Is Abdul El-Sayed Bigger Than Mamdani? - with Mark Halperin

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0:18You are listening to an ARK Media podcast. Tens of millions of Americans and millions in Michigan don't want the status quo. because like Trump supporters in 2015 and 2016, therefore anybody who will roll into Washington with sticks of dynamite on their cabs, ready to blow the place up and start over, that's what this guy is promising. Let's see if he can win the general election. But if he does, he could be the presidential nominee. He could be the kingmaker because he's not interested in business as usual and he's got a real hunger to lead a revolution.

1:02It's 7.30 a.m. on Sunday, August 2nd in New York City. It's 2.30 p.m. on Sunday, August 2nd in Israel. On this podcast, we spend a lot of time on what may be Israel's most consequential election in its history. The one set for October 27th of this year. But there's another election 6 ,100 miles away in Michigan that could matter just as much for the U.S.-Israel relationship, the Michigan Democratic primary to nominate their candidate for U.S. Senate, which takes place this coming Tuesday. On the surface, the races between Congresswoman Haley Stevens, characterized as the candidate of the party's moderate wing, and Abdul al-Sayed, characterized as the candidate of the party's insurgent progressive wing.

1:49I have some personal history here. I worked for the last Arab American elected to the U.S. Senate from Michigan in the 1990s, and I have had a lot of exposure to the large and vibrant Arab American community in the state and its role in statewide politics. But unlike the race I worked on back in the 90s, Israel has been anything but a subplot in this campaign. El-Sayed has made it the plot. For those who have not followed Abdul El-Sayed, he has made this race a referendum on Israel and AIPAC. As point blank, if a progressive could also be a Zionist, he said, quote, every definition of a Jewish state ends up in some articulation of illiberal values, every single one.

2:34Like Mamdani, he doesn't accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. And also, like Mamdani, Al-Sayed sees the office as a vessel for something much bigger than Michigan. Leaked audio from a donor call had him describing a Senate seat as a platform to build the progressive movement nationally and bankroll primary challenges against sitting Democratic senators. On that call, reportedly saying of Senator John Fetterman, quote, you put one ogre on a pike and then everyone else gets the message, close quote. His own primary opponent's campaign has accused al-Sayed of making this race, quote, about his personal political ambitions and the other 49 states.

3:17I believe that if al-Sayed continues to rise, he will be a larger force than Mayor Mamdani for three reasons. One, he can actually run for president or join a ticket as vice president. And there would be a logical political rationale for it among Democrats. Two, like Mamdani, who has an outsized platform and bully pulpit, a U.S. senator can actually have all that. Plus, unlike Mamdani, a very practical hands-on role in U.S. foreign policy. Just look at Lindsey Graham's story or the John McCain model in terms of how a U.S. senator can change the course of U.S. foreign policy. And three, Michigan will play an important role in the Democrats' presidential nominating process in 2028.

4:01Could al-Sayed become kingmaker in the state? If Abdul al-Sayed wins Tuesday and then wins the general election in November, he would become the most fervently anti-Zionist member of the United States Senate, elected not from a deep blue city, but from a state Donald Trump carried twice. He will instantly attract the kind of attention that Mamdani did when he took office last year, or approaching, perhaps, Illinois Senate candidate Barack Obama when he was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. The persona, the agenda, and the story are all much bigger than representing a Midwestern state in the U.S.

4:40Senate. To help us understand how we got here and where things are going with this race, I'm joined by Mark Halpern, veteran political journalist from ABC News, from Bloomberg News. He's host of the must watch twice weekly political podcast. Next up, an editor in chief of Two Way and the Morning Meeting, which is his daily interactive political update. Mark recently published a piece in the free press laying out a structural versus visceral framework for how opposition to Israel became this potent a force in democratic politics. and he's been following this Michigan primary closely. Our conversation right after this short break.

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6:35mark welcome to call me back thank you dan i i feared i would be the very last person you invited on the program and i think there's three or four others who haven't been on yet so i'm delighted to there's more there's more mark slip in under the under the gun thank you you are in good company i'm a big fan of your podcast and uh have been on it so i'm thrilled to have you on Big fan of this program. I'm just so impressed and blown away by what you've built. So honored to be here. Thank you. All right. So, Mark, you wrote this piece. I messaged you about it in the free press that struck me for a number of reasons, not the least of which is you basically say in the piece you spent three decades answering hard political questions.

7:14But the one we're talking about today, which is the role that Israel has played in our politics and specifically in progressive politics and the impact it's having in the Democratic Party, is one you've come up short on. So can you just talk a little bit of what you mean by that and why this one has stumped you? You did a great job of laying out the what. What is happening with Dr. Alcide? Why the Michigan Senate primary for the Democrats is such an important prism through which to look to this. the why is what continues to be just so difficult for me, as much reporting as I've done on it. I never would have imagined that in a Senate race, including in the formal debates the candidates have had, that the candidate who seems on track to win the primary maybe easily would repeatedly invoke AIPAC.

8:00If you said in a normal Senate race, yeah, we're in debate prep, I'm going to bring the candidate says, I'm going to bring up AIPAC a lot. I think traditionally, Democratic consultants would say, no, no, no, no one knows what that is. And instead, to invoke the old Joe Biden joke about Rudy Giuliani, his position is now a verb in APEC and the broader positions he has on the Israeli government and on Israel. I can give a stab, and I did in the piece in the free press, explaining some of the why, but the speed with which Democrats have turned from a pro-Israel party to an anti-Israel party, the speed at which this is not just a question or a topic that's part of a litany of positions, but a central plank of the progressive wing, of the socialist wing, of the anti-established wing of the party.

