El-Sayed is a singular star, a generational talent ideologically, geographically, and temperamentally situated to unite and inspire Democrats at a scale not seen since the ascent of Barack Obama. But unlike Obama (who campaigned as a populist and governed as an elite), El-Sayed’s promise of hope and change is genuine. It’s undeniable. As an authentic champion for the working class from an archetypical swing state, when El-Sayed dispatches his Republican opponent in November he will emerge as the only choice for a party laser-locked on recapturing swing voters in 2028.
With less than two years of experience in the Senate, some consider 2028 too soon for Michigan’s valedictorian-turned-Rhodes Scholar to reach for the highest office in the land. Yet history would suggest otherwise. 2028 is precisely the moment for Senator El-Sayed to run. And there is no reason not to run: even if he loses, he wins.
While Bernie Sanders failed to earn the party’s nomination in 2016 and 2020, his participation in those primaries nonetheless shifted the Overton window to the left. Bernie lost; the movement won. The Sanders campaigns developed and inspired a generation of leftist politicos now seriously contending for a total party takeover. El-Sayed would similarly triumph were his campaign to come up short; his profile would rise and in 2032 he could still run again. And again. If it worked for Joe Biden, who ran three times before finally securing the endorsement, it will work for El-Sayed. That said, I don’t expect a presidential campaign to merely establish Abdul El-Sayed as a household name. I expect him to win it all.
Two years in the Senate is nothing, you might say. In fact, you might remind me the 2028 campaign starts barely a year into El-Sayed’s first term.
Three reasons that doesn’t matter: Barack. Hussein. Obama. The junior Senator from Illinois was running for President before he was even sworn into federal office – it was the kind of “audacity” that energized and intoxicated a generation. A former Health Commissioner from Michigan’s Wayne County, El-Sayed will enter office with admittedly less legislative experience, but critically more executive experience than Obama held at the same moment in his career.
Three other reasons it doesn’t matter: Donald. J. Trump. Democrats may hold their leaders to a higher standard of expertise and gravitas, but with the former reality TV star’s two successful bids for the White House, voters of all stripes are much more open to alternative models of presidential material. With people as unserious as Marianne Williamson, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Dr. Cornel West recently vying for national Democratic nods, there should be no doubts about an actual sitting United States Senator.
Voters will never elect a Muslim, you might say.
Here’s why you’re wrong: They already have, and this November they will again. In his primary race against House Rep. Haley Stevens, El-Sayed overcame concerted Islamophobic attacks, $70 million in outside spending, and the entire Democratic establishment to emerge as the party’s nominee. In the general election the outside spending and rank bigotry will escalate dramatically, including from many mainstream and liberal voices. It won’t matter. The more El-Sayed’s opponents ramp up the hate machine, the stronger he’ll become.
A resounding El-Sayed victory will reveal both his personal stardom and political acumen, as well as the diminishing returns of the racist, Muslim-baiting politics of the past. A nation that twice elected a Black guy with a funny name and an adjudicated sex pest coup leader is not likely to get caught up on whether someone who credibly promises to improve their lives prays to Allah, to White Jesus, or to nothing at all.
Let me go further: anyone who claims to be concerned that voters won’t support a Muslim are projecting their own Islamophobia onto the masses. They’re putting millions of their fellow Americans into a basket of deplorables. If you would vote for AOC but don’t think others would vote for a woman; if you would vote for Jon Ossoff or Pete Buttigieg but don’t think others would vote for a Jewish or gay man; you’re just a bigot. If you want universal health care, but think your neighbors are too stupid to vote for it, you’re just an asshole. These attitudes are insulting, and they’re deeply flawed whether expressed by Van Jones or a regular Democratic voter.
We need only consider Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani – two of the most popular politicians in the country – to place such bigoted, pundit-brained concerns in the trashheap where they belong.
Voters will reject a socialist, you might say.
Don’t worry about it; Abdul El-Sayed isn’t a socialist. Not that his science-inflected embrace of capitalism will dissuade the establishment from attempting to disqualify him as such. Socialist, communist, radical, extreme, anti-American, the enemy within. By the November election, every such label and ten times worse will have been laid against El-Sayed. It won’t stick, it won’t matter – it may even backfire. Bernie and AOC detoxified the Democratic Socialist brand; Mamdani, Melat Kiros, Analilia Mejia and a dozen others came in after them and made it mainstream. Socialism spells credibility in contemporary politics. Deploy the slur at your own peril.
Does he even want it? you might ask.
That’s irrelevant. The operative question: would he answer the call? Would he carry the flame? Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. People like Abdul El-Sayed – like Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom and every other prospective nominee – all possess massive egos and ulterior motives. It’s endemic to the class of people who aspire to high political office. But they also universally follow the north star of public service. Ambition and patriotism are not mutually exclusive. If America needs El-Sayed to run in 2028, it doesn’t matter how badly he wants it. He’ll answer the call.
But El-Sayed hasn’t even won his Senate election, you might say.
