Today, Explained - Progressives take on the Rust Belt

Episode Date: July 18, 2026

First there was New York, then Colorado. But can a progressive candidate win in the Rust Belt? This show was edited by Kasia Broussalian, fact checked by Esther Gim, mixed by Shannon Mahoney, video edited by Christopher Snyder and Benjamin Stephen, and hosted by Astead Herndon. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) with Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed during the "Fighting Oligarchy" tour. Photo by Sarah Rice/Getty Images. You can also watch this episode on ⁠youtube.com/vox⁠. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: ⁠vox.com/members⁠. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Democratic Party is at war with itself right now, and it's playing out in primary races all across the country. On one side, you have the centrist establishment Democrats making a familiar argument. We have to pick up Democrats in these swing states, and those are usually the more successful candidates are the moderate candidates. On the other, it's the progressives who argue that the country wants populist fighters, who are looking to upend the status quo entirely. Together, we will usher in a generation of change. And if there's one place where this civil war is playing out most clearly, it's definitely Michigan. There's a stark contrast there between the two candidates running in the Senate Democratic primary, Congresswoman Haley Stevens and former public health official Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.

Now, Stevens has the backing of the Democratic establishment and people like Chuck Schumer. She says that El-Syed is too left, too untouch. and simply to extreme for a general election that Democrats have to win. The GOP is spending thousands of dollars to prop up your campaign because they think they will make it easier for Mike Rogers to win if you are the nominee. In the end, it all comes down to the dreaded e-word, electability, because that's the concept that's at the heart of the Democratic Civil War, whether the party wants to admit it or not. If you're a person of color or a progressive or a woman, it always comes up for candidates. Sure, you can win the primary, but are you electable in a general election? So in Michigan, one candidate is trying to turn the electability concept on its head.

Dr. Abdul-El-Sayyad is making the progressive case for America first, and he's trying to settle the Democrats' ideological battle in the process. This is about the many versus the money. If you support a politics of the UAW, of working people everywhere, of teachers, of nurses, of working families, this is that race. This week on America, actually, what does being electable actually mean? Let's begin. Support for the show comes from Apple News Plus. Apple News Plus has everything that you're into.

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So in our quest to think about American politics beyond the question of Donald Trump, there's no getting around the current fights happening within the Democratic Party. And one of the biggest is whether the left-wing anger that has fueled insurgent candidates in New York City and in Colorado applies to places outside of those typically blue-ins. and in states more important to the midterms and the electoral college, which is why the Michigan Senate primary is so closely watched. More than $40 million have been spent by outside groups on this race already, including nearly $50 million from pro-Israel lobbying groups like APEC, who are lining up behind Stevens and against El-Sayyat. Why?

Because this race is a proxy war for the Democratic Party, so much so that it comes up. all the time, including in my recent conversation with John Cohen, president of the centrist group Third Way. He told me last month that he was absolutely certain that El-Sahed was too extreme for the Michigan electorate, and he pointed to El-Syad's relationship with left his Twitch streamer, Hassan Piker, as proof. Very unclear that as a practical matter, Piker gets you much of anything except driving away people who matter to building a big Democratic tent.

If someone like El-Sayed were to win in Michigan, would you change that to? No. That would matter? That just wouldn't matter? Syed's not going to win in Michigan. Okay. So we can come back if that happens? Absolutely, we can come back if that happens.

Syed is not going to win in Michigan. And by the way, he's a close association with Piker. I don't think he's going to win the primary. If he did, he'd get crushed in the general and the association with Piker. I'll put money down on this. He'll run away from Piker. let me make you this bet instead. I don't believe that El Sajad will win the primary.

And Piker, too, was invested in the Michigan Senate race. He argued that El Sayed's rise to frontrunner already proved that there was an appetite for what the left is selling around Medicare for All and around shifting the United States relationship with Israel. He says there's more traction for those issues among the Democratic base than the establishment wants to admit. Abdul El-Said wasn't getting a lot of media attention

that race wasn't getting a lot of media attention in particular. It's changed. He's a stud. I mean, he's a Rhodes Scholar. He's a doctor. He worked in public health in Detroit. Like, this man has spent his whole life trying to save people's lives, right? And he wasn't getting the shine.