8:44It's quite striking. And while I try to explain it in the piece on it, and I'm sure we'll talk about some of the reasons here, I don't know anyone, including the two of us who follow this as closely as anybody. I don't know anyone who can fully explain the dimensions of how this occurred, why this occurred. I agree. I'm to some degree as stumped as you are. Let me say two things. One, I will tell you that AIPAC was never a ballot issue, to your point. It was an issue that, you know, if you're involved in foreign policy, you knew about or, but it was an issue that drove voter turnout, voter energy.

9:15No one even knew what it was. No one knew what it stood with, what it was an acronym for just, and two, I remember conversations with you. I remember being on Bloomberg with you. You were very early on Trump when everyone thought it was preposterous that Trump could win the Republican nomination, let alone get elected president in 2016, you were zeroing in on why it could happen, why it was likely to happen. Not that you were rooting for it, but just as an analytical point. So the fact that you're stumped here is actually especially interesting to me because you have like seen various forces in our politics, I think sometimes before others.

9:51In your piece in the free press, you split your explanation into structural and visceral factors. So walk me through the structural case first. What changed about the Democratic primary voting coalition itself that explains this like structural shift? Yeah, you should say that why are we focused on one race, one local race in one state? This state is kind of puts in the sharpest possible relief the dynamics occurring in the broader Democratic Party. And you've seen it in other Democratic primaries this year to be the party's choice to run in November in the general election, where the candidate who is more anti-Israel, the candidate who wants a bigger break between current and longstanding American policy and Democratic Party platform positions, is the one who wins.

10:38Not always, but a lot. And often with that, as I said before, as a central plank, the party has become anti-establishment and it mirrors and parallels exactly what happened with the Republican Party in 2015 and 2016. The more anti-establishment you are, the more you support change in American policy, foreign and domestic, the more you capture the energy of the most active members of the Democratic Party. The anti-Israel position that's risen up in the Democratic Party has a lot of strands to it. One is to be the party that supports the oppressed. That has become central to the Democratic Party's position.

11:15And if you pick sides between the oppressor and the oppressed, the Democratic Party chooses their perception of the oppressed. And in this case, that's the people of Gaza, the people of Palestine. And that's a structural problem. It's also the case that the party wants, like with the MAGA movement, they don't want foreign entanglements. They don't want American money spent overseas. And the momentum in the party has been towards saying this is a big example of what they don't want. No forever wars, no alliance with what they consider to be oppressors. And anything that goes against that, that view is to be destroyed.

11:51And then finally, to bring APEC back in, anything that shows American policy that the left doesn't like, that's fueled by big money, is something that has a lot of traction within the grassroots of the Democratic Party now. So AIPAC is seen as a supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu. It's seen as a supporter of an oppressor. But it's also seen as a manifestation of a system, according to the left, where the richest people in the country set policy as opposed to the grassroots. So it's interesting you say that there was this progressive sort of repelling of interventionist politics, but didn't break the Democratic coalition or let's say had the galvanizing effect for the Democratic or one segment of the Democratic coalition when it was U.S.

12:34foreign policy towards supporting Ukraine. It was almost like supporting Ukraine became like supporting Black Lives Matter in the summer of 2020. I mean, there was some progressives who were concerned about the U.S. getting involved, but it was very small. It did not have the effect that this did. So doesn't that scream out that, like, it's not just about U.S. foreign policy or U.S. intervention around the world. It's about a specific country in a specific region. It is. That is partly explained by the visceral list we'll get to in a moment. I think the difference in the minds of the base of the party is one is considered a just enterprise and one is not.

13:08But that war is considered just and the Israeli effort to defend itself is considered unjust. Zelensky is seen as the oppressed by Putin. The Israelis are seen as the oppressor by the progressives in the United States. Okay, you single out in your piece three presidential cycles, the democratic elites overriding the wishes or the sentiments or the preferences or the energy of the democratic primary electorates, 2016, 2020, and 2024. Now, Now, for those who are not aware, just also briefly explain what happened in each of those primaries and in what way did the process by which those primaries were determined put kerosene on this like fire they've been brewing that you're saying is culminating right now?

13:52Yeah, I'll answer that by stepping back one step. I've urged people in this country and around the world who don't understand the rise of Donald Trump and are angered by it and are saddened by it to focus on the why rather than approach it as this is so horrible. and just every day go to the barricades, go to the mattresses against Trump, to think about why this has happened, what is it in America that caused to happen? And I say the same thing to people now, supporters of Israel or people on the right or establishment Democrats who don't like the rise of the progressive left and the democratic socialists.

14:22Ask why, try to understand why, try to have some sympathy for the Americans who are revved up by this. And one way to understand it is that arc from 2016 to 2024. And really it has implications not just for where we are now, but potentially for who becomes a Democratic nominee for president in 2028. Three straight election cycles where if you're a socialist or a progressive or someone who doesn't like the establishment or someone who doesn't like American policy, foreign and domestic, because you don't think it's been progressive enough. Imagine what you've gone through. 2016, Bernie Sanders runs against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

14:56And the Democratic Party, we know from what came out through WikiLeaks and just through what happened in public, they basically did everything they could to support Hillary Clinton and stop Bernie Sanders from being the nominee. And my analysis of the race is Bernie Sanders would have been the nominee had Hillary Clinton not had the support of the establishment, including on the debate schedule, etc. That really made progressives say this thing isn't on the up and up. Same thing happens in 2020. But before that, just and also the use of, again, I don't want to get bogged down in the technical details, but the Democrats have this what they call superdelegates.

