Transcript: Who Is Abdul El-Sayed? His Harsh Trump Takedown Is a Clue.

Democrats just nominated a left-wing populist in the Michigan Senate race. A veteran political analyst explains how tough a road he faces, what he’s getting wrong, and how he can win.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 6 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

After Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan, Donald Trump uncorked a screed smearing him as crazy and a communist loser. And of course, that tweet previews what the GOP attack on him actually will be, only it’ll be backed by hundreds of millions of dollars. In the full expectation of this, El-Sayed delivered a victory speech and then remarks to reporters that framed the attack on Trump and on MAGA that seems likely to animate his campaign.

Can it work? Is it enough? How will El-Sayed overcome the other serious challenges he faces in this race? We’re really psyched to be discussing all this with Ron Brownstein, senior political analyst at CNN and columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, whose recent piece about the contest is a reminder that he’s the best in the business at explaining this stuff. Ron, great to have you on.

Ron Brownstein: Greg, glad to be with you.

Sargent: So Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official who was born in Michigan, the son of Egyptian immigrants, just won the primary by less than a point over the more moderate Haley Stevens. El-Sayed is harshly critical of Israel, is running a left-populist campaign for Medicare for All and targeting billionaires and the establishment. Ron, El-Sayed won big among young and college-educated voters, but Stevens won in the more rural and working-class areas. Can you explain why that portends a serious challenge for him in the general election against Mike Rogers?

Brownstein: Yeah. You remember, like, a phrase that I popularized about 15 years ago was that Democratic presidential primaries divide between the wine track—candidates who appeal to young people and college-educated whites—and the beer track—candidates who mostly appeal to working-class whites, Black voters, and seniors. That’s kind of gotten scrambled at the presidential level in the last few cycles, but it sure wasn’t in evidence in Michigan. 

I mean, this was a pure wine-track, beer-track coalition. And the answer is that whether it was Stevens or El-Sayed who won, neither side of that is enough to win a purple state like Michigan. You need both. And in the first general election polling that’s out there, from EPIC-MRA, El-Sayed, not surprisingly, is underperforming among voters over 50, Black voters, and non-college white women. So he’s got to do some work to knit together the coalition the Democrat needs to win in November.

Sargent: Ron, so what does he have to do? Basically, the poll you’re talking about, or at least a number of public polls, if you look at them all together—basically what they show was that El-Sayed is running behind where Stevens is running against Mike Rogers. 

So it depends on the poll, but it’s maybe around five points, six points, seven points—Stevens is running by that much more. So he has to win that chunk of voters, the voters who would vote for Stevens against Mike Rogers, but not vote for El-Sayed as of now against Mike Rogers, right? Who are those voters?

Brownstein: Well, I think they’re fundamentally Trump disapprovers. I mean, you know, as we’ve talked about before, in Trump’s first term, Susan Collins in 2020 was the only Republican senator or challenger who won a Senate race in a state where more people disapproved than approved of his job performance, according to the exit polls. 

In that EPIC-MRA poll, 63 percent of voters in Michigan now disapprove of Trump. You know, basically an amoeba should be able to win in that environment. There’s just no precedent for Republicans winning a Senate race in a state where Trump is that unpopular. But in that poll, El-Sayed is way underperforming among the disapprovers. What the political strategists call double haters are probably the people who are going to decide this race. 

I mean, the odds are high that there is going to be a big chunk of voters, maybe as much as 20 percent, who have an unfavorable view of El-Sayed at the end, after all this Republican money and after his own choices, but also disapprove of Trump.

So how do they vote in the end? In the past, double haters have tended to vote against the party in the White House. But Republicans hope that El-Sayed is such a reach for those voters that they can win more of them than they usually do. And I think that will be the pivot point of this race—people who disapprove of Trump and are somewhat hesitant about El-Sayed.

Sargent: Ron, who are those voters? Are those voters basically the same constituencies that essentially were more likely to vote for Stevens than for El-Sayed?

Brownstein: Logically you would say yes, but we don’t really have detailed enough evidence for that. You know, I suspect there are also some college whites in there beyond the Democratic primary. I think it’s going to be pretty broad-based. 

I mean, I think, you know, El-Sayed has run kind of a factional campaign. I mean, he presents himself as the leader of a movement. He’s been really focused on Israel and AIPAC, which is of less interest to a broader general electorate. And so I think he’s going to face a fair amount of suspicion, or resistance at least, among the broad electorate. 

But Trump is not going to get much more popular between now and November in Michigan. And so that group of people who are dubious of both, I think, will be the tug of war in this race.

Sargent: Well, Donald Trump issued a tweet that said this, quote: “Great news for the Republican Party. El-Sayed, a communist loser who hates Jews in Israel, is the projected winner in his race with the socialist. Now the Dumocrats’ crazy policies will only get worse.” 

I think by socialist he means Haley Stevens, which is utterly preposterous, but whatever. Ron, we’re going to see hundreds of millions of dollars put behind that precise message that Donald Trump put in that tweet. They’re going to paint him as a radical, a terrorist sympathizer, someone who pals around with far-leftists like Hasan Piker. They’re going to........

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