He wasn't getting the media attention at all. All of a sudden, third way comes out, starts railing against him. Mallory McMorrow starts railing against them. And what happened? He went from third place to first place, like, you know, with a comfortable lead in first place, according to most polls now. To some degree, Piker's right. State Senator Mallory McMorrow dropped out of the Michigan Senate race after failing to gain traction.

Now, El-Sayed is one-on-one with Stevens, who's consolidated the moderate lane and is pushing the electability question. And Stevens and her allies are flooding the airwaves. A pro-Israel super PAC that's supporting her candidacy recently released a negative ad that implied that El-Sayed has a, quote, history of disrespecting women. He called Michelle Obama's work with children uninspired and ineffectual, claimed Gretchen Whitmer was bought and sold. In a discrimination lawsuit, El Coyette was accused of telling a woman he didn't want to work with anyone over 40.

And an employee said he was offered payment to keep silent after witnessing El Coyed disparaging women. From this ad to the recent debate, it's pretty clear that Stevens and her allies want this race to be a referendum on El Ceyed. Syed and the left. And she, like Third Way, is making a bet that the electorate will find him a little bit of a loose cannon. And in such a critical race, that's more important than them buying what the moderate wing is selling. Which brings us back to the question of electability, and the public health doctor at the center of it all. Can Dr. Abdul El-Syad land a death blow on the

Democratic establishment? Let's ask them. Thank you for joining us. Honor to be here. Thank you so much. You know, I wanted to start by actually telling you something from my interview with John Cohen, the president of Third Way, the centrist shop that exists more or less, to stop candidates like yourself. He told me flatly that he doesn't think you can win this and that campaigning with people like Hassan Piker will cost you votes in the general, if not a primary. I wanted to start there with the question of electability. Why is that logic wrong?

They're so mad, aren't they? It's interesting taking political advice from a shop that exists specifically. to launder old ideas and make them seem new again and then like fail miserably at that. I think there's this idea of a purity politics that we probably should have gotten over by now. Like I remember the early 2020s when we were all so mad about cancel culture. And I thought we got through that. And it seems like for folks who want to shut down a debate and not have it, the best approach they can take is tell you that we should just go back to cancel culture but not use those words.

So look, at the end of the day, I am the most electable Democrat in this race. It turns out that when you believe in stuff, that's the best way to campaign. And I know what I believe in. The other thing I'll tell you is that it's not that people are wondering how you're going to be attacked. I know that's what D.C. likes to think about. How are they going to attack you? They're asking, what different can you offer me from politics as usual? And I think when people look at Michigan, you look at 2016, it went from for Bernie in the primary, then Trump in the general, then Biden in 2020, then Biden in 2020, then.

Trump in 2024, anybody who knows Michiganers knows that we're pretty steady eddy. It's not that we keep whiplashing back and forth from different extremes of the party. It's that we keep going back to the buffet and not finding what we want. So it may be that electable is not about who hews closer to some theoretical middle

imposed upon us by models that have proven wrong for a very long time. It might be that the question that Michiganers are asking is, who poses the biggest pushback to a system of politics that has been bought off in ways that leave me unable to afford my groceries, unable to afford a home, unable to look at my kid's school and believe that that's a good place for them,

unable to get health care when I need it, and then sending my money abroad telling me that somehow that's in my best interest. It seems like you're redefining electability to be from the kind of D.C. terminology, which I think you're correctly identifying has mostly meant the most moderate or traditional establishment candidate to something different. What is that version of electability for you? So if we think that voters walk around asking, where do I sit on some theoretical left-right spectrum, then in theory, the bulk of the voters are somewhere in the middle. The problem, though, is that that model hasn't really accurately predicted our politics for a very long time. If Michiganers wanted moderate, why would they have elected Donald Trump twice? I think the better way to think our politics is top down, people who are locked out versus people doing the locking out.

