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Posted on 11/08/2026 5:21:58 AM PST by MtnClimber
Olivia Reingold reports from Detroit, where the Muslim progressive’s election signifies a seismic shift in the scales of power. Socialism, TikTok, and anger now reign supreme.
DETROIT, Michigan — “LET’S F[-------] GOOOOOO!”
A blonde with a tattoo of the state of Michigan on her forearm thrusts her fist into the air.
It is just after 1:30 a.m., and Abdul El-Sayed, a doctor turned podcaster, has been senator-elect for approximately one minute. Three friends next to me embrace in a hug. Hundreds of his supporters, crowded into a downtown event space, raise their smartphones. As his signature walk-out song, Tupac Shakur’s “Changes,” fades into the background, the 42-year-old leads the crowd into his usual ritual.
“All right, friends, you know how we do,” he beamed.
For the past year and a half, El-Sayed’s crowds across Michigan have finished his three signature campaign slogans at nearly every rally. Tonight, his promises are victory cries.
“Money out of—”
“POLITICS!”
“Money in your—”
“POCKET!”
“Medicare for—”
“ALL!”
There is plenty to celebrate. These organizers, donors, and activists took a man who had never been elected to office before and catapulted him to the U.S. Senate in a state that President Donald Trump carried just two years ago. Ahmed Mostafa, a 38-year-old lawyer, was holding back tears. “I haven’t seen somebody who represented and could look like me and grow up like me,” he told me. “It means so much in my heart.”
As with New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, the establishment also doubted El-Sayed at first. On Tuesday, he delivered a warning to the naysayers of his movement.
“To the super PACs and special interests who tried to beat us, we are coming for your system of politics,” he vowed.
El-Sayed, who had a failed gubernatorial campaign in 2018, reminded the crowd that he would’ve been considered a political liability in the past.
“I’m not a politician. I’m a doctor with an 11-letter first name,” he said, referring to his full first name, Abdulrahman. “They told us that someone with a name and my story, a Muslim, was unelectable, let alone in a statewide Senate race in Michigan.”
The Republicans came at El-Sayed with everything they had. Late last month, Trump held a rally in Port Huron that was meant to inspire fear among Michiganders.
“Abdul Mohamed El-Sayed is a jihadist,” the president declared.
The senator-elect is not a jihadist. Instead, what El-Sayed, like at least a half-dozen other progressives elected to Congress last night, represents is a new, unapologetic opposition to Israel now ascendant in the Democratic Party. But that view of the Jewish state has also, in El-Sayed’s case, veered into something more noxious.
After a terrorist attacked a West Bloomfield synagogue in March 2026, El-Sayed extended compassion toward the attacker, who had lost family members, including one alleged Hezbollah commander, saying, “Hurt people hurt people.” He struggles to answer whether Israel has a right to exist with a simple yes or no. His win is the clearest testament yet to a shifting of the tides, in which he was arguably elected because of his anti-Israel politics—not despite them. At the watch party turned victory celebration, hosted by the Michigan Democratic Party, the candidate seemed to understand that.
“They try to call you hateful if you believe that Palestinian kids should get to grow up in the land of their forefathers, without being murdered by our tax dollars,” El-Sayed said. At that moment, shouts of “Free Palestine” ripped through the room. “Michiganders, we want our taxes spent here for schools here and healthcare here and infrastructure here. We don’t want our money sent to do apartheid or genocide or war.”
In many ways, El-Sayed’s populist platform shares more with the America First agenda than that of the Democratic establishment. He’s denounced NAFTA, the trade pact between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico that’s hated by Trump, calling it “a terrible cancer on the American economy” (a pretty big claim given Michigan’s close ties to Canada/cross-border trade). He has an isolationist bent, often arguing that our schools are failing and grocery prices are rising because of American foreign policy—particularly when it supports Israel.
Earlier in the night, just as the giant projector playing MS NOW announced that “DEMOCRATS WILL FLIP CONTROL OF THE HOUSE,” I found Sufyan Billel, 21, basking in the moment. He told me he wants to see the Democratic Party move in the direction of El-Sayed.
“He was pushed to condemn things that he stood by, and he didn’t fold on his principles,” he yelled over the thump of a Kendrick Lamar track playing in the background. “That’s why we see historic turnout.”
