{"id":786,"date":"2026-08-05T19:47:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T19:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=786"},"modified":"2026-08-05T19:47:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T19:47:24","slug":"abdul-el-sayed-the-power-of-our-many-is-greater-than-the-power-of-their-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=786","title":{"rendered":"Abdul El-Sayed: “The Power of Our Many Is Greater Than the Power of Their Money”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed beat the power of big money in Michigan\u2019s tightly contested Democratic Senate primary. That wasn\u2019t easy. El-Sayed was dramatically outspent and relentlessly attacked by his opponents. Yet the candidate who ran with the endorsements of US Sen. Bernie Sanders, US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the United Auto Workers union prevailed Tuesday over US Rep. Haley Stevens, who benefited from as much as\u00a0$70 million<\/u>\u00a0in spending\u2014in support of Stevens and against El-Sayed\u2014by corporate donors and groups aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.<\/p>\n

Read more The Makings of a Mass Crisis<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the words of Muhammad Ali, \u2018We shook up the world,\u2019\u201d El-Sayed\u00a0declared<\/u>\u00a0on Wednesday morning, after winning a close primary fight in which his campaign said he was\u00a0outspent by as much as 11-1.<\/u>\u00a0\u201cWhat we showed is that the power of our many is greater than the power of their money.\u201d<\/p>\n

El-Sayed\u2019s win came on a big night for progressives in Michigan, where democratic socialist\u00a0Donavan McKinney,<\/u>\u00a0who was backed by Sanders, Democratic Socialists of America, Justice Democrats, and the Working Families Party, beat Democratic US Rep.\u00a0Shri Thanedar\u00a0in the Detroit area; and where progressive\u00a0Will Lawrence,<\/u>\u00a0a Sunrise Movement cofounder who assembled a similar coalition of backers, won a three-way contest to take on a vulnerable Republican incumbent in central Michigan\u2019s 7th district. All of the winners are supporters of Medicare For All, taxing the rich, building strong unions, and strengthening Palestinian rights.<\/p>\n

But El-Sayed\u2019s win stands above the rest, given that it was considered by many to be the highest-profile Democratic contest of the summer. Now that he\u2019s prevailed in the primary, El-Sayed faces two immediate tasks. <\/p>\n

First, he has to unite a Michigan Democratic Party that is far more energized than the GOP, which is plagued by both the growing unpopularity of President Donald Trump and internal divisions over how to appeal to voters who have soured on so much of the Republican agenda. Second, El-Sayed must take his populist challenge to corporate interests\u2014and their influence on our governing\u2014into a general election where he knows he will be outspent but not outworked.<\/p>\n

Uniting Democrats is essential. The primary turnout numbers in Michigan\u2014a state where both parties had top-of-the-ballot contests (Democrats for the Senate, Republicans for governor) and extensive down-ballot competition\u2014diverged dramatically. Democrats drew\u00a0roughly 1.5 million voters<\/u>\u00a0to the polls on Tuesday, while Republicans drew around 930,000. \u201cWe have not seen this kind of split before,\u201d noted veteran Michigan pollster Richard Czuba. That\u2019s another reminder that the enthusiasm gap favors Democrats this year\u2014if they can stay focused on their opponents and not each other.<\/p>\n

The Michigan primary was often bitter. But on Wednesday morning, key players made major moves to pull the party together behind El-Sayed. \u201cI\u2019m proud to give Abdul my full endorsement and support as we head to November together as a unified party,\u201d\u00a0declared<\/u>\u00a0Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, whose name remained on the Senate ballot after she dropped her own bid last month. \u201cTake it from me \u2014 this was a brutal primary. But whatever differences there were between the candidates in this race, those differences are nothing compared to the contrast in November.\u201d <\/p>\n

Read more Hegseth\u2019s Testosterone Program Is a Disservice to Men<\/a><\/p>\n

And Michigan Democratic US Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a much more centrist figure than El-Sayed, was quick to announce that she\u2019d be working to help beat Republican nominee Mike Rogers\u00a0because<\/u>\u00a0\u201cthere is nothing more important than the mission of the next 90 days: uniting, keeping this seat blue, flipping the House and Senate, and providing a real check on President Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

But uniting the party is just one part of the equation.<\/p>\n

The other part involves what has emerged as one of El-Sayed\u2019s great political strengths: his development of a dynamic populist message that links the corporate and special interest money on which the Rogers campaign will rely to federal policies that harm the working families of Michigan. Speaking on Wednesday, El-Sayed mocked Rogers for once attacking Donald Trump and then falling in behind the president: \u201cIs he MAGA? Is he Neocon? No, man, he\u2019s just a corporate sellout.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s precisely the right message for this moment.<\/p>\n

Rogers will offer voters a rerun of the attacks that have already been made on El-Sayed. The Republican will have plenty of resources to do this\u2014very probably with funding from the same sources that spent so much money attacking El-Sayed in the primary.<\/p>\n

But El-Sayed\u2019s takeaway from the primary is a smart one. He plans to keep running a high-energy campaign that places an emphasis on meeting voters where they live\u2014especially in rural regions, small cities and\u00a0the Upper Peninsula,<\/u>\u00a0where he showed considerable strength in Tuesday\u2019s results. Yes, he\u2019ll be outspent. But he has learned a pair of confidence-building and strategy-influencing lessons from the primary\u2014both of which can be used against Rogers in November.<\/p>\n

First: <\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe took on a machine. You\u2019re not supposed to be able to beat $70 million dollars of outside spending \u2014a record amount of money spent in a campaign against a Democrat in a primary in any campaign. You\u2019re not supposed to be able to beat that. And what we showed is that\u00a0the power of our many is greater than the power of their money.<\/em>\u00a0What we showed is that if you are willing to build a movement, brick by brick; if you\u2019re willing to travel your state and have a conversation in rooms big and small, starting in a moment where people aren\u2019t even paying attention to an election\u2014but are paying attention to the price of gas, and the price of groceries, and the price of housing, and the price of health care \u2013 that you can build a conversation that builds into a movement that defeats the liar. This is what you all showed me. And my hope is that our democracy will never to the same. So when Big Pharma and Big Tech, when DTE and Blue Cross come a-knocking and say, \u2018You know what, this is our democracy and we\u2019re going to own it,\u2019 from here on out, we can always point [to this election] and say, \u2018No, this is the people\u2019s democracy, and we will\u00a0always<\/em>\u00a0own it.’\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Second, when faced with an onslaught of negative attack ads, there is reassurance in the fact that \u201cit turns out the commercials are the part of the television show most people don\u2019t want to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more This Isn\u2019t About Rosebud, David Ellison<\/a><\/p>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Nation Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nAbdul El-Sayed: "The Power of Our Many Is Greater Than the Power of Their Money" - Atlas Living Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=786\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Abdul El-Sayed: "The Power of Our Many Is Greater Than the Power of Their Money" - Atlas Living Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Nation Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=786\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Atlas Living Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-05T19:47:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=786#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=786\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/f6233854b1f92a6d21147fe5d5e58abc\"},\"headline\":\"Abdul El-Sayed: “The Power of Our Many Is Greater Than the Power of Their Money”\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-05T19:47:24+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=786\"},\"wordCount\":1121,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=786#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/7bebb8bf5742d81cf9b5e660b8c251d7.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Politics\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=786#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=786\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=786\",\"name\":\"Abdul El-Sayed: \\\"The Power of Our Many Is Greater Than the Power of Their Money\\\" - 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