our Earth get desecrated by corporations who are trying to make a buck off of them. And I know that that's what Michiganders believe. So I'm going to vote for any leader who is going to give me a plan to achieve those outcomes for the people who elected me. The only point that I'm trying to make is this. To me, a vote is a choice between two or more options. And if you don't know what the other options are, unilaterally saying I'm not gonna support this one just seems to me to be a bit unnuanced. So I'm not defending anyone's choices. I vehemently disagree with them. I disagreed with them the day they were made. But I am saying that as we think about the next step, we need to make sure that the alternative isn't worse. Photo courtesy of Abdul El-Sayed's Michigan U.S. Senate campaign. Photo courtesy of Abdul El-Sayed's Michigan U.S. Senate campaign. Bill Morée You touched a bit in that answer on the economy and workers. When it comes to tariffs, Governor Whitmer recently got into a bit of hot water because she went to the White House and spoke somewhat favorably about the idea of some tariffs. Of course, Michigan is a big union state. A lot of union leaders are supportive of the tariffs. What is your perspective on that issue? I'm in Michigan. I was raised here, and I remember when the Buick plant in Flint, where my parents worked, not at the plant, but in the city, when that shut down. I watched as every time we drive in, the state of the city just got worse and worse. Free trade has hollowed out Michigan towns. It robbed so many families of their dreams. It has been a cancer on our economy in Michigan and across this country. The thing about cancer is that usually you treat it with chemotherapy. And chemotherapy is poison. But it's poison that you use systematically because it's more likely to kill the cancer than it is to kill a patient. And to use it very sparingly in specific ways. So when it comes to the idea of tariffs, I think of tariffs as being chemotherapy for the poison of free trade. So I'm not categorically against them. But I do think that when you use chemo, you have to be extremely careful and extremely focused on the outcome that you want. The tough part is that, you know, when you put chemo in the hands of Donald Trump, characteristically, everything he does is ham-handed, it's self-serving and it's chaotic. That's exactly what he did. So what he basically did is, he said, "OK, I have diagnosed a cancer, so I'm just going to give my patient, the U.S. economy, all the chemo at the same time." Which any doctor will tell you will just kill your patient. Unfortunately, that's exactly what he did. My sense is that it wasn't about actually returning jobs to places like Michigan. It was about creating leverage against corporate CEOs who then come to him groveling, which is exactly what's happened. But if you were serious about re-shoring, if you're serious about building the future of manufacturing in places like Michigan, what you would do is you'd bring unions to the table from the jump. You would start investing in the most promising early stage technologies and you would invest in their ability to manufacture. In communities like Michigan with great union jobs and benefits. And then you would let folks know that you were going to tariff against these particular industries in very particular ways on a very particular schedule so everybody understood what was happening and why. And over time, as those industries grew and developed, you would expect that they would be able to compete on the global market. Over time, you would start to dial that down. I worry that because of what Trump's done, he's almost foreclosed on the option of using tariffs in a smart way to build the future industries and manufacturing in places like Michigan like we deserve. The two big issues in this past election were the economy and immigration. Now, Trump's approval on the economy has collapsed somewhat. But the one area where polling suggests he's still above water is on immigration. How do you think Democrats should be messaging on that issue? We need to secure our border. At the same time, the whole conversation about the border has been weaponized by Trump and his acolytes to demagogue the idea of immigration in the first place. Now, my parents immigrated to this country and I tell you, I know many immigrants. None of them come here to take. They come here to build. They wanna build in this country. We wanna build futures for their kids. They want to build opportunity. They come because they love this place and wanna contribute here. What we've seen under this administration is an attempt to weaponize the idea of immigration around trying to create the semblance of an America where people like me, people like so many others in this place, don't belong. And you're seeing that in a way where they're using the arms of the state to run roughshod, to like literally tear up our Constitution, to disobey court orders, to disappear people because they signed their name to an op-ed. To fearmonger people from coming here. One of the things America has done really well is it has made itself the destination of choice for the best and brightest all over the world to come here, to learn, to build and to grow amazing industries that we take for granted. I worry that when you look at this place, like my dad, who was a really promising graduate back in the '70s, he wanted to be a mechanical engineer. He said, 'You know what? The best single place to do that is in Detroit, Michigan.' And that's where he came and he has patents and he's built businesses and he's written books and he taught students. I worry that if he was making that same decision in 2025, that he might choose to go somewhere else and we would all be the worse off for it. And so let's not mistake the need to secure our border with the great benefit that immigration has had for us from the jump. I worry that Democrats are so afraid of this issue, because we have this awful dependency on this terrible advice that we get from the consulting class that tells us we have to triangulate a position so it's perfectly inoffensive, but then we have to say it with a lot of enthusiasm. And if you're not saying anything of meaning with a lot of enthusiasm, you look absolutely ridiculous, which unfortunately is how we often look, and we're losing votes because of it. I think we have a responsibility to step up and articulate a very clear, affirmative approach to what we believe the world ought to look like. I believe America is at its best when people from all over the world want to come here. Where, yes, we secure our borders and we protect those borders. But at the same time, we recognize that immigration has been a net benefit to our country and that we deserve in this country to continue to be that place. Where everybody can come and try to build something for themselves and for our country. And that's better for us. And we have to be willing to say that rather than try and run away from the issue. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont participates in a public health roundtable with health care professionals, including Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, on March 9, 2020, in Detroit. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont participates in a public health roundtable with health care professionals, including Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, on March 9, 2020, in Sanders has been a longtime supporter of yours, and he endorsed you right out of the gate in this campaign as well. I assume you must have had some conversations with him before launching the campaign. I'm curious, did he give you some advice? What did he tell you about running for this seat? Bernie is somebody who has been full-throatedly working for the well-being of working people in our country for decades and decades, since before I was born. His commitment to the working class, his commitment to the kinds of values of fairness that I think all of us believe in is sacrosanct. Even at 83 years old, there is nobody who is more full-throated on these issues than he is. So I'm really grateful for his support, and that I was able to earn his trust. So much of what I've wanted to do in my work is about serving at the leading edge of government, the place where the rubber, so to speak, hits the road. And I've tried to take a lot of the values that Senator Sanders articulates and turn them into programs, whether it's erasing $700 million in medical debt, it's putting Narcan all over the place, or giving people access to air quality data so they can stand up to the polluters who are affecting the air that their kids breathe every day. I was grateful that he saw that work and decided to come behind this campaign. What the senator told me that I'll never forget, he said, 'Listen, young people ...' this is a guy who's 83 years old, '... young people have the greatest stake in our democracy because they're gonna live the longest time. And you really have to keep close to what young people tell you.' One of the things I know keeps him up at night is this challenge with young men, why there has been this cynicism and this turn against the values of hope that we can actually use a government of the people for the people and by the people to deliver for people. He and I have had a lot of conversations about what it means to have an honest conversation with young men in particular in this country. And as a father of two daughters, right? I think it's just so important that we get that conversation right. Then the other thing he told me is, 'Don't lose sight of the big picture.' I think public service is about the public and too often we get caught up in these things that we think make it so complicated. I've studied complicated things. I went to medical school. This one's not that complicated. If you do the work of listening to people and then articulating in very clear points, policy that could solve their problems, that's kinda it. And then go out and tell folks that. Listen and talk, listen, think and talk. And it starts with listening. Right now, it definitely seems like the energy on the left is with Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at these rallies they're holding across the country. At the same time, we've seen that energy around Sanders in 2016, and then again in 2020, but it seems that the moderate wing of the party, or the establishment as some say, wins anyway. Do you think that this moment is different, and if so, how? I think there's an open question about what this party should stand for. I don't really love labels because, again, I trained as a scientist and one of the first things they teach you is that you should use words that mean the same thing to people saying them as people hearing them. I think these labels, they've been twisted and turned in 15 different ways. I'm a student of history, and I remember when the Democratic Party, right, in the time of FDR [former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt], in a time of LBJ [former President Lyndon B. Johnson], was about some very basic things. It was about delivering for working people in ways that made sense and were clear. It was about empowering working people, it was about empowering local forms of capitalism, meaning empowering small business and helping it scale and helping distribute wealth back to its local community. It was about guaranteeing health to people and health care in ways that the government can do in the richest, most powerful country in the world. It was about protecting air and water. Since then, the party has grown quite a bit because of pressure from folks like Martin Luther King Jr. to remind us those promises had to extend to everybody. Too often, they left people of color behind. I just think that if we're serious about our values, those seem to me to be commonsense values. Those are what we should focus on. We've got opportunities to win the future here and it's not gonna happen because we have poll-tested numbers that win a small proportion of Republicans who realize that Donald Trump is like patently insane. We're gonna win because we are listening to people, we're speaking truth to their pain, and we are taking on the power of the most powerful in a way that is taking our government back in delivering for working people. I don't know where that sits on the ideological frame and how that's gonna work within intraparty politics, but that's what I'm gonna be about for the next 15 months. Democratic U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and independent U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont speak to a full auditorium as part of the "Fight Oligarchy Tour" on April 14 in Nampa, Idaho. Democratic U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and independent U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont speak to a full auditorium as part of the "Fight Oligarchy Tour" on April 14 in Nampa, Idaho.I'm sure there are going to be some folks within the Democratic Party who say, 'Look, a Bernie Sanders-backed candidate can't win in a swing state like Michigan, especially after Trump just won there.' What would be your response to that criticism? I think it's a different time, and I remember when they said a guy named Barack Hussein Obama couldn't win. I remember they