15:28So there's delegates that choose a nominee and then there are superdelegates. So the progressive criticism would be the elites or the establishment of the party can kind of tilt the scales with the use of the superdelegates that could give, in that case, Hillary Clinton, the establishment candidate, a strength that you wouldn't actually have otherwise. So there's two categories of things that the establishment did to Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, and you just laid them out. One is the rules of the game as they exist that are rigged towards the establishment. They didn't do anything illegal.

15:58They didn't do anything new. They just built into the system benefits for the establishment. And then they did some things to change the rules to coordinate with the Clinton campaign to stop Bernie Sanders from winning. And I believe, and many Sanders supporters believe, that he would have been the nominee without that. Same thing in 2020. Fewer things that kind of elicit behind the scenes that we know about, although I'm sure there were some, but just the rules of the game. And then on the eve of the biggest voting day to determine who the nominee would be, Super Tuesday, Barack Obama and others worked to get two establishment candidates out of the race, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, to make sure that Joe Biden could beat Bernie Sanders on Super Tuesday.

16:36Without that extraordinary intervention, Bernie Sanders would have been the nominee. It's on that. And in the early primary contest and caucus contest, Biden was losing. Yes. Biden was losing in 2020. So your point is absent. Intervention by the establishment. And by Obama. Right. Absent that, Sanders. So there are Sanders who's now like the icon of the progressive socialist left. Yeah. From their perspective, Bernie Sanders could have been president, could have been elected in 2016, but the Democratic establishment stepped in. Bernie Sanders could have been president in 2020, but the Democratic establishment stepped in.

17:07So I just want to explain what's going on here. Yeah. Well said. At least the nominee. Now, they believe he would have been president and would have beaten Donald Trump. So, yeah. Right. But certainly the Democratic nominee. So they go into 2024 believing that twice their agenda, including a different policy towards Israel, was stymied by the establishment illicitly, improperly using corporate interests and the leverage of the establishment and the party structure to stop Bernie Sanders. And in 2024, Joe Biden's the nominee because he's the incumbent president, supported by many members of the establishment.

17:41Some members of the progressive movement drops out, hands it off to Kamala Harris. And so if you if you're a young progressive and you voted for the first time in the 2016 Democratic primaries, you've now gone a decade feeling like every time there's a presidential election in this country, the progressives are screwed. They're not given a voice. They're not given an opportunity to take their positions, including hostility to Israel, and make that the platform of the party. For a position of the left, the Biden-Harris administration was damn supportive of Israel. I'm using the word damn because it's the word Joe Biden would use in that context.

18:14And so, again, you get a Democratic president, if you're a progressive, and you say, what good did that do us? A Democratic president who would meet with Bibi Netanyahu, would praise Israel, would rally support for Israel. And so those that history, that decade long history, I think explains at least some of the why, because they don't feel they've been given a voice and they blame Netanyahu. They blame APEC and they blame the Democratic establishment for not responding to the will of the people. Lastly, I'll say, and I'm sure we'll talk more about this, the role of the media, including and especially the New York Times, is just massive here because the framing of all of this, it does not question the orientation of the left in saying this is all Israel's fault.

18:57Israel is the oppressor. Israel is the aggrieving party, not the aggrieved party. Okay, so I will want to get to the media in a moment before you. On the visceral side, you say that part of this is old-fashioned anti-Semitism, what's going on, but you also describe something like Pavlovian conditioning. For listeners who want a simpler explanation or assume all of this started after October 7th, walk through why you think the conditioning actually predates it. Well, you start with the foundation of historical anti-Semitism. And again, I don't think it's helpful to see anti-Semitism around every corner, to see it as the explanation for every anti-Israel position or actor in the country.

19:37I don't think it's smart to say anyone who blames Israel or anyone who downplays October 7th or anyone who's opposed to the Netanyahu government. I don't think it's right to call them all anti-Semitic. I know some people do. I just don't think that's smart because I don't think it's the explanation in a lot of cases. But what is the case is the built-in assumption of the media, the built-in assumption of the progressive movement, and increasingly the actual and pretend built-in assumption of a lot of Democratic politicians to cater to the left, and sometimes they believe it, is to say it's Israel's fault.

20:13That the presumption is Israel is at fault and Jews are at fault. and it shouldn't be sugarcoated. Again, the admixture here of the anti-Semitism and the feelings of being aggrieved on behalf of what they call the oppressed people of Palestine. It's all part in this toxic cocktail, but it's repeated over and over through the media, through the rise of the progressives and their position. And it starts to take root in the minds of a lot of Democratic voters, including younger people, whose ignorance on these topics is frightening, but they're not deterred by their ignorance and feeling so strongly about these issues.

20:51And I get why people think it's primarily or largely anti-Semitism, because when the words come out of their mouth so divorced from the facts on the ground, it's hard to interpret it another way. Israel has done things in Gaza in the settlements that are subject to criticism and that drive a lot of this feeling. No doubt. No doubt. And the suffering, the human suffering of lots of people, including children in Gaza, is real, no doubt. But what's taken root on the left in the Democratic Party is a feeling of hostility towards Israel and in some cases hostility towards Jews and certainly hostility to Benjamin Netanyahu that has caused this massive transformation in the party where even people who know better, even Democrats in leadership, even Chuck Schumer, one of the most pro-Israel senators of all time, are now so afraid of this anti-Israel sentiment that they have to downplay their support for Israel and often cater to the United States.