But he will. By a shocking margin. The 2028 elections are a disastrous environment for Republicans across the board, and Mike Rogers is a uniquely weak general election opponent. El-Sayed’s populist, anti-system message has broad bipartisan appeal. It’s not Clintonian-style triangulation, it’s an organic emerging consensus the elites in both parties have made inevitable through decades of corrupt mismanagement.
El-Sayed will also benefit from the newfound support of conservative Dems he dominated in the primary. They couldn’t beat him; they’ve now joined him in rapid succession campaigning hard for El-Sayed on the trail and on TV. This new coalition is formidable; picture AOC introducing Barack Obama at an El-Sayed Get Out the Vote rally, and get used to the idea of a ten-point margin of victory.
The path to an El-Sayed presidency runs so directly and repeatedly through Presidents Clinton and Obama, in retrospect it will be seen as practically preordained. The remarkable Clinton-to-Obama-to-El-Sayed narrative is precisely the kind of story found in books that soft-launch presidential campaigns and speeches that anchor nights of DNC programming.
On April 26, 2007, then-Senator Obama met Hillary Clinton (and six others) at South Carolina State University for the first debate of the primary. High fundraising totals had cemented Obama as a credible contender earlier that month, backed up by a staggering advantage in on-the-ground energy. Two days later, Bill Clinton delivered the commencement address at the University of Michigan, where the student speaker – a 22-year-old valedictorian named Abdul El-Sayed – impressed him enough that Clinton praised him from the podium and urged him toward a career in politics.
Clinton and his wife went on to lose the primary to Obama, only to be brought into the administration with Hillary as Secretary of State and the party’s presumptive next in line. This Obama-Clinton coalition became the Democratic organizational model for the next five cycles: triangulating the left and the right of the party under Obama twice, then Hillary, then Biden, then Harris. The bet paid off three times out of five, but its accompanying governing strategy exacerbated the underlying economic and cultural crises that led to Trump and ascendant authoritarianism.
Along the way conditions worsened for nearly everyone, yet Obama’s inner circle became fabulously wealthy after leaving office. While some exited Washington’s revolving door into traditional roles like lobbying and consulting, a group of young staffers leveraged their connections and the presidential imprimatur to launch Crooked Media and its flagship Pod Save America. Crooked Media would stand in for Obama in his absence, reaching massive success and expanding its portfolio of shows and events.
When El-Sayed lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary to Gretchen Whitmer in 2018, Crooked Media brought him on with America Dissected, an unabashedly liberal public health podcast. The Obama Bros ran Dr. El-Sayed for six seasons and more than 230 episodes. What was originally a limited 10-episode series became especially critical during Covid, all the while boosting El-Sayed’s public profile and communications skills.
On October 29, 2024, an America Dissected episode dropped covering trauma, trust, and Covid’s enduring impact on both public health and democracy’s prospects. The next day, Bill Clinton campaigned for Kamala Harris in Muskegon, Michigan, and told the crowd Jews “were there first – before their faith existed,” and had held “Judea and Samaria” “in the time of King David.” Of all the states where the Biden-Harris administration’s Israel policy threatened to cost Democrats the election, Clinton picked the worst one to say it in.
Israel-critical voters in Michigan broke from Kamala, but not El-Sayed – he had publicly voted with the uncommitted bloc in protest earlier in the year, then prominently endorsed Kamala when Biden dropped out. Even Clinton’s ghoulish remarks didn’t break El-Sayed’s commitment to the nominee, but unlike AOC (amplifying the bogus party line at the DNC) he did not compromise his reputation on this crucial issue. In the span of 24 hours, Clinton had perfectly embodied the political calculus that ignores trauma and degrades trust, while El-Sayed analysed and addressed the societal damage directly downstream of this conventional Clintonian strategy.
Two years later in his triumphant 2026 campaign, El-Sayed demonstrated what years in the podcast space (and the author’s circuit) can do for a politician: they made him famous; they made him exceptionally sharp on the stump and on the trail. El-Sayed’s two one-on-one debates with Haley Stevens are particularly stunning examples of a naturally gifted communicator at the top of his game.
Obama was elected as a celebrity. Trump was elected as a celebrity. Stevens attempted to ding El-Sayed for being a celebrity, but voters recognized that the years of hard work that made him one perfectly qualified him for the modern demands of public office.
Senator El-Sayed would never exist without Obama’s infrastructure and Clinton’s personal touch. Yet President El-Sayed will come to office despite these men, not because of them. Not as their ideological heir, but as the opposite – as a young man who grew up in the world they destroyed, rallying a generation to help put the pieces back together.
History flows through Abdul El-Sayed. He would be sworn in as the first millennial president. As the first native Michigander, the first doctor, and yes – the first Muslim president. From Clinton and Obama, through their wreckage, first opposed by the establishment then embraced as their only remaining option. President Dr. Abdul El-Sayed wouldn’t just make history – history will make him.
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