And I think if you're on the side of the people doing the locking out, you're going to have a really hard time in our politics right now. And I hate to say it, both Mike Rogers, the Republican and Haley Stevens, my opponent in this primary, have been on the side of the people doing locking out. They take their money and do their bidding when they're in Congress. Top bottom versus left right. That's right. And I think it also explains why our campaign is resonating in such a profound way. State Senator Mallory McMorrow recently dropped out of the race. Meaning to your point, and as the recent debate just showed, it is you and Haley Stevens. Congresswoman. What's the biggest policy distinction between you two? The differences are pretty huge. Number one, I don't take corporate money. She's awash in it. We've had $40 million of outside spending in this race, 40 million. Most of it coming from APAC, a organization that wants to take your tax dollars and send them somewhere else rather than keep them here to build schools and bridges and health care here. The second is that I'm for Medicare for all. I wrote the book on

how to do it. I don't know what her health care position is because she doesn't really want to talk about it, but that's a pretty big distinction. Third, I want to abolish ice. Maybe it's just because I've actually worked in the bowels of government having to run an agency. But when an agency runs amok that way, they can't be reformed or retrained. I think we just need to start from scratch. And then lastly, I just think very differently about what our responsibilities are when it comes to foreign policy. I don't want my foreign policy dictated to me by a foreign government. I don't think we should be taking money from special interest groups that are more interested in the well-being of a country 6,000 miles away than they are in the

well-being of kids in the heart of Detroit. So forgive me for wanting to keep that money here and spent here on health care. So the differences couldn't be more stark. If we want politics to look like it used to, we can go ahead and vote like we used to. There's also a difference in tone. You said in a recent interview with Simafore, Haley Stevens is a suit with a large APEC bank account. That's it. I hope that maybe they find some way to teach her to string two coherent sentences. I guess at some point when you sell out for that many corporations and special interests, you forget how to think for yourself. This was critical. by some Democrats as a statement unbecoming of a candidate seeking to unite the party.

It was taken by some to be a sexist dismissal of a female candidate. Do you stand by that description of Stevens? Look, the Congresswoman is plenty smart. There's no doubt about that. The question ultimately... I mean, it didn't sound like you were saying that in that quote. But the question ultimately is, why is it that whenever the question is asked about how our campaigns get funded, she's unable to actually explain it?

I'd like to hear a fulsome conversation, a fulsome explanation of why it's justified to take $40 million from an organization more interested in a foreign government than our own. That's the hard part where it's like whenever we're actually talking about what was given and what is expected when you take that much money, I don't hear a explanation. And I'd love the opportunity to have that conversation. Here's the other part of it, though. If you're a voter in Michigan, every time you turn on the TV, you are being bombarded by ads that cherry pick things that I said, like an op-ed I wrote about the let's-move campaign from First Lady Michelle Obama, or rehashing old campaign issues when I ran in 2018 against Governor Whitmer to make an

argument that somehow I have poor character and I'm blanket disrespectful. I just think it's important for us not to mix issues here. When you think about who's actually going low and lodging personal attacks, those are pretty personal. My eight-year-old daughter is being asked by friends at camp, whether or not her dad is disrespectful to women. I mean, to say that Haley Stevens is a suit with a large APEC bank account, a Democratic member of Congress that is from your state, saying that she can't, someone should teach her how to string two coherent sentences. I mean, is that language that is disrespectful to a woman candidate?

Well, look, at the end of the day, I'd love to hear an explanation. And if she wants to explain why APEC spending $40 million for her race, if she wants to explain where that money comes from, I'd love to hear an explanation. I just think it's important for us to actually contend with the fact that this is a candidate who has been funded by a huge number of outside organizations and is unwilling to explain what she has traded for that money. Part of this candidacy is clearly about the Democratic Party itself. You positioned yourself just against establishment politics at large, but folks like Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, you've said the party fell short in the Biden years. How much would you describe your candidacy as an opposition to Republicans versus

a candidacy that is meant to point Democrats in a different direction and is trying to win an internal party fight that is happening right now. You know, instead, I'm not trying to win any party fights. I'm trying to deliver for people in my state. I talk to people every single day up and down my state who tell me that they can't afford their health care. They're worried about whether or not they're going to be priced out of groceries, whether or not they're going to lose their job they've had for 20 years.

