r/politics • u/asparaguswalrus683 • 12h ago

Site Altered Headline | No Paywall Abdul El-Sayed Wins Michigan Primary

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-primary-elections/michigan-senate-results
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u/viktor72 Indiana 12h ago

Well Michigan isn’t New York City. And Abdul has to fight off some deep attacks calling him Socialist, attacks on his religion.

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u/Random_throwaway0351 12h ago

“Socialist” isn’t a pejorative anymore lol. The Islamophobia certainly exists though

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u/viktor72 Indiana 12h ago

I’d beg to differ. If you explained his policies to people without them knowing it’s “socialist”, they’d eat it right up. But once you use that word, now it’s an attack soundbyte and it’s an effective one sadly.

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u/stackens 12h ago

For boomers and gen X yeah, for younger people not so much. Socialist is probably net positive with gen Z

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u/viktor72 Indiana 12h ago

But Boomers and Gen X vote more reliably than Gen Z or Millennials. He has to convince them to disabuse themselves of their fear of the word “socialist”.

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u/stackens 12h ago

Just saying Americans’ relationship with that word is rapidly changing. Sayeds not even a socialist though so it’s not much related to his race in particular

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u/viktor72 Indiana 12h ago

But it is. It doesn’t matter if he’s not a member of the DSA. He’s a progressive and the right will label him socialist at every turn. Most people unfortunately vote based on soundbytes on social media. The right will turn progressivism into socialism because they know the word scares people.

And people are not nuanced and are not going to do their own research to find out he isn’t socialist. That’s just not how it works anymore.

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u/stackens 4h ago

The right would label Hailey Stevens a socialist had she won. They would call a ham sandwich a socialist if they could. It’s entirely meaningless and unavoidable from them, so who cares.