Billel, a University of Virginia student, said he viewed El-Sayed as part of a new class of Democrats that includes Mamdani and newly elected state representative Donavan McKinney, a Michigan Democrat endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). What they share is being pro-Palestine, anti–Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and “anti–Muslim hate,” he said.
“They said it couldn’t be done outside of New York,” Billel added, “but we’re seeing it’s possible, and not just in a blue state but a purple or even red state.”
The election of El-Sayed is the clearest sign yet of a seismic shift in the scales of power—one where socialism, TikTok, and anger reign supreme. His victory is a riposte to the donor class and MAGA. It is also a repudiation of a pro-Israel consensus that dominated the Democratic Party for generations. In the closing days of the race, the old guard tried to ring the alarm to no avail. Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called El-Sayed’s position on Israel “wrong,” and Democrat Haley Stevens, who narrowly lost to El-Sayed in the August primary, announced she was voting for Republican Mike Rogers, in part because of El-Sayed’s refusal to distance himself from an antisemitic campaign ad pushed by a progressive PAC. Pelosi’s warning was ignored. Stevens was derided and bullied for breaking with her party.
Before the race, Jewish Democrats in the state had warned that El-Sayed’s associations with the anti-American fringe, as well as his stance on Israel, risked a huge drop in support from Michigan’s Jewish community, which traditionally votes Democratic. When I went to Temple Israel, the synagogue attacked by a Hezbollah supporter earlier this year, I met members of the congregation planning to vote Republican for the first time. Marc Whitefield, a 76-year-old who previously served as Temple Israel’s president, told me during my September visit that “No thinking Jew could vote for Abdul El-Sayed.” He added: “If someone like Abdul El-Sayed wins in Michigan, where do you think this goes next?”
In the end, according to one exit poll, a majority of Jewish voters in the state backed El-Sayed, but at a much lower rate than they backed the Democratic candidate for governor. Among Democrats who did not vote for El-Sayed, 92 percent cited concerns about antisemitism. Eddie Rubin, a Temple Israel member who voted for Rogers, was one of them.
Rubin, whose two kids were inside Temple Israel during the March 12 terror attack, told me he was “disheartened” by El-Sayed’s victory. A particular point of pain was the senator-elect’s seven-point margin with 97.4 percent of the vote counted—a larger-than-expected show of support that suggests El-Sayed has mainstream appeal.
“It hurts,” said Rubin, a lifelong Democrat. “I feel lost.”
El-Sayed’s ascension is proof that the rise of the DSA, which El-Sayed does not belong to but whose members he closely associates with, is not a fringe phenomenon, cloistered to the coasts. And it sends a giant flashing signal to all potential presidential contenders in 2028: Lean into the populist spirit or get lost.
In the home stretch of the campaign, GOP cash flooded the state, financing ads to broadcast obscure vulnerabilities in El-Sayed’s past, like a 2012 op-ed he wrote railing against what he viewed as a disproportionate investment in breast cancer research.
None of it mattered.
What Michiganders ultimately feared more was the price at the pump.
On Election Day, I met Renee Diggs, a 57-year-old Detroit native who said she felt trapped because of gas prices.
“I can’t even enjoy places I normally would because of the cost of gas,” she said, adding that she’d been saving cash by refilling her truck with regular gasoline instead of the premium it’s supposed to take. “I just make sure I have enough to get where I’m going and back.”
Diggs, an employee at the local airport, said she voted for El-Sayed because she felt like he cared about average people like herself, “not just the bigwigs.” She blamed the $70 cost of refilling her gas tank—which she says she has to do every two to three days due to her long commute—on the war in Iran. El-Sayed has vocally opposed American involvement in the conflict, calling the war “illegal and unjustifiable.”
“The war is killing us,” she said. “Everything is too expensive.”
Her cousin, Denise Bonds, who was handing out pamphlets for the Michigan Democratic Party Black Caucus, told me she voted for El-Sayed because she felt like his focus was at home.
“We need help here,” Bonds, 56, said. “We’re the ones paying for the war.”
Back at the Michigan Democratic watch party, Ahmed Mostafa, the lawyer, described the moment as bigger than a changing of the guard. As an Egyptian American, Mostafa says he grew up being told he was one of the “good ones”—a Muslim who had pleasantly defied expectations.
“I came out okay, but I was supposed to be rotten,” he said.
Mostafa, who runs a pro-bono legal clinic at Stanford Law School, said he never expected someone with a similar background to win a U.S. Senate seat in a purple state.
