Senate nominee El-Sayed brings the DSA test to the Trump Belt
I had a flurry of quotes running through my mind this morning as I was slinging iron in a downtown Nashville gym, making men half my age wonder what they’re doing wrong. One of them is an all time classic, which I’ve shared in these virtual pages many times:
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. — NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
I’ve written extensively about the rise of the DSA-aligned candidates who have been punching through a little at a time, mostly in long-gone locales like New York City, Denver, and Seattle. I’ve made specific notations that this hasn’t been tried in a critical battleground state in which widespread appeal will be required, particularly when the task at hand will be to peel back that pesky Trump coalition that has been squandered by Democrats in the “Rust Belt” and Upper Midwest over the past decade.
From that article:
Forget New York, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Los Angeles for a minute. They all fit the same profile. How do you think this lurch toward a more extreme ideology will play out in Lancaster, Altoona, Saginaw, Muskegon, Oshkosh, Sheboygan, Surprise, Casa Grande, Henderson, Macon, or Columbus?
The most prominent shifts are those in the Rust Belt, Upper Midwest, and heavily Latino areas in Florida, Texas, and California. They were spurred on by the left’s continuing lurch toward legitimate socialism, the right’s turn away from outdated conservatism and toward pragmatic populism (problem solving). The only way to send those gains back is to revert to neoconservatism, making the left’s inevitable lurching less noticeable.
I am becoming more and more convinced that Democrat strategists read this newsletter. They seem to understand that specificity matters. Of course the utter lunatics they are nominating in New York City are going to win their Harris +60% seats. Their psychopath in CO-1, who isn’t even American by birth, is going to win in Denver because a majority of people there have no problem dodging syringes and feces when they go into LoDo to get high and watch some ratty emo band dance around on a makeshift stage. They know that, and they also know that sending these communists into the heart of the Trump revolution is a bridge too far. That’s why we got a big Whitmer-aided push for this individual:
That would be Haley Stevens, who left-wing media isn’t exactly a fan of but for necessity (depending on the outlet). In the six Midwestern (Industrial and Upper) states Trump completely overhauled (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin), Democrats have exactly one playbook. Yes, their grassroots lunatics are exactly the same lunatics campaigning openly in the Bay Area, much like your standard right-winger in Vermont is as right-wing as the ones in Wyoming. The common ground is that neither seems to understand how everyone else around them thinks (and votes) and as such, gives no thought to how to reach those who don’t have ideological uniformity with them.
This playbook is best executed by running the most bland, boring white woman as possible, pulling her recording string, and having something like this come out on the campaign stage:
Hi, y’all, I’m Tammy Sue Morgan and I’m just like you. Grand-pappy worked right down yonder in the factory until the global special interests closed it down in the 1980s, but I’m one of you and I’m proud of my roots and that’s why I’m standing here today. I want the same things you want, a higher wage, better schools, and safe streets to raise our children in. They should be able to play in that creek just like we did when we were getting ready to watch the (Lions/Packers/Bears/Steelers/Eagles/Vikings) with our families. I will put my state over party every day of the week and here are my Republican friends behind me to tell you a story about that time I held a real shotgun and waved an American flag at a parade with our county sheriff 42 years ago.
Successful cases:
- Tammy Baldwin
- The Wisconsin Supreme Court
- Tina Smith
- Amy Klobuchar
- Gretchen Whitmer
- Jocelyn Benson
Many of these test cases are on the ballot this year. But not Haley Stevens.
ENTER ABDUL EL-SAYED
I am convinced the Democrat machine pulled out all the stops, including aggressive mail-in ballot fraud, to stop him, but nevertheless – he has prevailed in his quest for the Democrat nomination to replace the retiring Gary Peters (a male version of the generic boring woman giving her biography above).
Abdul…El…Sayed
A name as American as apple pie. Tom Smith, Joe Thompson, Kevin Jones, Michael Miller. Abdul El-Sayed.
