This Tuesday’s election will be, without question, the most consequential of our time, as the lawless administration of Donald Trump is doing its best to end the American Republic, while the supposedly “country before party” Republicans submit to his dictatorial dictates.
Trump and Republicans must be stopped cold by American voters at the ballot box.
Two Democratic U.S. Senate candidates who can help do this, while tackling “affordability” kitchen-table issues—particularly right now, with the high costs of gas, oil and food that have the American people hurting economically—are Florida State Rep. Angie Nixon and Michigan’s Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.
Nixon and El-Sayed are both strong proponents of Medicare for All, healthcare reform, tackling housing and homelessness, taxing billionaires, and cutting military aid to Israel. Nixon has also called for raising the minimum wage and for free childcare and pre-K. El-Sayed also wants to address the high cost of prescription drugs, along with undertaking Supreme Court reform.
Both have been endorsed by the U.S. Senate’s primary progressive champion, Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Both are brilliantly smart.
Tuesday’s election results will tell us whether American voters are ready to turn the tide on the most corrupt criminal presidency in American history. Voter discontent is surely high, which is part of the reason why Nixon and El-Sayed were able to achieve victories in their respective state primaries in August.
They need an even higher turnout on Tuesday.
We have just seen the betrayal in Michigan, where Haley Stevens, defeated by El-Sayed in the primaries, has now declared her support for his Republican rival for the Senate seat, Mike Rogers.
In Florida, Nixon, who is also a community organizer, made history when she pulled off a stunning upset by beating Democratic Party favorite, retired Lt. Col. Alex Vindman. Nixon trounced Vindman, who had a $16 million war chest, while Nixon had less than $1 million.
El-Sayed beat establishment Democratic Rep. Stevens, who received a reportedly historic $32 million in campaign donations from AIPAC.
Of the two, Nixon, a Black woman who comes from the Trump red state of Florida, has the harder road to travel to achieve victory over her opponent, incumbent Sen. Ashley Moody, and get to the U.S. Senate. Nixon must win in Florida, where, even before Gov. Ron DeSantis, voter suppression has been used to stifle the votes of Black Floridians and Democrats. This, along with other factors, has some analysts predicting Rep. Nixon will come up short.
However, given the political volatility of the time, the fact that Nixon wasn’t supposed to beat Vindman, and her organizing skills, why can’t Nixon achieve the supposedly impossible once again?
Rep. Nixon is the kind of candidate Democratic voters want—but whom the corporate elite within the leadership of the Democratic Party often oppose. Democratic voters have been making it clear they want real change from the Democratic Party, unlike the leadership.
Nixon and El-Sayed represent that change.
El-Sayed, who was a Rhodes Scholar and holds a doctorate in public health, served both as executive director of the Detroit Health Department and as director of the Wayne County Department of Health, Human & Veterans Services. We should expect that Michigan’s Muslim voters, many of whom refused to vote for Democrats in 2024 because of the Gaza genocide, will turn out in massive numbers for El-Sayed.
But Dr. El-Sayed also has his own minefields to navigate as he runs against Republican nominee and former Rep. Mike Rogers.
They are running for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.
El-Sayed, like Nixon, has spoken out against the Iran war and America’s funding of the genocide in Gaza—and because he is Muslim, he has faced an onslaught of Islamophobia, similar to what Zohran Mamdani endured in his New York City mayoral campaign.
More AIPAC and Israeli lobby money is no doubt being spent to elect Rogers and stop Dr. El-Sayed. Republicans are pushing racist invective and false narratives to suggest he is connected to terrorists in a transparent attempt to scare white voters away from El-Sayed.
So, both El-Sayed and Nixon have obstacles to overcome.
However, there are signs favorable to their chances of obtaining seats in the U.S. Senate. And those signs have led former President Barack Obama to endorse Rep. Nixon and Dr. El-Sayed, even though both are the kind of progressives the Democratic Party leadership usually loathes because they are not beholden and bound to billionaire donors.
Here we should thank both Donald Trump, who has thoroughly corrupted the Republican Party, and the corporate-compromised Democratic leadership, which still supports the genocidal monster, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—as he continues to rain bombs down on Palestinian babies and civilians and is pushing Trump for renewed full-scale war on Iran.
This has created a political environment where many Democratic voters—and other voters—are listening more attentively to progressives, who advocate for spending money internally, as the American economy implodes because of war, monetary mismanagement, and American hubris.
This current reality bodes well for both Nixon and El-Sayed.
For whatever reason, the American people have been too silent as the nation’s first felon president has been running roughshod over American institutions, with the help of his Republican partners in crime.
But now that the country is crippled by the spiraling cost of living, particularly high gas and diesel prices brought on by Trump’s disastrous tariffs and the foolhardy war of aggression in Iran, another question that will be answered by Tuesday’s results is: Will the economic pain lead to a Democratic blue wave that handcuffs the final years of Trump’s presidency?
There are some positive signs showing this might be the case.
For one thing, reports of high voter turnout in early voting are always a good indicator for Democrats. For another thing, it appears voters are also poised to elect progressives whom the leadership of the Democratic Party is always trying to stop.
The election of Mamdani as the first Muslim mayor of New York City—and what is now being called “the Mamdani effect”—points us to this. Mamdani’s message of “affordability” is not only being echoed by other Democrats; Republicans are also cynically paying empty lip service to it.
Besides beating big-money candidates like former Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani is now something of a kingmaker. In New York, all the congressional candidates he endorsed won in the June primaries: former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez and democratic socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier.
Around the country, there are several other progressives vying to capture seats in the next Congress. These include Colorado’s Ethiopian-American candidate Melat Kiros, New Jersey’s Dr. Adam Hamawy, Michigan’s Donavan McKinney and Pennsylvania’s Chris Rabb.
Therefore, within the current political climate, after Tuesday, we may well see both Rep. Angie Nixon and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed working for the real change the American people need from inside the U.S. Senate.
Go out and Vote.
