Video by Josh Miller-Lewis, Mae Ryan, and David McCaw
The biggest election in America is next Tuesday in Michigan, and the debate, as usual, is about electability. We put Abdul El-Sayed’s ideas to the test with real voters.
TRANSCRIPT
TOM FILAR, FORD EMPLOYEE: Abolish ICE. I have a hard time with that.
ALEXIS MADSEN, SERVICE-DISABLED VETERAN: I know that Medicare for all would be very difficult. Why is now the time?
RACHEL SELLARS: Does he support the continued existence of Jews in Israel-Palestine?
JOSH MILLER-LEWIS, MORE PERFECT UNION: All eyes are on Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed is on the verge of a massive upset in the Senate Democratic primary, campaigning on issues that were previously deemed too radical.
ABDUL EL-SAYED, MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE: I’m running on three things: Money outta politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all.
MILLER-LEWIS: The argument against him is, as usual, about electability.
[MANU RAJU, CNN NEWS CLIP: The electability issue that is really the central question here]
MILLER-LEWIS: The establishment pick is Haley Stevens – who is backed by over $30 million from AIPAC.
[HALEY STEVENS, MS NOW CLIP: No one wants Abdul to win more than the Republicans. They think they can beat him in November.
MILLER-LEWIS: But in an era where an increasing number of Americans feel politically homeless, what does electability actually mean?
JIMMY IZZO, AUTO WORKER: I have a lot of concerns with the Democratic Party
MADSEN: I feel scared to call myself a Democrat.
LINA SAAD, CLINICAL PHARMACIST: I no longer consider myself either a Republican or a Democrat.
MILLER-LEWIS: And can a progressive agenda really win in a purple state like Michigan?
EL-SAYED: What’s my coalition? It’s people who are sick and tired of being sick and tired.
MILLER-LEWIS: We gathered voters with diverse political views to put EL-SAYED’s message to the test.
IZZO: I come from a fourth-generation auto worker family. A lot of what we hear from Democrats is like a lot of lip service when, in actuality, they don’t really follow through on anything that they really say.
MADSEN: I am a service disabled veteran. I would previously describe myself politically as more Republican leaning.
SAAD: I have voted Republican in the past. I feel like the mainstream media is very biased, and I do respect a lot of the independent journalists, including Tucker Carlson.
SELLARS: My political views have evolved over time.
IBRAHIM DUHAINI: Donald Trump did visit Dearborn, and he said that he will try his best to end wars in the Middle East. We accepted his, you know, pledge.
MILLER-LEWIS: Have you ever voted for a Republican?
FILAR: Yes. Many times. More often than Democrat.
[EL-SAYED ENTERS THE ROUNDTABLE]
EL-SAYED: Hey everybody. How are you? So good to see you guys. Alexis, nice to meet you. Ibrahim, very nice to meet you. Thank you so much for taking the time to be out here. I really appreciate you.
MEDICARE FOR ALL
MILLER-LEWIS: Let’s begin with Medicare for All because that is, you know, one of the most important issues in this race.
EL-SAYED: I went to medical school, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this system, wrote a whole book on it, and ultimately realized that the biggest challenge is not making the math work. The biggest challenge is not architecting the system. The biggest challenge is creating the political will to get there.
I want you to imagine that next to your insurance card, you had another card, and that card was your Medicare card. It came to you the day you were born. And it didn’t matter if you turn 26 or get married or get divorced or get a job or lost a job; that you could get healthcare with it. That’s what Medicare for All is.
IZZO: My uncle, he had a precarious health situation, and he put off getting treatment for a while, and he ended up passing away from stomach cancer. I just think that really goes to show how far gone the system stands as it is right now.
EL-SAYED: Most people just put off having to do anything, because the financial burden of actually getting the healthcare you need is more anxiety-provoking than the possibility of being very sick. Now, the current system that we live under allows all of the corporations who make money off of our healthcare system to spend money to elect people who will then turn around and protect the industry.
And they’ve, in effect, manufactured a bipartisan consensus that tells us we can’t have guaranteed healthcare through Medicare for all. This is the question I always get: ‘What doctor? How you gonna pay for it?’
Just remember, we already pay for it. Every single dollar that goes to the back pocket of an insurance CEO, every single dollar that goes to a pharmaceutical company, every single dollar comes from where? One of our pockets. Every single one.
And because you don’t have to worry about that health insurance CEO’s exorbitant salary, now all of a sudden, the overhead of that system goes down. That’s the vision of Medicare for all. We could have it if we actually were willing to fight for it.
SAAD: My name is Lina, I’m a clinical pharmacist. There’s one patient that was not able to afford her oral therapy at the time. And we relied on giving her samples that we would get from drug companies. And I would literally take it and drive it to her on my way home. So how can we incorporate the pharmaceutical aspect into Medicare for all as well?
