Abdul El-Sayed: New Face, Same Farce

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination for US Senate in Michigan on August 4, defeating Representative Haley Stevens and providing a new face to help revive the decrepit Democratic mafia.

He campaigned on an immediate arms embargo on Israel, Medicare for all, higher taxes on the rich, and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The Democrats have historically aimed to leverage popular struggles and redirect them to the voting booths, convincing some that they will be the ones to deliver on the people’s demands if they get elected.

Each time they offer a new face, the farce is always the same.

Opposing Israel’s Policies to Save Israel

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent more than $30 million supporting Stevens—who bizarrely declared that “Israel comes to me in my dreams”—in its largest investment in a single race. El-Sayed, by contrast, called Israel’s assault on Gaza a genocide and leveraged his Muslim identity to traffic in popular support for Palestine.

El-Sayed’s opposition to Israel, however, is restricted to its government and military policies, while at the same time expressing his opposition to the Palestinian resistance in starker terms.

He compared Hamas to an invading “bacterial infection” and Israel’s policies to an “immunodeficiency,” arguing that “both are dangerous” and make the other worse. His metaphor turns Palestinian resistance into a disease infecting Israeli society rather than a just and heroic response to occupation and dispossession.

You cannot be anti-Zionist and pro-Palestine while opposing the very people who are leading the way in liberating Palestine.

This is the function of liberal Zionism: permitting criticism of the Nazi-Zionist Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli military policy while preserving the fundamental relationship between Israel and US imperialism. It can recognize Palestinian suffering while rejecting Palestinian resistance, leaving the existing order intact.

The “pro-Palestine” rhetoric of the Democratic mafia is a matter of preserving Israel in response to the strategic defeats the US and Israel have been dealt on the ground by the armed resistance. Even Trump has warned Netanyahu to lower the intensity of the genocide to help with Israel’s image; the Democrats do the same but in a more concealed form. Under the Biden administration, there were many stern warnings to Israel’s government, and at one point a single shipment of bombs was put on hold, all the while the money and weapons kept on pouring in. It is a matter of sacrificing the part to save the whole. By putting the blame on the Israeli government, Israel itself can be preserved by casting the current administration as an outlier.

The liberal Zionist outlet Forward captures this sentiment precisely in its defense of El-Sayed, writing that he offers an alternative to the “anti-Zionist left and the Jewish supremacist right” to help bring about “a Jewish and democratic Israel”.

It is telling that while El-Sayed toys with the idea of abolishing ICE, writing on his campaign website, “ICE is irredeemable. Retraining won’t fix it. And the only reason to deny this is political cowardice,” he does not extend this to Israel, but instead supports “equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination, for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis alike.” What machinations!—ICE is irredeemable, but Israel can be saved?

He continues: “I believe we have a responsibility to uphold international law. I believe we have a responsibility to treat every single state the same way, around international law. I believe in a process that offers a free Palestinian people the equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination that a free Jewish Israeli people ought to have. And then I will support whatever the outcome is that a free Palestinian people and a free Jewish Israeli people decide is the right outcome.”

International law is structured around and dominated by the interests of US imperialism. It has put out arrest warrants for a few officials in Israel’s leadership but has not enforced them, and has given approval to Trump’s “Board of Peace” to bring an occupying army to Gaza and facilitate US and Israeli domination.

It is this international law that has aided and abetted Israel very explicitly since its foundation in its occupation of Palestinian land while issuing warnings to conceal its own complicity, warnings that it refuses to enforce. This is the “international law” El-Sayed upholds, providing the pretext that such a decision is made jointly by “free” Palestinians and Israelis to justify his support for Israel, not unlike Trump’s own rhetoric around the Board of Peace.

The Conquests of the Masses and the Cackles of Politicians

Divestment is an economic decision to maximize profitability by withdrawing investments from an increasingly unprofitable environment. With apartheid South Africa, divestment was not won by voting the right people in office, but was imposed by the rebellions of the masses against the genocidal South African government and supported by solidarity actions around the world.

A similar example today is the US military considering retreating much of its forces from the Middle East following US imperialism’s defeat at the hands of Iran and its allies. This is not because the top military officials are progressives aiming to reduce US imperialism’s military footprint, but because these conditions were forced on them. The only reason it is not being portrayed as a moral decision is because the Republican mafia is at the helm instead of the Democrats.

Governmental policy changes reflect economic realities; both mafias, but especially the Democrats, spin this to make it seem the other way around, to hide the fact that they were forced to make the concessions and instead claim it happened because they were elected. It is an attempt to rob the masses of their victory and control the narrative to oppose violent rebellion for peaceful electoralism.