said that a guy called Donald Trump couldn't. So I just don't trust the pundits to call the shots. Also, to say the thing that sometimes people are too polite to say, obviously my name is Abdul, and that is, we'll just say, not the best name for politics on a ballot. I got a lot of faith in my fellow Michiganders and I got a lot faith in the fellow Michiganders because I've been named Abdul in Michigan my whole life. I was named Abdul when I was elected captain of my high school football team and awarded a coaches leadership award by my coaches for my leadership of people who didn't look like me or have names like mine. I was named Abdul when I walked into patients' rooms in medical school and asked what's wrong and how can I help. I'm named Abdul and I rebuilt Detroit's health department and delivered a debt cancellation of upward of $700 million to folks across Wayne County. I've spent my whole career and most of my life in this state, born and raised, and Michiganders are good people. And they see past a name and they see past these labels. They're asking, number one, "Do you care about me?" And number two, "What are you going to do to try and help me?" I trained as a doctor, and those are the two questions that people ask of their doctors. So, I've learned a lot about how to see through people's pain, to help work with them to get past the cynicism of that pain. You gotta get people to hope and to believe that the things that we can do together can address the pain and make it better. I think right now, what Trump and his acolytes in Congress have done, is tell us that it's only ever going to get worse, and that they at least understand that there's pain. So it frees them up to do whatever they want that just makes the pain worse. I think the lift for us is a lot harder. We have to see people's pain, understand it, and then help them to believe that it can get better and then make it better. That's a tough thing to do. But it starts with being able to see that pain. I worry that too often, the Democratic message is, 'No, actually things are perfectly good. If you take the average of income across this country, our economy was great.' Well, unfortunately, it just wasn't working for the majority of people. There's a lot of good statistical reasons as to why. So you've got to be honest with people about, 'No, this is a painful situation. I see your pain. But what can we do to make it better?' Rather than what will you let them do to make it worse. You were part of the 'Uncommitted' movement in this past election. Could you just speak a bit to why you thought that was a particularly important thing to do? And how do you think the issue of the ongoing Gaza war resonates with Michigan voters, broadly speaking across the state? I endorsed Kamala Harris in the general election. I want to be absolutely clear about that. And I spent most of election season trying to convince as many people as possible that whatever you thought of Harris, she was so much better than Donald Trump. 'Uncommitted' was about a choice in the Democratic primary, which of course was no choice at all. I think people were asking us to unilaterally support a guy who clearly did not have what it took, to run for president again. That decision became obvious during the debate. I think a lot of the folks in the 'Uncommitted' movement saw that early when it came to the disastrous handling of what was happening in Gaza. Now, you asked me very specifically about Gaza, but let me just be clear. I'm not asking people to have an opinion about what's happening over there. I'm asking people to look at their kids' school and ask whether or not it makes sense to send tens of billions of dollars abroad to a foreign military in a very rich country so that they can bomb other kids' schools, when we could be spending that money on your kids' school. I think when you think about it that way, it's an obvious thing that we shouldn't be in the business of funding foreign militaries anywhere, whether it's Gaza or Egypt or Saudi Arabia. We've got a lot of issues to take on here at home, and I think we've got a responsibility to take them on. At the same time, I want to think bigger picture about foreign policy. We talk about a rules-based international order and the principal violator of those rules too often ends up being us. We spent a lot of time after World War II trying to create multinational organizations that would create and uplift and enforce those rules of that rules-based international order. And when we follow those rules, as in Ukraine against a despot who is trying to take over another country or in Serbia, for example, back in the '90s, we do well. When we violate that rules-based international order, as in Iraq, as Vietnam before that, that's when we make terrible decisions. I'm just asking us to be sensible about how we want the world to be. I think we need to be leaders in the world, but leaders lead toward a particular set of values. I believe you say, 'Here's what our values are, we support democracy, we are willing to work with our allies when the purpose is just,' and then you obey your own rules. If you were to win the Democratic Party's nomination, you'd actually only be the second-ever Muslim to be nominated for a major party. The first was Dr. Mehmet Oz in 2022 by Republicans in Pennsylvania. And if you won, you would be the first Muslim senator. Do you think much about the potentially historic nature of this campaign in that respect? I'm not running to be the first anything. I'm running to the best senator for the state of Michigan and to deliver for working people. Do you have anything else that you think is important to share before we let you go? I just want to double-click here on this point on pain. I just think we are so used to things getting worse. It's so tough when your message is that things can be better. I really want this campaign to invite people to believe that it actually can be, and it should be, and that we deserve better. It does not have to be this hard. There are choices that we've allowed the richest, most powerful actors in the country to make for us. Corporations, billionaires, oligarchs—so that they get richer and it just gets harder for us, we get monetized at every turn. You get monetized when you want to go see a doctor, you get monetized when you reach into your phone and a trillion dollar corporation spends billions of dollars to make sure that you can't look up from it. We get monetized by the collusion of oligarchs when we go and shop at grocery stores and our prices are just that much higher. It doesn't have to be that way. We have to believe that it can be better, not just that it's always going to get worse. And I hope that this campaign can be one of healing and one of hope, and I hope that folks will get involved.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Haley Stevens launches Senate bid in Michigan