“It represents a new change of leadership,” he said, “that doesn’t have to be shy about who they are and what they want to do.”
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The muslim-democRAT alliance will eventually be just the muslims.
A ES = UAW.
GM and Stellantis are doomed. If you are an American, don’t buy a Jeep or a Chevy.
this tells us his clear agenda
Don’t worry about me buying a Jeep or a Chevy. Even getting a used one is highly unlikely & I can’t afford new (any kind).
The Demoncrats have been pushing for a civil war and it looks like they are close to getting one ... and I know where you will find them if that happens ... hiding in their mommies basements.
Well, that is how they have operated over many ceturies. Venerunt, viderunt, vicerunt (THey Came, They Saw, They Conquered).
Yeah, let’s get the money out of politics too:
Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed “Abdul” El-Sayed
• FEC S6MI00418; 14 Oct 26; Tot $53,830,872; Dsb $51,096,843
former Member of Congress Michael J. “Mike” Rogers
• FEC S4MI00595; 22 Oct 26; Tot $23,016,439; Dsb $19,369,637
I kept hearing that the Democrats didn’t have money but the Green Papers showed that individual candidates did.
Yeah, let’s get the money out of politics too:
Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed “Abdul” El-Sayed
• FEC S6MI00418; 14 Oct 26; Tot $53,830,872; Dsb $51,096,843
former Member of Congress Michael J. “Mike” Rogers
• FEC S4MI00595; 22 Oct 26; Tot $23,016,439; Dsb $19,369,637
I kept hearing that the Democrats didn’t have money but the Green Papers showed that individual candidates did.
Back when Dem thugs started tearing down historic statues Republicans should’ve demanded the destruction of the Dem party. After all, they were the party of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan & Jim Crow laws. R’s are always too spineless to play the hardball the other side plays.
And the Dems just continue to get worse & worse, now embodying communism & Islamism.
Not sure I’ll be around to see it, but one of the very few things that will be fun to see is liberal white women being brought under sharia law.
This is way beyond “democrats” and “republicans”.
The rules aren’t just for I-70 anymore. Trucks must carry chains on all these corridors from September through May:
I actually like the way they handle this in Wyoming better. When bad weather strikes, I-80 gates come down and block your entry. Also on US 287, same deal. "Slick in spots".
Until individuals whose worldviews do not adhere to the U.S. Constitution are prevented from becoming U.S. citizens and holding office, America is only a few generations of becoming England and France.
What is notable is that the national Uniparty coalition is no more as the commies have taken over. The absolutely great news is the GOPe/Uniparty being destroyed is the best thing to happen in America, politically speaking for decades. However, the cost of this action is also unfathomable as the common rats will be shocked as the bills/new laws will be presented from school boards up to the POTUS, also we have no idea what’s going to happen in 2028.
The biggest collective POS in this whole saga is Thune/McConnell duo and along with a do-nothing Congress who adds a couple TRILLION every year on the national debt. They collectively brought us here and finally met the political guillotine, where do you get fireworks this time of year?
“I can’t even enjoy places I normally would because of the cost of gas,” she said, adding that she’d been saving cash by refilling her truck with regular gasoline instead of the premium it’s supposed to take. “I just make sure I have enough to get where I’m going and back.” ***
I'm from SE MI and this is ** EXACTLY ** the reasoning of the pro-abortion murder cult and unbeknownst to most conservatives this is the Abortion ***AS BIRTH CONTROL*** way of thinking ***PURELY FOR PERSONAL LEISURE AND "ENJOYMENT"***.
The 90+% proponents? .DemonCrats.
The overwhelming demographic supporters within the .DemonCrats.?
The original target victims of the eugenics, black people.
Lots of conservatives THINK their erudite reasoning and astute calculations have meaning but you are wrong. You are dealing with neo-Stalinists where they solve problems by ignoring laws and institutions and when a person becomes a problem they kill the person...
Period.
Antisemitism?
I wonder how far that will go in the hands of neo-Stalinists and hardcore eugenicists. I have a guess from the trend lines of millions extinguished in current real time and 80 years in world history is current and real time.
Sorry...
Them's the rules. Ignore them under your own risk analysis.
Gee...wonder where all that money came from????
The next time you are Car shopping don’t ever forget that the UAW Endorsed and Supported El-Sayed - Never buy any GM or Ford products again
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