21:45with dog whistles, this anti-Israel, anti-Jew hostility in the Democratic Party. You also point to foreign money and influence as accelerants. First of all, how confident are you in that causal chain? And what's the strongest evidence? Or is it just a general sense you have that is basis for speculation? Really, arguably one of the most undercovered stories, even though it gets covered, of the last decade is the power of the algorithms in the social media platforms to impact our children, our politics, our debate. And these platforms are so open and so subject to manipulation that we should never dismiss the possibility, because it's almost certainly a probability or a likelihood or a certainty, that foreign actors take advantage of how easy it is to manipulate.

22:35So one thing, what's the strongest evidence? We know Qatar spends tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions, on trying to influence the public debate and that they're openly hostile to Israel. So they've certainly done things to stoke this. And then most analysts who studied it believe that China, Iran, Russia have done the same thing, but not necessarily because they want an outcome that's hostile to Israel, although in some cases they do. What they want, and we've seen this in a range of issues, is to sow discord in the United States to turn American against American, to have our society be as roiled as possible by conflict over emotional issues.

23:13And so I'm not a data scientist. I'm not I don't do my own reporting on this. It requires a lot of expertise. But I'm talking to experts and then looking at how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, other actors who want to do divide America and Qatar. I think there's no doubt that this has been accelerated the way the algorithm on Facebook and TikTok can accelerate things. It's been accelerated by foreign actors who want to do harm to America and want to divide America. Okay, I want to come back to your point about the media coverage. You still are this incredible, incredibly deep consumer of legacy media institution content and products.

23:53So you really track the coverage patterns. As you talk about every piece of coverage is Israel as quote unquote, the active agent, Palestinians as passive victims as though Palestinians have no agency. Separate the question of whether criticism of Israel is legitimate. How do you and your own reporting distinguish between fair scrutiny of Israel and Israeli policy and this structural bias that you point to as a huge part of the problem in the mainstream media? So I'm also a critic of supporters of Israel and of the Israeli government for the absolute incompetence they've shown in trying to understand these issues and make it less dangerous to the survival of Israel.

24:34It's really a level of ineptitude. You talk about a bunch of very smart people with a lot of influence, and they've completely squandered it. On the one hand, it speaks to the intensity of the feelings of people on that side. But on the other hand, it speaks to a lack of understanding of how the world works and a failure to execute on what could have been a preemptive effort to keep this from happening. When people say to me, do supporters of Israel, both in Israel and the United States around the world, do they have a bigger problem with the new media or the traditional media? And the answer is yes.

25:05They have a problem with both in a big way. We talked briefly just now about the social media issues and how those platforms infect the mind, particularly of young people who, of course, Paul Show are more anti-Israel than older folks. But they have a huge problem with the legacy media. And it's been true my entire career, particularly, again, the New York Times. They just have a special place in the world because they're so influential. Okay, but can you just, Mark, I want to, again, especially for our international listeners, you are very, and I am too, You're very fixated on the New York Times as this outsized force in our media ecosystem and its ability, even today, even with the intermediation in the media industry and lots of entrepreneurialism in the media industry and all sorts of interesting startups in the media.

25:50And yet the New York Times is, you know, it's like a freight train. Can you just tell us a little bit why why the New York Times is so important in this conversation? It's read around the world. For all of its flaws and biases, it's still one of the most impressive and important institutions in the United States. They just produce a lot of high-quality work, particularly in the area of international relations and focus on Israel. You and I could sit side by side and read any article about Israel in the New York Times, and we'd circle a lot of words, a lot of paragraphs, as loaded, as implicitly anti-Israel.

26:23Again, Israel's subject to criticism, not just in the abstract, but Israel's done a lot of things that have contributed to how Americans, and particularly on the left, but also on the right, feel about Israel. But the New York Times coverage, just, it never gives Israel a break. You can go back to October 7th as the watershed, but it's been going on my whole career. They just have a desire to hold Israel to a different standard than anyone Israel's in opposition to. All the things we know, the listeners of this program, the viewers know about Israel, about the importance of the Jewish state, about democratic values, about a thriving economy, about the strategic importance to the United States, about the decades of bonds between the countries, about the attacks on Israel and both pre and post October 7th.

27:07All these things, despite all these things, the New York Times influences the debate because they still have influence in the United States and around the world with a just a persistent anti-Israel point of view. I don't understand why, but it's a reality and it's never been diffused by this Israeli government, by previous Israeli governments or supportive of Israel in the United States. And the implications of that as it influences other media and Democratic politicians is massive. We'll be right back. Over the past couple of years, Call Me Back has grown into something much bigger than we ever expected.

27:44A place for clarity, context, and honest conversations at a time when those things can seem hard to find. That's what ARK Media is all about. Building a truly independent voice, which means no one shaping what we say or how we say it. To help support our rapidly expanding operations, we created Inside Call Me Back, our members-only feed. If Call Me Back has been meaningful to you and you want to be part of what we're building, I hope you'll join us. You can subscribe at arkmedia.org or through the link in the show notes. And to our insiders, thank you. And we're back with Mark Halpern. Okay, I want to talk about Abdul El-Sayed, because I think many of our listeners are now hearing more about him, but didn't really know him.

28:32Just like sometime in 2025, they were starting to hear about Zoram Amadani, but they didn't really know he was. Jonathan Chait, who you and I both know, liberal journalist, writes for The Atlantic. He wrote an entire book about Barack Obama's legacy. My only point about Chait is his credentials as someone who leans Democrat, supports liberal ideas, liberal politicians, I think is, you know, unquestioned. And he's also been very critical of the Israeli government over the years. And he's from Michigan, so he really knows Michigan. And he's been following the rise of Abdul El-Sayed, and he just did this piece on him.

