Why does everybody love Abdul?

That question keeps nagging me, almost mocking me. There are more of his lawn signs on my drive to and from summer camp all the time, and every day more of my Michigeese and gander neighbors are making his case unprompted. So I went to the People v. Powerful rally in Detroit to hear him, along with Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other local progressive champions like Rashida Tlaib, and find out for myself.

Just minutes into the rally, UAW president Shawn Fain nailed the “Everybody loves Abdul” phenom, describing what happened when Abdul El-Sayed addressed the union’s constitutional convention.

 ”UAW members from all over the country and from every part of Michigan, from Detroit to Flint to Three Rivers to Northern Michigan, and they were on their feet,” Fain said. “We have members that are Republicans, we have members that are Democrats, we have members that are independent, we have members that don’t give a damn about any of these parties. But the thing that was cool that day is they were all saying the same thing after Abdul spoke.  They were saying, ‘This guy understands me. This guy gets me. We love this guy.’”

That sense that we have a fighter on our side is why Abdul is within single digits of a Schumer-backed frontrunner with two weeks left before Michigan’s August 4 Senate primary.

He’s got a real shot to be Michigan’s chance to join the ranks of Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who just endorsed him (and hopefully Sherrod Brown), as a member of the small but mighty “People First” caucus of the US Senate. This is true despite $50 million in dark money raining down on behalf of the establishment candidate Haley Stevens, $30 million of that from AIPAC and the forces still championing the war crimes that the Netanyahu regime committed, and is still committing, against women, children, and the elderly in Gaza.

So my heart was sold. But on the drive back out to Washtenaw County, my head did the math. And the practical case is even stronger than the emotional one.

Let’s do them both.

Your heart

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez opened up her speech by making the case that undergirds Abdul’s candidacy and blots out the arguments that our state can’t have the good things he’s fighting for. She said that good leadership “swings for the fences.”

Then she went after the corruption underneath it all. “Good leadership gets big money out of our system. It takes on the corruption that blocks common sense solutions that lift working people.”

She knew what critics would call it. “Pundits want to dismiss this idea as naive,” she said, then pointed to 2018. Democrats won their largest House majority since Watergate with 185 candidates who took zero corporate money. “It’s not naive. It’s how we win, Detroit.”

Her closing went straight into my ventricles. “Abdul El-Sayed is America. We all are America.” The politics of the future, she said, “looks like a doctor who answers to people and not big donors.”

Bernie Sanders asked the question everyone in the room already knew the answer to: “What is it about Abdul that frightens them so much?” His answer: Abdul believes healthcare is a human right, “and maybe in the richest country in the history of the world, we should do what every other bloody country on Earth is doing.” Sanders noted that Abdul doesn’t just support Medicare for All. “He wrote the book on it.” He noted that Abdul has “the crazy idea” that America should have the best public education system in the world, and wants super PACs out and public funding in. “They got the money, that’s clear... but we have something that they don’t have. We have a vision as to what this country can become. And we have the people.”

Then Abdul took the mic, and told the room exactly who he answers to and who he doesn’t. “If you’re somebody who wants government to work for you, I aim to be the best friend you ever had…” he said. “If you’re the CEO of DTE, you damn well better believe I’m dangerous. If you’re Blue Cross Blue Shield shareholders, yep, I’m dangerous.”

He told us where his drive and vision come from.

Every summer growing up, he visited family in Egypt. Every summer, his grandmother reminded him what separated him from the cousins he left behind: “You get to go back to America at the end of the summer.”

That’s the line that traveled with me on the drive home. It’s not just the wonk case for Medicare for All, which he wrote the book on, as Bernie Sanders noted. It’s about what it means to be handed a country you didn’t do anything to deserve, and what you owe it back.

“America has one incredible gift, and that is the indelible capacity to correct. In this country, we don’t make peace with our demons, we exorcise them. We don’t rest on our laurels. We fight for better.”

And he told Michigan what beats $50 million dollars. “If all they got is money, we’ve got the many. We’ve got a movement of people coming together beyond our differences to build together what we cannot have alone.”

And Fain was right; by the end of the speech, their hearts had lifted the crowd to their feet.

Your head

And here’s the math that hit me on that drive.

We need Abdul on the ticket to win. Not the US Senate seat, but the governorship, and a trifecta that can return to the work of making Michigan a state that works for the working class.

The inevitable Democratic nominee for governor, Jocelyn Benson, is exactly who we want leading this state when the vote is under attack; no one understands or implements secure elections better. But Haley Stevens won’t bring her one new vote, and Benson won’t bring Stevens one either.

Both represent the “normie” Democratic vote that used to be reliable in our state but has now been upended by the rise of MAGA. To win in an election that will be as activated and contested as Michigan will be this time around, we need to turn out those irregular and/or anti-system voters who decide any close race in this state. They decide it when they turn out for Trump, or when they stay home to reject the stale, compromised state of the Democratic Party. They did both in 2016 and 2024.

Polls, if you trust them, back up the math.

A Data for Progress and Working Families Party survey found El-Sayed narrowly leading Republican Mike Rogers in a general election matchup, 47 to 46, while Stevens trails him, 46 to 45. El-Sayed posted stronger favorability, more intense support, and more resilience after negative attacks than Stevens did. Zenith Research found the same pattern in June, with El-Sayed beating Rogers by 3 points while Stevens and McMorrow led by smaller margins.

Even inside the primary, where Abdul and Stevens are trading leads, El-Sayed’s favorability numbers are better. A Detroit News/WDIV poll taken after the candidates’ first debate found El-Sayed viewed favorably by 51.5 percent of Democratic voters and unfavorably by only 15.4 percent. Stevens’s numbers were 49.5 percent favorable and 21 percent unfavorable. Voters like Stevens less than they like El-Sayed even while more of them plan to vote for her.

Tough numbers to survive a general election.

Then there’s the youth vote, the group every Democratic strategist claims to want, and few campaigns actually organize. Youth turnout jumped in every 2025 race that featured a Mamdani-style campaign. It hit 28 percent in New York City’s mayoral race, 29 percent in New Jersey’s governor’s race, up nine points from 2021, and 34 percent in Virginia’s, up seven points. That’s the demographic El-Sayed’s campaign is built to activate, and it’s the demographic that decides midterms engineered to be close.

The heart case says vote for El-Sayed because a UAW hall full of Republicans, Democrats, and people who hate both parties agreed on one thing. The head case says vote for him because the data backs up what the feet in that hall already knew. You don’t have to choose.

On August 4, your heart and your head can vote the same way. Most elections don’t give you that. This one does.