I'm trying to address those problems. And I think it's important for us to recognize that too often, those of us in the Democratic Party, and I love my party, I just want it to be better. Those of us in the Democratic Party who are out there trying to fight for a Democratic Party that delivers are too often hamstrung by the corporate wing of the party that is taking money from the very same corporations who are price gouging us and pulling away basic worker protections. If we want to be the party of working people, we have to be the party for working people, which means that we've got to stop taking money from the people who are nickel and dimming them. The problem is too often we're lazy about taking money from the same corporations to do the same bidding. And then where's the contrast between us and Republicans, we can have a party that is robust on these issues if we actually listen to working people and deliver for them. The contrast gets flattened when you're pulling from the same pot that is a corporate buck in the money that also goes to Republicans. Exactly. I do think, though, the diagnosis of what went wrong is important when we think about

solutions going forward. Let me just ask that question then a little differently. Like, why do you think Trump won Michigan in 2024? The problem right now is that for a long time, the Democratic Party has rested on its laurels that were not that. we took Donald Trump and said, well, look how obviously patently bad he is, which he's obviously patently bad. But then we didn't really point to what we could do to make things good. We didn't have a fulsome analysis of why it is that this thing's not working for you. We don't win because he's so bad. We win because he's so bad and we're so good. And so I'm just encouraging us to break free of the things that are keeping us from being as effective as we can. And you

mentioned Third Way at the top of the show. Third Way is a perfect thing. example of everything that's wrong with democratic politics. I just want you to think about what they push. They take money from corporations to push a brand of politics that tells us that we should keep keep doing corporations favors, that we should keep giving them our tax dollars in the form of government contracts, that we should keep pulling back on government. And then they want to police folks' campaigns in the worst iteration of the cancel culture that people rejected back in the early 2020s. I mean, this is exactly what's wrong with the Democratic Party. And I just think that we could be so right if we're willing to be honest about how our political system has worked

for the rich and powerful for too long. It sounds like, you know, you're providing a response to the pervasive feeling we hear from voters' left, right center, about a feeling of being screwed, frankly. And, you know, Donald Trump has his version of how why that is that points to immigrants and folks abroad and kind of blaming others. You're saying that the Democratic Party needs to tell a clear story with that with corporations as the villain in the center. I guess, I wanted to ask, though, about the way that that narrative has shifted over time. I think when you first came onto the scene in your previous statewide race, that was a time in which progressives were talking a lot more about things like the Green New Deal, about climate. The

center of gravity seems to have shifted a little. Certainly Medicare for all still there, but there's a greater focus on economic populism and affordability. There's a greater focus on repositioning the U.S. relationship with Israel. Like, if we could define the connective tissue that defines the progressive lane right now? Like, what do you think is the issue that's at the top of the list? But they're all connected. I mean, I want you to think about why it is

that we continue to accelerate forward with respect to burning stuff that comes out of the ground into the lungs of our children. It is because you have massively powerful corporations like Exxon and Chevron that get to dominate our politics. Donald Trump has been so cozy with them,

and now we're rolling back on renewable energy, which can be both cheaper and certainly better for our health, and obviously better for the environment. And here we are. But that's the power of those corporations. Now you think about AI, which wasn't an issue that we had to contend with because it was still in its infancy in 2018. And we're in a moment right now where people are worried about having a data center foisted in their backyard for what reason, right, to drive a technology that is going to enrich the most powerful and richest people in the country and then take away 50% of our jobs.

Like, why is that in our best interest? I just think that there's a response. for us to understand the system inside that is allowing all of these money people to take advantage of the rest of us so that they can make more money. Healthcare, the last example I'll raise here. You talk about Medicare for all. We don't need to have a system where a private health insurer can tell you who you can't see, charge you a nickel and a dime, undercut the pay for providers, and then you're in a situation where you've got to pay a $5,000 deductible simply because you got sick to use the health care that you thought you already paid for every two weeks or four weeks. All of it goes back to the same central issue. And unless we unrig the system, I worry that we're

going to continue to watch ourselves to get monetized left, right and center. After the break, the elephant in the room, how progressives like El-Sayed are demanding a Democratic Party rethink on America's relationship to Israel. Support for the show comes from Talk Ayatri. When your mental health is suffering, therapy can help. But sometimes it's not the whole answer. Talk Ayatri, gives you access to psychiatric care with licensed clinicians who can diagnose and prescribe medication if it's right for you. Psychiatry is a 100% online, like your cousin, psychiatry practice that provides comprehensive evaluations, diagnoses, and ongoing medication management for conditions like ADHD,

