Tipping point? Far-left’s Abdul El-Sayed chosen by US Democrats

Tipping point? Far-left’s Abdul El-Sayed chosen by US Democrats. By Greg Sheridan in The Australian.

The victory of far-left candidate Abdul El-Sayed in the Democratic primary for November’s Senate race was narrow in the end, but it’s an earthquake in American politics.

It opens up a chasm as wide as the Grand Canyon between normal, progressive, centre left Democrats and the wild new radicals mounting a far-left insurgency against the party’s values, traditions, history and policies.

El-Sayed beat four-term congresswoman Haley Stevens to become the Democratic candidate for Michigan’s Senate seat in the November midterm elections.

Stevens was supported by the retiring Democrat senator Gary Peters, the Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Chuck Schumer. She’d been a strong election winner before, taking a seat from an incumbent Republican congressman.

El-Sayed, who if elected will be the first Muslim in the Senate, was supported by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the far-left activist base beyond the Democratic Party.

Some of El-Sayed’s campaign was standard progressive populism — tax the rich, expand healthcare, all perfectly respectable.

But a lot of his positions, the ones which got the young activists’ juices going, were extreme, intolerant and plain horrible.

As with all these far-left insurgencies, hatred of Israel and hostility to Jews were at the heart of things. El-Sayed says Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza and rejects Zionism, the idea of a Jewish state in Israel, as illegitimate. He condemns Israel as an “ethno-state”. ,,,

He has previously condemned US police forces as “standing armies” and called to “defund the police”. Naturally, he wants to abolish immigration enforcement agencies. …

Pals around with Hasan Piker:

He’s not formally a member of the Democratic socialists of America. But he was proud to campaign alongside the influencer Hasan Piker who hates modern America and has called the Chinese dictator, Mao Zedong, one of the world’s great leaders. Worse, Piker said America deserved the 9/11 terror attacks. He’s also said Hamas is “a thousand times better” than Israel.

This is the company El-Sayed chooses to keep, indeed sees as useful to his political campaign. It’s the left-wing equivalent of a Republican campaigning alongside neo-Nazis. …

Into the US Senate?

It’s not so clear that he will win the Senate seat in November. … Michigan’s large Arab minority greatly disliked Biden’s residual support of Israel and many of them sat out the 2024 election. They, like the college educated junior bourgeois Bolsheviks, will be full of enthusiasm for El-Sayed.

NBC News:

El-Sayed, a former public health official, goes on to face former Rep. Mike Rogers, who claimed the Republican nomination without opposition Tuesday. Their race in November is expected to be one of the most competitive in the country, and it could determine which party controls the Senate.  …

El-Sayed overcame a nearly $65 million onslaught of outside money and an establishment that had rallied around Stevens.

First attack ad from the Republicans:

 

Hasan Piker to Democrats who didn’t vote for El-Sayed: “You are all unbelievably Islamophobic pieces of shit.”

 

This probably needs updating: