What does a politician do when he realizes that his actual ideas are anathema to a broad swath of the electorate? He runs as a man of the people.
But ... which people? It depends on which demographic he needs the most. Abdul El-Sayed managed to barely win the Democrat nomination in Michigan while losing Detroit, thanks to the reluctance of black voters there to go The Full Marxist, preferring the more traditional liberal Haley Stevens instead. At a rally yesterday, someone asked him about criticism that El-Sayed "doesn't care about black folks."
El-Sayed started off insisting that he doesn't like the politics of division, and ended up by claiming to be just as African as the voters in Detroit:
Abdul El-Sayed responds to black voters who do not support him: “I am African.” pic.twitter.com/3yVWaMDAng
— DSA Watch (@DSA_Watch) August 19, 2026
First off, El-Sayed glosses over quite a bit of history in embracing both an Arab and African identity. The Arabs forcibly colonized northern Africa and imposed Islam by the sword. Those same Arabs then created a slave trade that sold off sub-Saharan Africans for centuries (not to mention others captured by sultanates and caliphates), the same process that brought the ancestors of those Detroit voters to the US in chains, although likely not from the same sources. That smug declaration would likely infuriate anyone invested in that history.
Furthermore, the premise is absurd on its face. El-Sayed has no idea what it means to be a black man or woman in the US, and to claim that experience is also an outright insult. These voters are not "African," but are Americans of African descent whose families suffered and struggled to achieve equality as Americans. His life has been a privileged stroll through a free society he mainly despises, the spoiled prodigy of wealth who now claims to be down with the struggle, y'all. The fact that he poaches this identity while lamenting the politics of division is hypocritical, to say the least, especially for a Marxist who constantly preaches class warfare and demonizes "Zionists."
This reveals a fundamental problem with El-Sayed's campaign: His actual ideas won't sell, and he knows it. His impulse to grasp for an identitarian response exposes the intellectual bankruptcy of his radical politics. El-Sayed knows that his actual views won't gain him many followers, and so the last refuge of the radical progressive is to claim points through tribalism. El-Sayed wants to climb the intersectional scaffolding of a woke party by poaching blackness.
And if that doesn't work, El-Sayed can be ... Jesus?
Abdul El-Sayed compares himself to Jesus Christ:
— Sarah Gallagher (@sgallz_) August 19, 2026
"Jesus was considered radical in his time too." pic.twitter.com/hkSITnW9AP
This will likely land even less well among Christians in Michigan than El-Sayed's claim to be "African" will with black voters in Detroit. Radical Islamists have spent the last fifteen centuries attempting to erase Christianity and have largely succeeded where their footprints remain.
Even apart from that, though, Christians will recognize the utter vapidity of this argument. Jesus was not a "radical" – Jesus was the Son of God, sent to restore the Law in our hearts and to die for our sins. The only political position Jesus takes in the entire New Testament is to advise people to pay their taxes. He did not come to the world to lead a revolt against authority or to conduct class warfare. Just saying this makes El-Sayed look as ill-informed about Christianity as he is about being black in America.
El-Sayed is a fraud, a phony, someone who has to construct identity rather than coherent policy. And while that may hide who El-Sayed truly is and wants, it's enough to warn Michigan voters to keep this man from ever holding an office of public trust.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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