The Establishment Would Rather Lose Michigan Than Let Abdul El-Sayed Win It

Here is what the Democratic establishment wants you to believe is the most important story in the Michigan Senate race: a Twitch streamer said something grotesque about 9/11 seven years ago, and a progressive candidate who appeared on stage with him is therefore unfit for public office.

Here is what is actually happening: Abdul El-Sayed is running to become the first Muslim senator in American history on a platform of Medicare for All, getting dark money out of politics, and cutting off unconditional military aid to a government he calls out by name for committing genocide. And the people who have spent decades profiting from the systems he threatens have decided that a streamer’s 2019 rant is the hill they will die on to stop him.

Conlan Houston (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons

Let’s be clear about the facts, because the facts matter. Hasan Piker said “America deserved 9/11” on a livestream in 2019. It was a vile thing to say. El-Sayed said so himself on Meet the Press this past Sunday, calling it “a dumb statement” and confirming that Piker had already disavowed it. Bernie Sanders said the same thing. Nobody is defending those words. Nobody should.

But watch what happens next. Watch how the outrage machine shifts gears. El-Sayed disavows the comment, and the response from the establishment is not “good, moving on.” The response is: but will you stop campaigning with him? Who else do you talk to? What does it mean about what you think? The goal was never accountability. The goal was isolation. The goal was to make El-Sayed spend every interview apologizing for someone else’s mouth instead of talking about the three million young people Piker reaches who have been abandoned by every institution in this country.

Michael LaRosa, Jill Biden’s press secretary, posted that he “won’t defend or support anyone who is too cowardly to stand up to extremists” and then appeared to back El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, Mike Rogers. Let that sink in. A Democratic operative, citing the memory of a friend’s mother who died on 9/11, used that grief to justify supporting a Republican over a Democrat. That is not principle. That is the establishment eating its own because the wrong Democrat won the primary.

SlikeR (CC BY 3.0) via Wikimedia Commons

And then there is Trump, who posted a photo of El-Sayed and his wife, who wears a hijab, next to a picture of himself and Melania with the caption “Two very different Americas.” This is textbook Muslim-baiting. It is the same playbook that has been used against every prominent Muslim American who dares to seek power. El-Sayed’s response was perfect: he agreed with the caption. One America is run by billionaires who don’t even like each other. The other is two people who love each other and want to build something worth living in.

The MSU rally where Piker and El-Sayed appeared together drew 37,000 viewers on Twitch. Students showed up because Piker was there. Pennsylvania Rep. Summer Lee was there. The room was packed. And what did they talk about? The Trump administration’s bombing campaigns. The genocide in Gaza. Medicare for All. Getting money out of politics. The things that actually affect people’s lives.

MSU Hillel called Piker a “known antisemite.” El-Sayed, at that same rally, said he loves and reveres his Jewish neighbors and Judaism, and that is precisely why he will not sit by while tax dollars fund a genocide. He has drawn the line that the establishment refuses to draw: between the Jewish people and AIPAC, between a religion he reveres and a foreign government he will not bankroll.

Hudson Institute (BY) via wikimedia

The Democratic Party has a choice. It can keep running candidates who are perfectly inoffensive and perfectly useless, as El-Sayed himself put it, and keep losing. Or it can build the coalition that actually turns people out. Young voters, Muslim Americans, working-class Michiganders who have been told for decades that their concerns are too radical for the table.

The establishment is not worried about 9/11. They are worried about Medicare for All. They are worried about unconditional military aid. They are worried about a Muslim senator who cannot be controlled. And they should be.

What must happen now is simple. Stop demanding that El-Sayed perform contrition on a loop. Start demanding that every Democrat in Michigan get behind their nominee. The choice is not between El-Sayed and perfection. It is between El-Sayed and Mike Rogers, between a movement and a machine that would rather lose with dignity than win with a coalition it cannot own.