Karl Marx exposed this farce in one of the dominant parties in England at the time, the Whigs:

“The Whigs are the aristocratic representatives of the bourgeoisie, of the industrial and commercial middle class. Under the condition that the Bourgeoisie should abandon to them, to an oligarchy of aristocratic families, the monopoly of government and the exclusive possession of office, they make to the middle class, and assist it in conquering, all those concessions, which in the course of social and political development have shown themselves to have become unavoidable and undelayable. Neither more nor less. And as often as such an unavoidable measure has been passed, they declare loudly that herewith the end of historical progress has been obtained; that the whole social movement has carried its ultimate purpose, and then they ‘cling to finality.’”

The same is true of the Democratic mafia, bourgeois representatives of the US financial oligarchy. They make “progressive” statements only when it becomes a necessity for them to win votes (which Democrats were campaigning on opposing Israel a decade ago?) and push legislation to adapt the interests of finance capital to the conditions imposed on them while declaring themselves the purveyors of progress.

The masses impose their demands through rebellion while the Democrats take credit after fighting against the demands tooth and nail.

The Democrat Mafia Uses Two Wings to Fly

El-Sayed’s victory has been celebrated as further evidence of a “progressive insurgency” within the Democratic Party. But his campaign exposes the farce of that label.

“I’m simply not a socialist,” El-Sayed said during his campaign. Yet he ran on the same demands that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and its allies promote under a “socialist” banner.

El-Sayed simply drops the pretense maintained by candidates such as Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. All are by necessity tied to the imperialist ruling class—not only serving as functionaries of the imperialist state, but even running through one of the two ruling class parties—while their so-called socialist supporters present them as vectors of working-class power.

Such campaigns drum up support for the Democrats and rebrand it as pro-Palestine and pro-worker after overseeing the largest arms and money transfer to Israel at the height of its genocide while transferring hundreds of billions of dollars to monopolies through publicly-funded subsidies only a few years ago when they held office.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently called for Democrats to be in the “addition, not subtraction” business, reiterating the tired call for a “big tent”. The “big tent” is an expansion of packaging rather than policy changes. The primaries act as rehearsals for the electoral farce, allowing each faction of the ruling class to test how to best swindle votes.

As opposition to the US-Israel’s genocide in Gaza has grown and the economic crisis has continued, the Democrat mafia is hemorrhaging support. According to the Pew Research Center, only 36% of US adults supported the Democrats in 2025. They have been able to make a partial recovery in popularity since then with the help of their social chauvinist wing.

A vote for a “pro-Palestine” Democrat is a vote for an AIPAC Democrat. Each uses the specter of the other to garner votes, all while testing to see what will help the Democrat mafia get more seats in the state bureaucracy to loyally serve the imperialist faction they represent.

Over 60 years ago, Malcolm X exposed this relationship between the anti-civil rights Southern Democrats and the “pro”-civil rights Northern Democrats:

“These Northern Democrats are in cahoots with the Southern Democrats. They’re playing a giant con game, a political con game. You know how it goes.”

“One of them comes to you and make believe it’s for you. And he’s in cahoots with the other one that’s not for you. Why? Because neither one of them is for you. But they’ve got to make you agree with one of them or the other. So this is a con game. And this is what they’ve been doing with you and me all these years.”

And this is what they continue doing today, around whatever the latest hot button issue is. Why is it that after all these decades of voting for the “progressive” faction of the Democrats, on every issue—worker rights, civil rights, abortion rights, support for Israel, ICE—these rights still end up getting eroded by the government anyway?

Because it is a political con game, as Malcolm says. The state is tied to finance capital by a thousand strings; elections do not change who is in power, only the representatives of those in power. Legislation follows the interests of the ruling class, and the job of the politician is to sell this to the people as their interests, or at least to try to make them look the other way through fiery rhetoric or bribery.

In the same speech, Malcolm describes how the different factions of the Democrats are friends despite the appearance of contention.

It’s the same thing today, with the “progressive” wing receiving the support of the dominant faction of the Democratic mafia. After receiving the endorsement of former Vice President Kamala Harris, El-Sayed thanked her, writing that her support is “critical” to building a coalition against Donald Trump and calling for Democrats to “bring communities together.” El-Sayed also received a congratulatory phone call from former President Barack Obama, whom El-Sayed praised as a personal hero.

El-Sayed can present himself as a break with Democratic politics while receiving the support of its most prominent representatives. The Democratic Party redirects opposition to its party with candidates promising reform through the same political machinery. They change the faces but keep the same farce.

Elections cannot solve the problems of the people, only the people can.

Image: Dr. Abdul El-Sayed at Michigan Technological University, 2025. Credit: Conlan Houston.

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