Everyone here already knows I don’t do polls. I will glance at them here and there because when I piece them together like a good intelligence officer, I can usually understand the entire election picture as in who is running behind who (or ahead of who), what demographic groups may be leaning which way, and where the other side (the enemy) considers the center of electoral gravity to be in a given week. Right now, the polls are “look this way, not that way” in showing us that somehow Republicans are competitive enough to have a shot at holding the House majority and should retain the Senate majority, yet somehow lose OK-5.
“We have reached the ‘carpet bomb with fake polls in solid red seats’ stage of the summer. Somehow everyone forgets every two years. ‘See, look here! You’re definitely losing all the tossups of OK-5 is in play!’” — Seth Keshel (@RealSKeshel), August 4, 2026
Anyway, the polls for the newly formed Michigan U.S. Senate race between Mike Rogers and El-Sayed do not look good for Abdul. Granted, he will consolidate some support, but that’s usually a Republican thing when time narrows in the run-up to the election:
El-Sayed doesn’t lead Rogers at all, while Stevens averaged two points better and even had a +7 in one poll. All of this polling is junk science, but given what I told you about how the mushy Midwest will vote for a boring white woman, I think there is substance here. Rogers is most certainly the potential GOP win we didn’t see coming a year ago, which would negate Maine flipping if that were to finally happen (which I don’t believe it will) or take the sting out of North Carolina and Georgia going to the Democrats (they would in an election held today).
Now, I need a cigarette – and I don’t smoke. Look at these beautiful results:
Stevens and her fellow boring Midwestern (not really) white woman posing as “just like you from down by the creek” combined for 51.5%, but because McMorrow didn’t ditch her campaign early enough, El-Sayed had just enough with less than 4% of the count remaining. Want to talk about polls again?
Another big whiff for pollsters, who averaged El-Sayed +10.2% (+13.6% if we throw away the pro-Stevens outlier). Except… I’m not so sure they were that wrong. What I am confident about is that the Democrat establishment, in seeking to deny DSA-El-Sayed the nomination, cheated like hell with mail-in ballots:
“Dem establishment cheating its ass off in the mail to save themselves from the DSA pick. It’s one thing to try and sell me on a +53% mail margin in a D vs R race. Don’t try me on D vs D.” — Seth Keshel (@RealSKeshel), August 4, 2026
Yes, ladies and gentlemen – let’s believe together in the fictional universe in which two candidates are neck-and-neck for Election Day votes, but the candidate that lost the race and polled double digits behind for a month won absentee ballots by a margin of +53.6%. Usually, it’s the media trying to sell me on a 53-point margin for Democrat vs. Republican races. You’re not convincing me there’s yet another differential like this within Democrat ranks.
The Oystergruppenführer Counteroffensive
The moral of the story: Democrats are ruthless. They nuked Graham Platner and snatched the nomination from him, moving on like it was nothing, and they will coordinate with whoever they must to do exactly what that party was designed to do way back in the days of Martin Van Buren – hold power at all costs.
Unfortunately for them, they missed, and the exam is coming up in less than three months. We will see if the All-American Abdul El-Sayed (ironically born in America, unlike many other DSA goons) can get over in Traverse City, Holland, Battle Creek, Mount Pleasant, and Monroe, and turn out to be the blessing I think he will be. Or, in a twist of events, perhaps Michigan will rally the cause and get him over with the mail-in ballot game the same way they stuck it to Rogers the last time he ran against the seditionist spook darling Elissa Slotkin.
Time will tell, but the Bernie Bros who argued that Sanders fed them sugar all night and then asked them to pipe down and go back to bed when he helped coronate Hillary Clinton have had their say in the Great Lakes State. The die is cast, and there is no putting this genie back in the bottle.
Seth Keshel, MBA is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy and a retired Army Captain. He publishes Captain K’s Corner on Substack.