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You've got questions. We've got Ancestors. Offer ends July 22nd, 2026. Visit Ancestry.ca slash beginners for details. Terms apply. I mean, we should talk about Israel or the Board because it has been such a central delineation line in this race. You called it the rogue states that the U.S. can't keep selling weapons to a country committing genocide in apartheid. And you've made an argument that we've heard from even some progressives

here in New York City who were successful in their congressional race. That's money that should be coming here and should be invested in the least of Americans, not going abroad. But the question of how central repositioning U.S.'s relationship with Israel would be to you holding office in the Senate, I think it's an open one. Like, is this just the conviction that you hold? Or do you think that, like, reshaping America's relationship with Israel would be a priority for you once in office. So, instead, my priority is money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all.

That's what I'm campaigning on. That's what I've always been talking about. I'm a doctor who rebuilt health departments. We've talked a lot about APAC in Israel, though, even here today. Because people ask about it, and they're also the biggest vendor in the race. A PAC has inserted themselves in this race. They didn't have to.

They made a choice to do that. I am focused on being a senator from Michigan. And here in Michigan, kids need glasses, kids need schools, kids need functional infrastructure, and I'm going to find the money that we're sending to do heinous things to other people and keep it here. So look, I just think it's really important for us to think a little bit about the power that opposition to that message has. When you're spending $30, $40 million to try and shape one U.S. Senate seat so that we can send billions of your tax dollars somewhere else, I think everybody in the country should be a little bit

surprised, frankly, outraged, that they are the biggest spender in this. race, how does this affect the lives of people in Michigan profoundly when they're taking your money and sending it somewhere else? I know that you have advocated for restricting weapons transfers. I know you've kind of been clear-eyed about calling Israel's actions in Gaza a genocide. I would wonder about kind of a larger arm sales, like defensive weapons. Is that something that the U.S. should be providing money for to Israel? Why are we sending support in the form of weapons? To a foreign go.

Instead, like, just think this through for a minute for me. I'm thinking it. I know we know the argument. Polks and make the argument that it's our ally in the Middle East. If any other country did this, we would be treating them as the rogustag actor that they are. And somehow they're our ally and deserve our money and our weapons. Come on. Like, it just, it's crazy to me that this is a thing that is such a central feature of our politics,

that every time I come on to talk about the things I want to do for people in Michigan, everybody wants to ask me about something that happened 6,000 miles away, when it's so clearly an insane thing, that our government is supporting a government that does such heinous acts with our money. And then we can't call it what it is. Like, you should be asking yourself. Everybody should be asking. Why does $40 million get dropped into a Senate race in Michigan against the guy who wants

to keep Michigan tax dollars in Michigan? It's a wild thing. I mean, honestly, we should really be asking that. And I'll just be honest at clear. It's important to me to ask that question, in large part because I worry a lot about folks asking that question and getting to the wrong answer. And I worry because people are trying to tell us that our effort to keep our money here has to come at the edge of having some distaste for Judaism in the Jewish people. And that could not be further from the truth. Antisemitism is a scourge.

We have to fight it everywhere we see it. And I understand somebody who's been discriminated against for how I pray just how dangerous that is. And I'll be on the front line to fight in anti-Semitism. But people who try to use the specter of anti-Semitism to defend what a foreign government is doing when it's indefensible, that itself is a danger. And I think it's just really important for all of us who care about the well-being of Jewish communities to differentiate between those two things. And so I'm more interested in keeping my money here to defend people in our communities than I am to send it abroad to a foreign government to decimate another people when it could be used here to provide health care for people here. And that is not about

hatred for anybody. That is about a love for everybody. And I think we should also say it's important to know that this is aligned with a sea change that's happened among a democratic base that is documented, not only in reporting, but polling, that a lot of folks have come to kind of see your position, particularly in the last couple years. And Michigan is the place where the uncommitted movement was taking shape in 2024. Harris got 36% of the vote. Dearborn, Biden had won nearly 69% of the vote there in 2020. She lost the state by 80,000 votes. I wanted to connect the kind of policy issue talking about with the political electability

question we were talking about previously. Do you think your kind of pro-Palestinian advocacy helps you win votes in the general? You know, because that's the other side of the argument that the third ways are making, which is obviously arguing that there's an electoral cost to your policy statement. there is an electoral cost to back shopping genocide in the part-time. And that's what's wild to me is that people like third way are like, well, there's a cost they're not doing it. And I'm like, do you not pay attention to basic math?