29:06And he chronicles this pattern where every time he's criticized about anything, about anything, he brings it back to Israel and to the pro-Israel lobby and to AIPAC, like everything. And El-Sayed was asked about it, I guess, and he accused Jonathan Chait, based on the piece that Chait wrote in The Atlantic, of, quote, defending a vested interest in a foreign government. So now Now, Jonathan Chait is an agent of the Israeli government. He dismissed public polls. He dismissed an unfavorable poll about the race as, quote, AIPAC funded without any evidence. It's just, oh, AIPAC was behind that poll.

29:41And, you know, rather than engage his opponent in any substantive way, Haley Stevens, on her views, he's described her as, quote, a suit with a large AIPAC bank account. So you could just say, oh, it's just sharp elbowed politics. It's the rough tumble of a hot heated campaign. or is this what Chait was focusing on is this is something categorically different that's going on here. And it's infused perhaps by this like conspiracy theory mania. Yeah, the way you've just framed it raises a thousand things. Let me choose some of them to respond to. First of all, we don't know who's going to win the primaries.

30:14We're sitting here talking, but the polling suggests he's going to win easily. And the lessons we learned from this and the explanations of the why, why has he turned to this issue will be solved more deeply once we see if he wins. And then we'll see how he does it in the general election. Will his general election rhetoric, if he's running as the Democratic nominee against Republican Mike Rogers, who's a standard issue pro-Israel person, will he continue to talk about this? That'll be so interesting to see. And if he wins, it'll be super interesting. I'll say again, I understand why people are alarmed by the rise of Dr.

30:47Al-Sayed. And I understand why his retrieval of this weapon every time he's challenged is very, very interesting, very troubling. But people need to focus less on their anger and their fear and more in understanding why he's doing this. Why did he see this as a path to success? And if he does become the Democratic nominee, why was he right? Why is this so resonant? Not just for his fellow Muslim Americans, not just for his fellow Arab Americans in Michigan, but for a broader piece of the electorate. And if he wins, as the polls suggest, easily over a very establishment-backed candidate, Naley Stevens, previously pro-Israel, but now saying every time she gets the microphone, well, I was attacked by Bibi.

31:27Can you imagine 15 years ago, a Democrat running to try to win a nomination, bragging about being attacked by the prime minister of Israel? This demonstrates that al-Sayed is obviously on to something, even if he doesn't win the primary, which he probably will. He's on to something. And that something is that hostility to Israel, hostility to AIPAC, and a linkage between previous and current American support for Israel with well-funded support for an organization not exclusively supported by Jewish money, but largely supported by Jewish money, is something that is not just seen as out of favor, but something seen by the American left as fundamentally connected to conspiracies that are true to corruption.

32:10And I will say, and I know you've been a great analyst of differentiating between the problems for Israel within the Democrat and Republican Party. This one is not different. This one goes up to the vice president of the United States and many others on the MAGA side of the Republican Party who feel the same things and say the same things, often not backed by a fact. So I feel like we've had this whole conversation. We haven't really talked about who Abdul Al-Sayed is. Can you just do a brief, like, who is he? He's not a practicing doctor, but he has a medical degree. He ran for governor of Michigan a few years ago and did okay.

32:45If he said, you can't talk about Israel and AIPAC this election, he would still have a platform that's very popular with the progressive wing of the party, talking about public health and about Medicare for All, backed by Bernie Sanders, backed by AOC. Ron Fournier, who is from Michigan, longtime reporter for the Associated Press, who covered Bill Clinton as an Associated Press reporter in Arkansas, said on Twitter this weekend that the person whose political skills Dr. El Said has most remind him of is Bill Clinton. That's a pretty high praise from a guy who knows to say this guy has political skills on par with Bill Clinton.

33:18He's very talented, although I will say, my gut is that at some point, if he continues this in the general election, that constantly referring to AIPAC and Israel may not resonate as much. He doesn't do it in his ads. The central thing, and again, the AIPAC and Israel money is a piece of this, is saying special interests. Special interests control government policy, and that's why government policies help the wealthiest, the money over what he says, the many. It's a great slogan, the money over the many. Israel, AIPAC, that's a subset of this, but it's his prime example. Talks about it all the time, not the pharmaceutical companies, not the health insurers.

33:57He talks about that, too. But his prime example seems to be Israel. So this is a guy who has risen for a lot of reasons separate from his focus on Israel and AIPAC. But again, as you said, it's so central to his argument, you can't ignore it. And I'll say finally, the fact that he's an Arab American, the fact that he's Muslim, I think plays into this from the point of view of being an effective outsider. But I think some of the criticism he gets, some of it is a reflection about it. Some of the fear of him, just as with Mayor Mondami. Graham Plattner and his replacement, Troy Jackson, they speak about AIPAC too.

34:31They're pretty anti-Israel too. And they did not face the same backlash. The accusations that ultimately sunk Plattner's campaign, he was like blaming AIPAC for being behind them. And his closing his letter where he formally announced he's pulling out the race, he had like three kind of send off calls to action. One of them was free Palestine. One thing we should have mentioned earlier, I think, is the vote in the U.S. House of Representatives where Nancy Pelosi and AOC voted to cut off military aid to Israel. So for those who haven't followed it, there was this recent vote in the House of Representatives that was introduced by Tom Massey on his way out, a Republican.

35:07It's important to know, but he was the only Republican who voted for his own amendment. and it got this big democratic vote for it, which was a vote, a resolution, or it was a vote to cut off all aid, offensive aid, defensive aid to Israel and the number of Democrats, mainstream Democrats, many members who are on the rise, who are on the move in democratic politics, moderate, considered moderate, considered friends of Israel who voted to cut off aid. And the party had to have at least two private meetings to talk through before the vote, to talk through how people were going to vote. My point is that El Sayyid gets more focused than some of these others because he's charismatic, because of the terms, the primer, where he's running against an establishment candidate who has over the years been supportive of Israel.

35:49And again, we should say, AIPAC is spending tens of millions of dollars to try to beat him. That's not made up. Why is AIPAC doing that? If he does become the nominee and if he does and then maybe a senator, AIPAC needs to do some soul searching here about how they spent that money because he talks about it all the time. It's hard to quantify how much benefit in dollars he's getting with that message. But I bet it's more than APEC spending. If he wins, they may be pouring that down a red hole and they may have fueled his victory by virtue of spending the money and allowing him to talk about the fact.

36:20But what I've always been struck by in Michigan is if you look at the candidates that succeed statewide, right, they're usually more like Haley Stevens in Michigan, who El-Sayed is running against, right? John Engler was governor. Carl Levin was longtime U.S. Senator Spence, when Spence ran the tagline for him when he was running against a kind of more glitzy, glamorous candidate was for guts, not glitz, vote Spence Abraham. Debbie Stabenow, I mean, Gary Peters, but more or less, there was a certain kind of candidate. And then El Saeed bursts out of nowhere. I mean, he's so not like most candidates that get nominated and elected for Michigan.

36:59Well, you're right that they've been more moderate, more centrist candidates of both parties. But he's also different because he's not white, he's Arab, and he's Muslim. I'd say that's part of his appeal to some progressives. Tens of millions of Americans and millions in Michigan don't want the status quo. And to have a young Arab Muslim outsider who's run for office but not held office, who speaks, like Bernie Sanders and AOC, of radical fundamental change in America, that's why someone who doesn't quote unquote look like demographically and issues. That's why he has a chance to win this. People shouldn't write off the prospect that he will win the general election.

37:41And being the nominee against the establishment choice, endorsed by the governor, endorsed by senators, endorsed by establishment money like AIPAC, that's an extraordinary achievement if he pulls it off. And it's an achievement that comes with someone who does not look like other people who've been elected in that state and that for the people supporting him, that's a big part of why they like him. They want someone different because like Trump supporters in 2015 and 2016, therefore, anybody who will roll into Washington with sticks of dynamite on their cabs, ready to blow the place up and start over.

38:15That's what Donald Trump promised and he won. That's what this guy is promising. And the fact that he's young and Arab and Muslim, again, there are some people in Michigan who probably don't like that, but the people supporting him love it because it says to them change. Yeah. Okay. I mentioned in the introduction that he recently, he said to donors, you put an ogre on a pike and then everyone else gets the message. I think he said in the Zoom that it was a reference to Fetterman, that he's going to go after Fetterman. Fetterman is up for reelection in 2028. And he seems to be very focused on using his seat as a platform to build the progressive movement nationally.

38:50He's not been like kind of cute about that. And as I said, his own primary opponent has said that that's what he's doing. He's not representing Michigan. He has his own political ambitions and he's focused on the other 49 states. If he wins, I'm not saying he's going to be president, although I would when I tell people he will be a bigger force than Mamdani. People are like, oh, no way. I'm like, I'm like, guys, J.D. Vance got elected to the Senate from, you know, two years before he was picked to be vice president. So, I mean, things can happen quickly. Michigan is an important state in Democratic politics.

39:22By the way, if you look at the Democratic National Committee's calendar for the primary process, Michigan now has an even more prominent role for the Democrats heading into the 2020 presidential election. So he could be a kingmaker. You know, Michigan will be obviously one of the six states that matter most in the electoral college. So he could become a real force. He could channel it that way. He could channel it towards being like an accountability, have an accountability role in the Democratic caucus, making all these other number of Democratic senators worried about primary challenges. is try to paint a picture of what it looks like if this guy gets elected to the Senate and is sworn in in January of 2027.

39:58Sky's the limit. You know, you really believe that sky's the limit. All the things you said are true, plus more. What kind of fundraising force will he be? I'm obsessed with figuring out who the progressives will run in 2028. Presumably, not like 2016, 2020, or 2024, as we discussed, presumably the progressives will not allow the Democratic establishment to rig it against them. Presumably, they'll get a clean shot at it, which means if they have a strong candidate, you'd have to say that that person would be the favorite to be the nominee, even the last 10 years. So I believe Bernie Sanders might run, but most people in our businesses say, no, he's too old.

40:37OK, I don't think AOC is going to run. And I don't know that Ro Khanna is up to it. And why don't you think AOC is going to run? I don't think she wants to be president right now. I think she likes her life. She likes the privacy. I think she understands she's got plenty of time if she ever wants to be president. I think she can walk into a New York Senate seat because I don't think Schumer will run for reelection. So if you assume that others are right that Bernie won't run, if you assume I'm right that AOC won't run, if you assume that Ro Khanna is not, for a variety of reasons, big enough to do this.

41:08A congressman from California who's really been out there promoting himself as a progressive and promoting himself. He was the one for folks who don't recognize the name who pulled the stunt a couple of weeks ago where he went to Israel, went straight to the West Bank and got into this confrontation. So I just want people to understand who he is. That's why. Because of the stunt, I assumed most of your audience would know him. But in any event, if those three are not the answer for the progressives, not just the Democratic Socialists of America, but the grassroots movement that Senator Sanders currently leads, there's going to be a vacuum there that has to be filled by someone.

41:40And if you've got a guy whose political skills have been compared to Bill Clinton, a guy who's a master on social media, every bit as good as Mondami, a guy whose ambitions, both sort of in the abstract but specifically to remake the country, are so large, and a guy who's a freshman senator from the battleground state of Michigan, I don't know why he wouldn't be sucked into that conversation about being a presidential candidate. And as you said, J.D. Vance demonstrated and Barack Obama demonstrated, you don't need to wait your turn anymore in the age in which we live. The party elders are not going to be able to stop you and in some cases will welcome you in.

42:14So I think he could be a presidential candidate and I think he could be the nominee. Now, again, cart before the horse. Let's see if he's the nominee for Senate. Let's see if he can win the general election. But if he does, he could be the presidential nominee. He could be the kingmaker. He could also be an extra and would be an extraordinarily disruptive force in Washington because he's not interested in business as usual. You have a lot of Democratic politicians who say, oh, I don't take super PAC money. I don't take money from corporate interests. But they are still governed by the Democratic Party structure, which is fueled every bit as much as the Republicans by taking special interest money, unions, businesses, etc.

42:51This guy I don't think would do that. This guy would be like Bernie Sanders. He'd be different. But unlike Bernie Sanders, he's younger and he understands social media and he's got a real hunger to lead a revolution. So against that backdrop, Mark, zoom out to 2028. There's Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania. There's J.B. Pritzker, governor of Illinois. There's Rahm Emanuel, former White House chief of staff, longtime congressman, Chicago mayor, ambassador to Japan, recent guest on Call Me Back. John Ossoff, the Democratic senator from Georgia. All of those names, you didn't mention any of those names.

43:27They're all talked about as possible candidates. They're all Jewish. They will have to navigate this very complicated terrain. So does what happens in Michigan this week change how you think about any of them and how they approach possibly running for president? You could add Alyssa Slotkin into the list as well. The other senator from Michigan. I have plenty of sources in the Democratic Party who tell me when I every month I do my eight for 28, the eight most likely Democratic nominees for president. Which I will encourage our listeners to listen to. We'll link to the most recent one. It's a very good.

43:59New one, new one, a new one coming this week, actually, on Tuesday. OK, great. Great. It's just a height of historical irony at a time when hostility within the country and within the Democratic Party is at an all time modern high against Israel. I've had months where five of my top eight candidates, likely candidates, were Jews. None of them so far have taken this on. In fact, even the ones you think would be most likely to take on this movement in the party away from Israel, Josh Shapiro and Rahm Emanuel, both of them have largely gone out of their way, like Chuck Schumer, to dog whistle and pander to the anti-Israeli sentiments in their party.

44:34Neither of them, and certainly not John Ossoff, certainly not Governor Pritzker, none of them have drawn a line in the sand and said, no, we're a party that's going to support Israel. Now, in the context of this presidential campaign, I had I was wrong. I had thought that this issue would recede. And none of us know what happens if Bibi's gone. None of us know what impact that has on the debate within both parties. The optimists say anybody doesn't matter how much of Bibi's policies they maintain. Any of these guys would move the debate to a lower temperature and would allow, amongst other things, the possibility that the Democrats would nominate a Jewish American for president.

45:11I have sources who say, no, this is the issue. This will be as hot button as anything in the context of choosing the Democratic nominee for president. Does that mean it cannot be a Jewish American? I don't think it does, but I have many sources who do. I have many sources who say, forget Governor Shapiro. I believe Governor Shapiro is as strong as anyone else in this race if he gets in. and that he will have to take this on. But the way to take it on, and this is the one thing J.D. Vance said about Israel in his interview that he did with Joe Rogan that I think is under been undercovered, which is he basically took the position that Rahm Emanuel took in his speech in Israel, which is I'm the moderate on this.

45:51I'm the accommodationist. I'm the one looking for common ground. I'm not the AIPAC candidate. I'm not the Bernie Sanders candidate. I'm someone who says there's things about Israel we need to deal with, and there are things about Israel that we need to sustain. And I think that's where the Josh Shapiros of the world will be if they run for president in 2028. And the question's going to be, are they overridden by a candidate of the left who is able to beat them by saying, I'm not for accommodation, I'm not for common ground, I'm for changing the United States policy towards Israel in a fundamental way that breaks from the tradition that both parties have had of being supportive, but a partner that talks about when there's disagreement.

46:33Yeah, I mean, one thing I was struck when there was the terror attack against Temple Israel in West Bloomfield a few months ago, which could have ended it much worse, thank God, than it did. But when Abdul Al-Sayed was asked about it, I will never forget, Mark, his response. It had, talk about visceral, it had a visceral impact on me. He said, his exact words were, hurt people, hurt people. Now, what he meant by that is the guy who apparently executed this terror attack had family members that were members of Hezbollah who had been killed or injured by Israel. So he was therefore a hurt person because he's connected to family members who are terrorists.

47:14And therefore, what do you expect? That hurt person will hurt other people, meaning Jews. Not a condemnation, but like almost a rationalization. Now, if that's your approach, he could say the same thing about October 7th. Hurt people will hurt people. If that's where the conversation is going, that hurt people are justified in hurting other people, if those hurt people are Jews, that's a whole new world. Yep, absolutely a whole new world. Two things about that. One is, El Saad's a lot like Mayor Mondami. He never misses an opportunity to do things that really freak out supporters of Israel. They say things and fail to say things and go places and fail to go places.

47:49The pattern can't be denied. It just can't be denied. I resist calling them anti-Semites for a variety of reasons. But I don't think that I don't think it helps. What helps is to try to understand why do they think that's good politics? What's in their heart also that causes them to do that? The other thing is, if outside the nominee, does everybody endorse him? Chuck Schumer will endorse him almost certainly because he wants a Senate majority. What does Josh Shapiro say about the Senate nominee in a battleground state? Does he embrace him? Does he campaign with him? What does Barack Obama say?

48:19because the things he said about Israel and about AIPAC, again, a decade ago, unfathomable a person like that could be the nominee, but unfathomable that somebody like Josh Shapiro would embrace that person. And yet I think the odds are likely that they're all going to embrace it. And so where do you go in 2028 for the moral high ground? Where do you go in 2028 to draw the lines in the sand to say, we are not a party that does X. If you've embraced the hot new candidate who's your hope for winning this and keeping the Senate seat in Michigan. And make no mistake, again, for international listeners, Democrats want the majority control very badly.

48:54They need to net four seats in this election in the U.S. Senate. They can't do it without winning this Michigan race. So this is not a thing where they could say, well, we're not going to endorse this guy. We'll find another way to get the majority. They currently hold the Democratic seat in Michigan. The incumbent is retiring. They must win the seat. So endorsing him, El-Sayed, if he's the nominee is essential. They have no option to do it. But can they find a way to endorse him and maintain what they would historically say is the moral high ground by saying, on this we disagree? So imagine, Mark, just before we wrap, two questions.

49:26One, imagine he wins the nomination and he wins the general election. Therefore, this will validate and give rocket fuel to the progressive base saying, you told us this guy wasn't gonna be electable. Guess what? He just won this very competitive race. That could be one takeaway. The other takeaway could be that it's going to be a big year for the Democrats. Presumably there's a big blue wave coming. So even a candidate with problems in a general election like El-Sayed can get through. I mean, that may be a more reasonable, more sober take. But imagine if he wins the nomination and loses the general election.

50:01OK, which I betting today and call me back. Listeners don't hold me to this. Betting today, if he wins the nomination, I will bet that he will probably it could be close. But keep in mind, Mike Rogers ran for the Senate in 2024. He lost when Donald Trump was at the top of the ticket and won Michigan, but he only lost by something like 9 ,000 votes or something. I mean, he barely lost. So if I'll say it loses, do you think the progressive base will say post-mortem in the Democratic Party will be, wait, maybe we need to think twice about the kind of people we're nominating because it just cost us a Senate seat and may have cost us the Senate majority.

50:35Maybe we need to pivot. Right. Right. So remember, there are reasons he might lose that have nothing to do with Israel. Might be, you know, he's for liberal economic policies. And my guess is just knowing the way data works and evidence works. If he's the nominee for the Democrats but loses in the general election, there'll be arguments on both sides about why he lost. And same with why he won. Did he win because it was a great Democratic year? Or did he win because the mood of the nation, not just the mood of the Democratic Party, has twisted? So I don't know that we'll be able to say, but I do think this is true.

51:09If he's the nominee, win or lose, people will read a lot into the outcome and there'll be arguments on both sides. But if he does win, which we discussed before, regardless of people's explanations of why he won, he will have a massive impact on the Senate, have a massive impact on the Democratic Party, have a massive impact on the debate over the presidential nomination in 2028. Okay, last question for you, Mark. You basically say that there's no outside force capable of reversing this trend right now. Is there anything about Al-Sayed, but what Al-Sayed is representing that we've been talking about?

51:45Like, do you think he's bigger than Mondani? And do you think these forces are bigger than Mondani? And do you see anything on the horizon that could slow it down or stop it, just analytically? Look, the forces are bigger than both Mondami and El Saad. He has, as you well said, the potential to be bigger. I'll go back to saying people need to understand why this is happening. The why will be fleshed out if he wins the general election, if he becomes a United States senator. The why will be fleshed out in the debates within both parties, because there's one in the Republican Party, too, about what the American policy should be towards Israel and about why so many people, especially young people and a lot of podcasters and a lot of influencers in both parties have taken Israel, AIPAC, America's relationship with the Middle East and made it so central to how they feel about the American dream, how they feel about American policy.

52:35We shouldn't just be angry about it. We shouldn't just write it off. We should wonder who can change it. I think the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees in 2028 will will tell the tale to a large extent about where this debate goes. I think the new Israeli prime minister will play a big role in it. And then I think not just the media, but people who can influence the media, create new media, whatever it takes to try to have this debate be better grounded in fact and less grounded in open, overt, reflexive hostility to Israel. I think there's the makings of a change here, but we're not going to see a change between now and 2026 and the midterms in November here in the United States because no one in the Democratic Party who feels that the positions on Israel of the left are wrong, no one's going to stand up to them before the midterms.

53:22Wow. All right. I try to end on an upbeat note these conversations, Mark. But a big note is this is a great show and this is a conversation that supporters of Israel need to have and they need to focus more on the why than the what. All right, Mark, thank you. This is I appreciate your maiden voyage here on Call Me Back. And I look for it. I look forward to coming back every 10 years or so. It's going to be a spicy few months these next few months in American politics. So we will need your your analysis and wisdom. Thank you for doing this. Thank you, Dan. Good to be here. Honored to be here. Great to see you.

54:08I'm Debra Pardes, the host of ARC News Daily. What's happening in Israel and the Jewish world right now matters. But it can be hard to keep up, let alone make sense of it all. That's why we started ARC News Daily. Every weekday morning, I walk you through the most important news, give you the context you need, and let you know what to look out for next. I don't try to convince you of anything, and I don't waste your time. On most days, I'll be in your ears for about 10 minutes or less. Then you can move on with your day, hopefully a little bit smarter than before. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or follow the link in the show notes.

54:46I hope to see you tomorrow.