Why did Kamala Harris lost the “blue wall” and any other swing mode in 2024?
For the three leading candidates who are struggling to win the democratic nomination to succeed in withdrawing to Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, it could give an answer their political future.
At least one already has: Abdul El-Sayed argued on Monday that his party ran away from his voters-not against them.
Voting within the margin of error against rep. Haley Stevens, El-Sayed, 40, is very well positioned to draw the historic achievement of becoming the first Muslim member of the United States Senate.
A poll conducted by NSRC, the GOP’s Senate campaign arm, put him two points behind Stevens, a democratic congregation woman and allegedly the democratic party’s favorite to win the seat. Mallory McMorRrow, a State Senator, drew both, but approached a marked distance.
“Democrats still have not learned this lesson,” insisted El-Sayed on Monday. “It’s frustrating because these people made a calculated decision on who they needed and who they didn’t. And it turns out that this decision was far away.”
El-Sayed talked to The independent Two days before, he was ready to visit a Yemeni-Kaffeseshop in Dearborn Heights to get a meeting-and-greeting with voters, an area in Michigan that saw one of the sharpest falls among Democratic inclined voters last year.
Throughout the state, El-Sayed runs the exact opposite kind of campaign as an increasingly fragile Joe Biden ran in 2024. In some ways, his strategy also contrasts with Harris, ‘also in ways that obviously did not sit well with former Detroit Health Commissions.
On a recent interview with Twitch Streamer Hasan Piker (Hasanabi), the two Israel-Hamas war and the hunger crisis in Gaza, which El-Sayed labeled a genocide. But in the hour -long conversation – as Harris avoided some dismay from the Democrats – the two also broke out, chatting about fitness as well as YouTube and Twitter “shorts” apparently consuming social media and transformed it into a scrap.
“I saw this campaign actively running away from certain groups of voters because they did not want to take questions that would expose the inconsistency to their values,” said El-Sayed. “Whether it was Joe Rogan’s audience, whether it was Hasan’s audience, there are just groups of people that the Democrats have said,” Do you know what? We will abandon you because we do not think we need you to win a choice.
“That’s not how you are doing politics,” he continued. “Your job is not about just trying to architect a winning coalition. Your job is about trying to identify the problems that all people need, and then be able to be clear, specific and instruct on how to solve them in an attempt to win a choice because your agenda would deliver to most people in the ways they need.”
He attached much of the blame for the stiffness of the party in 2024, exemplified in both Biden and Harris’ campaigns, on a steady stream of donor money, as the two-time Bernie Sanders-supported candidate claimed they were going on the party. Democratic policies were won down through a narrow lens of what would be tasty for both the party’s base and their company-backed financiers, El-Sayed claimed.
The destruction in Gaza and the Democratic Party’s contribution to not pushing Israel over it under the bite highlighted a gap between the two groups he claimed grew for years. The man, who could very well be the Master of the Democratic Party in a crucial Senate race, spared no criticism for the democratic elites for which he argued was responsible for the mess within which the DNC was now mirrored.
“Joe the bite’s handling of Gaza was the sign of a general failure to do the job,” El-Sayed told to The independent.
“I wasn’t in these rooms,” El-Sayed said. “What I can tell you is what I watched and what I think the American public watched, [which] is a US president who fought to make a coherent statement to get through a debate, [and] … to control an extremely complicated situation in Gaza. “
“I also know that there was this effort to dampen the voices that were willing to enlighten what was obvious to our eyes,” he added.
A disturbing voice in the party that El-Sayed promises to shake the geriatric halls in the Senate if he were to become his party’s nomine. He hopes that a phenomenon that manifested itself to drive Zohran Mamdani to victory in New York City Mayoral Primary Election can be duplicated in Rust Belt.
“There was an inversion of voters’ demographics in the primary, young people came out during the hoping time,” said El-Sayed.
“And here in Michigan we have got young people who have been sick and tired of the system for a very long time, and our job is to go and talk about the challenges they face in their lives,” he continued, offering me an example of the complaints he has heard: “I don’t know I will be able to get a job, even though I did everything you told me to do. One I was to take jobs supposed to have.
As a senator, El-Sayed says he would return to exploit democratic votes on legislation to finance the government: The kind of closure policy Chuck Schumer refused to play earlier in 2025. He also supports the end of the filibus, according to an employee. El-Sayed would also not commit to support Schumer for another period as head of Caucus, says The independent He would look at his options when 2027 appeared.
First, he will have to win the 2026 primer as well as a parliamentary election against Mike Rogers, the Republican Trump-supporting congressman on a path to be crowned for GOP nominated. With a unified Republican Party supporting Rogers, El-Sayed is well aware that his Muslim background and attitude towards Gaza could weapons by Republicans in an attempt to overshadow a Zohran Mamdani-like focus on affordable prices and Michiganders’ economic stability.
Republicans see Michigan as a way to expand a majority and give Donald Trump the respiratory room he needs to promote his legislative agenda in 2027. The loss of Michigan would be a massive blow to a battle-tired DSCC, and a pro-Israel place has already attacked El-Sayed over his sitdown with Hasan Piker.
El-Sayed claimed that the momentum was on his side and that the Democrats should be ready to beat.
“I think we have to stop being scared,” he said. “I just think we have to hit harder, right? They will come after us on this question, strike back harder.
“I’m not back, I’m not pulling my strokes, and I’m more than happy to go to this topic or some other problem with lying MAGA types,” continued El-Sayed. “I think we can win the American public, but we have to stop being afraid of our own shadow.”