Like, I'm sorry, but it's bigger than, it's bigger than the question of like, do you gain or lose votes here? That's the shit people hate about politics. I know. It's an ingy question to ask. Like, I think it's important to the question, but that's why I pose it. The reason that I think it's important is not just because it gains or loses you votes. It's because it speaks to the broader question.

People are asking questions about a candidate. The first one is, what do you say you're going to fight for? The second one is, how do I know you're going to fight for it? And if you can't call a genocide perpetrated by our tax dollars, the moral abomination that it is, that at some point it's hard for me to believe that you're going to fight for anything. And so at the end of the day, people want to vote for people who are going to show up and fight for their ability to live a dignified life. And I think it's important to show people, look, I'm willing to take on the Goliath of APEC because I think they're wrong. and I'm willing to say, and I don't hedge my bets,

I don't back down on it because I think it's the right thing to do. People want to know that you're going to show up, fired up to fight for them and fight for the truth that you believe. And at least we're showing that. Come what may. Yeah. I want to ask about looking forward. We kind of laid out the stakes of electability.

And I do think whether you're successful or not in this primary will be seen as a kind of larger reverberation on the question of the progressive lane and its ability to win. Besides the question of electability, besides the question of policy that you have laid out, what do you think is the stakes of this race? Like, why should this matter to someone, even if you're not in Michigan?

This is about the many versus the money. If you support a politics of the UAW, of working people everywhere, of teachers, of nurses, of working families, of Bernie Sanders and AOC, of people who want to break the chokehold of corporations and special interests on our politics,

this is that race. This has become, in effect, a very, very clear dividing line about what the future, not just of our party is, what our politics are. I'm running because I want to get money out of politics. Yes, to get money back in working people's pockets and to pass Medicare for all. But the fact that big money can come in here with tens of millions of dollars and try to truck people's basic ability to, like, see these candidates for who they are by writing 30 second attack at a 30 second attack at, it's anti-democratic, but it's anti-democratic for a purpose. It's for a purpose of trying to corrupt the politics so that the politics keep working for them and not for us. And I'm sorry, maybe it's just because I'm romantic around the 250th anniversary, but like, I know what America did for me. But I also know what it denied kids who grew up 15 minutes away whose families have been here way longer than mine.

And at the end of day, all of that kind of comes down to the choices that we make about who we venerate. And my parents took a bet on the idea of government of the people, by the people and for the people. And when I see that government being denied from people and doing things that benefit the people who are picking all of our pockets, that is something I'm not going to stand for. And so I'm running because I really want government to work for everyday folk.

Or will we continue to have government dominated by the richest people who can use it to keep pulling money out our pockets into theirs? Dr. El-Sayev, we appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining us. Honor to be here, said, thank you so much. And we'd like to see you in Michigan, huh? Yeah, and listen, we'll make our way out there.

Okay, so before my takeaways, a couple things. You've just heard El-Said say that Stevens is getting $30 to $40 million from A-PAC specifically. But we could not independently verify that number, and our research does not point to a number that high. It is safe to say, though, that the number is in the tens of millions. Also, we reached out to the Stevens campaign for comment, both for an interview and to talk about their campaign finances. We didn't hear back. But the more I think about it, the more that's becoming a bit of a trend. Considering Stevens, Congressman Adriano Espayat here in New York,

and many of the suspected 28 presidential contenders, it's hard to get a moderate Democrat to talk right now, particularly if you want to interrogate their vision and not just bash the left. So shout out to El Saeed, Hassan Piker, and even third way, for that matter. Because no matter where you fall on the Democratic Civil War that's playing out right now,

I think you should at least believe in it enough to say it out loud. America actually will be in your feeds every Saturday with an interesting interview in culture or politics. And you can also watch these episodes on the Vox YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube.com slash Vox or click the link in the show notes. The best way to support this show is by becoming a Vox member. Members get a bonus segment on Patreon every week and they make our work possible. Go to Vox.com slash members to join. That's Vox.com slash members to join.

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