EL-SAYED: One of the most important things we could do is negotiate prescription drug prices. Medicare becomes the buyer of all prescription drugs on behalf of all of us. And so it can use its power purchasing on behalf of the 350 million people in this country to start bringing those rates down.
Here’s the other crazy thing about pharma: almost every pharmaceutical that has come to market in the last decade has had its roots in NIH-funded research. You know who paid for that? We did. Then some private company comes and buys the rights to this thing, then they get to sell it back to the taxpayer at a ridiculous rate. And that’s insane to me.
IZZO: My mom’s from Canada originally, and it seems like the motive there is to keep the people healthy.
EL-SAYED: So what we really want is prevention. I’ll be honest with you, I actually agree with MAHA on a lot of things. Most people are like, ‘wait, what?’ They’re right about a lot of the problems. The solutions are bat shit crazy, but they’re right about a lot of the problems.
I think we need to stop selling huge amounts of ultra-processed foods in ways that have us subsidizing them via a whole bunch of programs when what we really want is people to be eating healthy foods in the first place, right?
But in our current system, let’s be clear, a lot of people make a lot of money off of people getting sick.
FILAR: I’ve been working for Ford Motor Company for 31 years now. I’ve had it nice being a UAW member that I’ve had health insurance my entire career. I find myself as a parent of a child with autism; I’m coming towards the end of my career. So that’s one of my biggest fears: where the care will be in place for him.
I typically hold more libertarian views on something like this. So, would we be doing like a single payer system?
EL-SAYED: It would be single payer, and what I want is that the government basically guarantees your health insurance, and that allows the healthcare providers to go out and say, ‘look, if I can provide a better service, then I should win more patients.’
But it shouldn’t be that your health insurance says, ‘No, here’s who’s in network and here’s who’s out of network. So you’re gonna go here, and you’re gonna like it.’
And I think there’s a couple of pieces that, that we need to institutionalize. Number one, the governance of this system can’t just change on a dime because you have a new president, right? And so the governance would have to live somewhere similar to the kind that we offer in the Fed, right? So the governance would have to sit under, but separate from, the executive branch in a certain way.
We’re the richest, most powerful country in the history of the world. And, you know, we fight wars for no reason. But whenever we talk about providing healthcare, everyone’s like, ‘well, I don’t know if we could do it.’
Well, it’s a choice. These are policy choices. I would rather not spend a trillion dollars on war. I’d rather spend that money on healthcare and schools and infrastructure.
MILLER-LEWIS: The U.S. relationship with Israel has become a flashpoint in this race.
[EL-SAYED, ABC NEWS CLIP: The question about Israel isn’t about the theoretical right to exist of a country that exists. The question about Israel is, do they have a right to our tax dollars?]
MILLER-LEWIS: AIPAC is spending 30 million tens of millions of dollars to defeat El-Sayed, its ‘largest single-race investment ever.’
AIPAC AD: [EL-SAYED is] Too radical for Michigan. Too radical for the U.S. Senate.
MILLER-LEWIS: And his opponent, Haley Stevens, has made her commitment to Israel very clear.
[STEVENS AIPAC AD: Hello from Israel. I will continue to fight for Israel’s existence. Israel comes to me in my dreams.]
MILLER-LEWIS: But most voters believe the U.S. is too supportive of Israel, according to a recent AP poll. So will El-Sayed’s message actually get him more votes in Michigan?
ISRAEL & AIPAC
MILLER-LEWIS, TO EL-SAYED: As a U.S. senator, how would you seek to reorient U.S. foreign policy?
EL-SAYED: I don’t believe in unconditional foreign military aid to anyone. I don’t pay my taxes every year to be like, ‘Man, I can’t wait for Israel to get a new tank.’
And then when it comes to Israel’s own behavior, I think we need to engage them consistent with what they have done. They have perpetrated genocide, and before that they were perpetrating apartheid, right? They lobbied to move us into a war. Now they’re trying to annex southern Lebanon. Like I just think that any other country that behaved that way would be treated as a rogue nation because they’re violating international law.
SELLARS: A fear that a lot of American Jews have when they hear messaging against the state of Israel is that that is a slippery slope towards Jews don’t belong in Israel-Palestine.
EL-SAYED: I recognize that land is a land that a lot of people have lived on, right? The most recent inhabitants before 1948 were the Palestinian people, but also historically the Jewish people.
The problem though is that the implicit public policy of our government has been to aid, arm, and abet Israel’s current government to the exclusion of the right to peace, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinian people, right?
SELLARS: What would you say to people who are worried that withdrawing defense funding to Israel would make American Jews less safe here at home?
