Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Michigan Democrats Nominate El-Sayed for Senate
The chatterati clutched their pearls and tore their garments yesterday as Abdul El-Sayed, a left-of-centre politico, won the Michigan Democratic nomination for the US Senate seat up for election this year. They worry that he is too far left, that he has trouble with white working-class and black voters, that he comes across as arrogant. One expects they would be more honest if they said they are afraid of Muslims. The fact is he is not a Democratic Socialist; he calls himself a capitalist. He just wants capitalism to work better for those less-well-off. This journal predicts he will win wih 52% of the general election vote.
Dr. El-Sayed (an epidemiologist) is a Rhodes Scholar (Oriel College, Oxford, and a lacrosse blue), a former assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University and was executive director of the Detroit Health Department. He is the kind on non-lawyer that the US Senate needs.
His ideas are hardly the stuff of Stalinism. He wants to get money out of politics and into the pockets of the people. Or so he says. One doubts that can happen, but the instincts are solid. Whatever scares them about him, those who opposed him spent $60 million on the campaign – and lost.
Where the chatterati have really missed the boat is in understanding what he has achieved. His opponent, Haley Stevens, is closer to Bill Clinton than Bernie Sanders. She carried the day with white working class and black voters. This makes the talking heads wonder if Dr. El-Sayed can win them over. They are missing the point. Unifying the party after a primary is always a chore, but the question is not can he win over the Stevens voters.
The question is how did he win without the white working-class and black voters? The people who elected him are the people the Democrats should be most intersted in understanding and to whom they should appeal. In most constituencies, the Democrats have a good shot at winning the white proletariat, and they have 80% of the black vote before any campaigning happens.
Dr. El-Sayed did best in college towns and places where lots of people have college degrees. Those under 50 went for him, and those under 40 went for him even harder. In short, this is a generational shift and a shift toward the educated. The Democrats held a primary where the white working-class and black voters were not enough but the highly educated and youth were. If one is going to go fishing, one wants to put the bait where the fish are.
The reason for this is really pretty simple. People with Masters' degrees and PhDs used to be guaranteed a spot in the middle class. That ended some years ago. The AI insurrection (it has yet to become a revolution) threatens many of the jobs that traditionally went to the educated. They have less opportunity and fewer jobs. They are rightly angry about that, and they expect things to change.
One of the issues that demonstrates the change is the US-Israeli relationship. Older Americans are more supportive of the State of Israel than younger Americans. The difference is lived experience. People in their 60s, 70s and 80s remember an Israel surrounded by hostile nations that have attacked it repeatedly. Younger voters are not saddled with that nostaligic baggage. Israel to them has become an aggressor state, a racist state and a problem for the US. The truth, of course, is somewhere in the middle, but people vote on their perceptions not on reality. As time goes by, the older voters are going to die and the younger voters will have the field to themselves (until even younger voters get upset with the youth of today).
Is his campaign is an outlier, or the beginning of a new Democratic Party? Time will tell. Demography may not be not destiny, but it comes close.
© Copyright 2026 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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