Rep. Haley Stevens is making her long-awaited Senate bid in Michigan official with a nod to her first car. 'I'm running for Senate because just like that day I got these keys to that old Cutlass, we have the power to chart our own path. I'm proud of Michigan and I'll never get tired of saying it. It would be my honor to fight for you in the Senate,' she said in a video announcement released Tuesday morning. Stevens is touting her background in the auto industry in the manufacturing-heavy state. Her announcement video features her role as a top aide on President Barack Obama's auto rescue task force — and an old video of Obama talking about her. She's also suggesting she'll emphasize an economic message in the race, saying that Michiganders are getting 'more chaos' while facing higher prices and increased housing costs. A prodigious fundraiser, Stevens had quietly been making moves this year towards a bid to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, but she'll be entering a crowded Democratic field to replace him. State Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed, the former director of Wayne County's Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services, are already running, with former Michigan state House Speaker Joe Tate is also expected to declare his candidacy. Other top-tier Democrats like former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet opted not to join the race, leading many Democrats to see the contest as wide open. Stevens is now likely to occupy a more centrist lane in the race as compared to her declared and expected competitors, drawing from her current position as the current chair of the political arm of the New Democrat Coalition. El-Sayed and McMorrow have positioned themselves as political outsiders, with El-Sayed winning the endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). She has previously backed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, while other Democrats like McMorrow have openly said they would oppose him continuing in his leadership role over his handling of a GOP-backed government funding bill. Stevens is no stranger to tough races. She flipped a seat in Detroit's northwestern suburbs in 2018, though redistricting after 2020 made it bluer. That redistricting cycle then forced her into a bruising member-on-member primary against Rep. Andy Levin, a member of a storied Michigan political dynasty. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent heavily for Stevens in her 2022 primary, fueling fears among some Democrats that the deep-pocketed group could get involved in the Senate primary this year, too, and reopen deep Democratic divisions over Israel and Gaza. Michigan is also likely to be one of the most hotly contested Senate battlegrounds this cycle. Republicans see it as a pickup opportunity after President Donald Trump won the state in 2024, and former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, who narrowly lost the Senate race to Democrat Elissa Slotkin last year to replace retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow, is already running again. Rep. Bill Huizenga has also been floated as a potential GOP candidate.
Politico
22-04-2025
- Automotive
- Politico
Haley Stevens launches Senate bid in Michigan
Rep. Haley Stevens is making her long-awaited Senate bid in Michigan official with a nod to her first car. 'I'm running for Senate because just like that day I got these keys to that old Cutlass, we have the power to chart our own path. I'm proud of Michigan and I'll never get tired of saying it. It would be my honor to fight for you in the Senate,' she said in a video announcement released Tuesday morning. Stevens is touting her background in the auto industry in the manufacturing-heavy state. Her announcement video features her role as a top aide on President Barack Obama's auto rescue task force — and an old video of Obama talking about her. She's also suggesting she'll emphasize an economic message in the race, saying that Michiganders are getting 'more chaos' while facing higher prices and increased housing costs. A prodigious fundraiser, Stevens had quietly been making moves this year towards a bid to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, but she'll be entering a crowded Democratic field to replace him. State Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed, the former director of Wayne County's Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services, are already running, with former Michigan state House Speaker Joe Tate is also expected to declare his candidacy. Other top-tier Democrats like former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet opted not to join the race, leading many Democrats to see the contest as wide open. Stevens is now likely to occupy a more centrist lane in the race as compared to her declared and expected competitors, drawing from her current position as the current chair of the political arm of the New Democrat Coalition. El-Sayed and McMorrow have positioned themselves as political outsiders, with El-Sayed winning the endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). She has previously backed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, while other Democrats like McMorrow have openly said they would oppose him continuing in his leadership role over his handling of a GOP-backed government funding bill. Stevens is no stranger to tough races. She flipped a seat in Detroit's northwestern suburbs in 2018, though redistricting after 2020 made it bluer. That redistricting cycle then forced her into a bruising member-on-member primary against Rep. Andy Levin, a member of a storied Michigan political dynasty. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent heavily for Stevens in her 2022 primary, fueling fears among some Democrats that the deep-pocketed group could get involved in the Senate primary this year, too, and reopen deep Democratic divisions over Israel and Gaza. Michigan is also likely to be one of the most hotly contested Senate battlegrounds this cycle. Republicans see it as a pickup opportunity after President Donald Trump won the state in 2024, and former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, who narrowly lost the Senate race to Democrat Elissa Slotkin last year to replace retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow, is already running again. Rep. Bill Huizenga has also been floated as a potential GOP candidate.