EL-SAYED: This idea that the things that we’re doing with our tax dollars to backstop a foreign government somehow makes Jewish folk more safe here — that doesn’t make sense to me.
I start from a position of principle, which is to say that Jewish Americans are not the same as AIPAC and Israel. That Jewish Americans deserve to live their lives unfettered and unencumbered by discrimination or hate and that we have to fight together to build in America where that antisemitism is stamped out.
DUHAINI: There is the largest Arab-American community here in Michigan, and mostly are from Southern Lebanon. My dad [was] building this dream home for all of us as brothers and sisters, and it vanished, in like, in a couple of seconds. And the soldiers were laughing about demolishing the whole village. As an American citizen, I’m paying taxes for this government to bomb and kill us. For what?
EL-SAYED: I appreciate you lifting your voice, and I’m sorry about your family’s experience. What is happening in southern Lebanon right now is frankly an abomination. I intend to be a voice in the U.S. Senate to consistently advocate for our principles, and that we apply them everywhere and that we apply them consistently.
MADSEN: Do you think that it’s harder to change things so we’re not being proactive anymore? Like, it’s easier just to let things keep going, like Israel AIPAC; is it just the easy way out?
EL-SAYED: I’m threatening a system of power that says, you just go along to get along. The real issue in our politics is not right versus left. It’s not like progressive versus conservative. It’s not Democrat-Republican. It’s people who are locked out of our healthcare, our housing, our economy, versus the people doing the locking out. I just want to always be on the side of the people who are locked out.
In theory, my opponent in this race is Haley Stevens. My real opponent in this race is Chuck Schumer, every corporate PAC, AIPAC. They will run your name in the mud. They will lie about you, they’ll lie about their opponent. It doesn’t matter as long as they maintain a control on power.
MILLER-LEWIS: One of the biggest attacks on El-Sayed right now is that he will lose to Republican Mike Rogers. The Democratic establishment thinks that Stevens ties to the Obama administration and her history as a U.S. Representative since 2018 make her a safer bet.
But recent polls slightly favor El-Sayed’s chances against Rogers.
ELECTABILITY
IZZO: I haven’t decided who I’m gonna vote for for sure. I do think Stevens polls a lot better with like the older demographic who are much more likely to vote. I think Haley would have a better chance to beat [ROGERS].
MILLER-LEWIS: Does that impact how you’re gonna decide to vote?
IZZO: Yes, for sure.
IZZO, TO THE ROUNDTABLE: When it comes to being against Mike Rogers, I want to hear how you can get your message out to people when you are facing these odds of people spending millions and millions of dollars that you don’t necessarily have.
EL-SAYED: You beat Mike Rogers because you build something that embodies the hope and the joy that you want to have for the future. This is a guy who voted to raise prescription drug prices, I don’t know how many times. Then he helped to architect the opioid epidemic. He took $700,000 from the pharma industry.
They’re gonna spend a whole lot of money trying to call me some combination between a communist and a terrorist. And I’m gonna sit out there and be like, ‘yeah, well, he’s corrupt as hell.’
Now I get it. I’m brown, I’m Muslim, I got a name you probably can’t pronounce, right? But I was born and raised here, and I’ve taken the time to, to serve and listen. So I think that’s how we beat him.
FILAR: I do question [El-Sayed’s] ability to win against a Republican. I feel that some of his beliefs turn off a large portion of the population. Listening to his comments that he would like to abolish ice. I have a hard time with that.
[EL-SAYED ANTI-ICE CLIP: I’m Abdul El-Sayed, the only Senate candidate for abolishing ICE, and I approve this message.]
ABOLISH ICE
MILLER-LEWIS: A lot of people in this room, Abolish ICE is one where they are a little bit confused about what it means. Lina, you expressed some questions about what Abdul’s immigration policy looks like.
SAAD: I think we can put ICE to better use to protect our borders and protect Americans. How can we draw that fine line between utilizing this federal agency versus allowing them to go rogue as they’ve done recently?
EL-SAYED: Here’s the thing. So I’ve run government agencies and once they take on a certain culture, it is really hard to change the culture, really, really, really hard. So under Trump, he started to recruit people who specifically came to ICE not to specifically enforce immigration policy, but they’re against immigration.
The whole subtext of this is that Donald Trump sold this fallacy to people where he understood that people were in pain. You’re out of a job, you’re out of a home. You can’t afford your healthcare. And his answer was a simple one: Well, you’re out of a job. It’s ‘cause the immigrant took your job. Out of a home? Immigrants living in your home. Out of healthcare? Immigrants took your healthcare. And so he turned immigrants into the answer to everybody’s problems. And then he built out ICE as a way of demonizing immigration itself.