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Michigan is becoming a ‘litmus test' for the left
A podcaster and former Wayne County official's entrance into the U.S. Senate race with the backing of Bernie Sanders — the progressive champion's first candidate endorsement of the year — has all but cemented Michigan as a frontline battleground state for the midterms. Michigan is shaping up to be the state where the left makes its big stand, offering the clearest test yet of the direction of the Democratic Party. Before Abdul El-Sayed announced his campaign, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, a liberal Democrat, splashed into the race pillorying the 'same old crap out of Washington' and declaring she would not back Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Meantime, moderate Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens is widely expected to declare her Senate candidacy as early as next week. She is contacting Democrats urging them to run to succeed her in her House seat, according to two Michigan Democrats familiar with the calls and granted anonymity to describe them. It's touching off a battle between progressives and moderates on everything from economic and foreign messaging to who should lead the party. And the winner of the primary in the key battleground will help shape national Democrats' messaging in 2026 and the presidential election two years later. Already, El-Sayed has swiped at McMorrow, saying anyone who "unilaterally oppose[s]" a leadership candidate without knowing the alternatives is "is either unnuanced or unsophisticated." "If the left does not make its stand, we will not have strength in this seat," said Michigan State Rep. Emily Dievendorf, a progressive. "It is a litmus test for whether we are going to be willing to have courage in this moment. And I do think the two Democratic candidates that have emerged so far certainly aim to speak to the needs of our more progressive voters and the average American." There are fault lines even along the party's left flank, and the Michigan primary could help to define how aggressively Democrats across the ideological spectrum go after aging members of their own party. El-Sayed and Stevens are defending Schumer, while McMorrow has said she would cast him aside over his handling of a GOP-backed government funding bill. The state is 'at the center of this conversation,' said state Rep. Laurie Pohutsky, a progressive. 'We're going to continue being a focal point when it comes to that debate, and I think that we are also in a position to kind of reach a sort of consensus about what we need right now in terms of moving the Democratic Party forward.' The race is still in its infancy. But the contested primary — and the evident ideological schisms — are raising alarms among some strategists who fear the intra-party fight could damage whichever candidate advances to the general election. The race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters is a top target of Republicans in a state that Donald Trump carried narrowly last year. Immediately after former Rep. Mike Rogers launched his campaign this week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Tim Scott both endorsed him. 'The Michigan Senate seat is imminently winnable, but if the primary challengers decide to turn this into a proxy fight among the party's most online factions, we are cooked,' said Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic campaign veteran. In an interview, El-Sayed, who has been sharply critical of Israel actions in Gaza, infuriating some centrist Democrats, played down the national resonance of the race. 'I think Bernie's endorsing in this race because he sees the opportunity to empower somebody who wants to join him in the Senate to make sure that we've got a politics that works for working people,' he told POLITICO. Sanders hasn't had much success with his statewide endorsements in Michigan in the past. After he endorsed El-Sayed for governor in 2018, Gretchen Whitmer, the more moderate Democrat who ran on a slogan of 'fix the damn roads,' trounced him in all 83 counties. Stevens' camp views El-Sayed and McMorrow as occupying the same progressive lane. In response, she is likely to not nationalize the race, but 'Michiganize' it, according to an aligned strategist granted anonymity to discuss her strategy. But even in laying out that approach to the campaign, the strategist suggested a rebuke of the progressive left. 'It's a focus on Michigan, Michigan's auto industry, and manufacturing jobs versus a national conversation about progressive leadership and Democratic punditry,' this person said. Zack Stanton contributed to this report.