ICE itself has become a rogue agency based on a premise that is inconsistent with both the Constitution and the ideals of our country. We don’t need it. In fact, we didn’t have it before 2002. America’s a lot older than 2002. So the notion that we can’t protect our southern border, or we can’t enforce immigration policy without ICE, is just not true.
You get rid of the agency, you fire all the people in it, and then you ask yourself, what would you want to build that actually achieved the goals that we have to keep a safe and secure southern border, to create a very clear pathway to citizenship for people, right? And in the cases where you have people who should not be here and do bad things, that you are very targeted in your enforcement, rather than making a show out of enforcing to tell all immigrants that they don’t belong here.
SAAD: That’s very, very enlightening. Thank you.
MADSEN: ‘Cause I think this goes to like ICE and other things that like, our politics are so black and white. How do you change that narrative? ‘Cause we need to recognize each other as like people again.
EL-SAYED: The problem with too many Democrats is it’s too easy to point and say, ‘Trump bad. I’m against Trump. You should vote for me.’ And you’re like, ‘Well, from a policy standpoint, are you really for me?’ You’re taking the money from all the worst people. So, what would happen if we actually built a movement about what could be good?
When we start talking to folks who might have voted for Trump for a whole bunch of different reasons to be like, ‘All right, is your life better now? Do you have better healthcare? Do you have better access to a job? Can you afford a home? If no, here’s an opportunity.’ Let’s focus on that.
Right, so I just really appreciate you guys having this conversation that’s like the lifeblood of what we do in our civics and is really enlightening. Thank you, guys. Appreciate you all.
MILLER-LEWIS: Did Abdul change your mind on any issues?
SAAD: Yeah, definitely on the ICE issue.
FILAR: I think the way that Abdul spoke about Medicare For All as far as it being a plausible and a tangible goal was pretty enlightening and I plan to vote for Abdul.
SELLARS: I think that Abdul did change my mind about what I feel like I can expect from a politician who really believes what they say.
MADSEN: Him taking a stance on something, even if it’s strong and people consider it maybe too strong; I think taking a stance means something.
IZZO: It’s an election. Anybody could lose. Haley Stevens could lose. And I’d rather, you know, vote for somebody who I agree with on their policy points rather than somebody who I just think is against Trump.
I’ve got my mail-in ballot at home. I’m gonna go home and fill it out and mail it in for Abdul El-Sayed
MILLER-LEWIS: The narrative in the media is that El-Sayed’s policies are too radical to win. But with these voters — who largely distrust both parties — his ideas broke through. El-Sayed won’t be able to sit down with every skeptical voter in the state, though. So I asked him what he thinks his path to victory in November looks like.
MILLER-LEWIS, TO EL-SAYED: You talked to a bunch of voters who had voted for Trump, many who identified as Republican for a long time, and they all left the conversation yesterday saying that they’re gonna vote for you.
Are there issues beyond sort of Medicare for all, which is at your core, that you think have the potential to win over disaffected Trump voters in a general election?
EL-SAYED: Corporate monopoly. The corruption of our food system, the role of AI in society, the onslaught of data centers- you think about who’s taking money from these corporations. Unfortunately, it’s Democrats and Republicans.
I always wonder why there’s so much opposition to this in the Democratic Party. I keep coming back to the same answer, which is it’s just laziness. It’s laziness, and it’s this sort of elitism. The laziness part is, ‘Well, if we can’t get money from corporations, then we’re actually gonna have to have a message and go talk about our message anywhere and everywhere.’ I’ve done 450 public events. I challenge my opponent in this race to say how many events she’s done, where she’s actually taking questions. You gotta do the work it turns out.
And then the elitism part is, ‘Well, the corporations are rich, and they throw the fanciest parties, and if I don’t take their money, I’m not gonna be invited to the party.’ I’m like, ‘Fuck your party. Who cares?’ You got the best room on the Titanic and don’t realize that the whole Titanic’s about to go down. I don’t know, man. I really struggle to like, to understand the psychology of it.
MILLER-LEWIS: Yeah. It seems to me that you are interested in something deeper than just winning this election. That it is actually fighting for some sort of change.
EL-SAYED: Losing this primary is not the worst outcome for me. The worst outcome is that I get the job and I fail to deliver. That’s the worst outcome. So I don’t want to fight for the job and, in the process, hamstring myself from doing the work. I don’t want to have been one of those senators that, you know, you had this power, and then you sold out, and then you can’t even account for why you were there.
So right now you’ve got the choice between three candidates, two of us in this primary and then one in the general. There’s only one of us who has never taken money from Blue Cross Blue Shield. Only one of us who doesn’t wanna send your money abroad to drop bombs on other people and wants to keep it here to invest in your kids. There’s only one of us. So which do you pick?
