On Monday, Abdul El-Sayed sat down across from Martha MacCallum on Fox News.
El-Sayed is the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan. He’s a progressive who supports Medicare for All, and he knew exactly what kind of reception he’d get. There are plenty of progressive who oppose Fox News so completely that they don’t believe anyone left of center should go on the network. El-Sayed had a message especially for them.
“A lot of people wonder why I’m having this conversation with you,” he said. “It’s because there are people out there who I want to have a conversation with.”
He also quoted a famous line: “If your coalition is not uncomfortable, it’s not big enough.”
El-Sayed attributed it to Dr. King. It actually comes from Bernice Johnson Reagon, who sang with the Freedom Singers during the civil rights movement and said it in a speech about coalition politics. Wherever it came from, it’s right. And it’s an argument I’ve been making for years.
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The Party Isn’t the Coalition
Let me start with the fight inside the Democratic Party, because it has sometimes gotten nasty. Moderates versus progressives. The establishment versus the Democratic Socialists. El-Sayed himself won a narrow primary in August against a more moderate congresswoman, Haley Stevens. Polls show Democrats divided over where their party should go.
That’s fine. In fact, it’s healthy. Parties are supposed to argue about what they believe. That’s how they figure out what they stand for. The problem starts when Democrats confuse their party with the coalition it will take to beat MAGA. And they are not even remotely the same thing.
A party is where you fight over Medicare for All. A coalition is everyone who agrees the country shouldn’t be run by a man who tried to overturn an election.
So who all makes up the broader pro-democracy coalition?
First, the independents. There are millions of independents who can’t stand Donald Trump and don’t much like the Democratic Party either. A new AP-NORC poll found that few voters think either party can solve important problems or help people like them. Plenty of those independents hold views a lot of Democrats find objectionable. The coalition still needs them desperately.
There are also a lot of Republicans who’ve had enough. Only about a third of Republicans now say they’re primarily supporters of Donald Trump. One in six Trump voters say they wouldn’t vote for him again. Some of those people are thinking about voting for a Democrat this November for the first time in their lives, just to put a check on him. The coalition needs them desperately too.
Here’s where it get personal for me.
I’m not always comfortable with the language and the policies coming from the left. And plenty of people on the left aren’t comfortable with every vote I’ve ever taken either.
Fine. That’s the point.
But none of those differences are as big as the threat in front of us. You can argue about health care in a democracy. You can argue about taxes in a democracy. What you can’t do is win those arguments, or lose them fairly, in a country where the president prosecutes his enemies and pressures states to cancel elections that are already underway. Authoritarianism doesn’t care where you stand on Medicare. It just needs the people who oppose it to be too busy fighting each other to stop it.
Go Where the People Are
That’s why El-Sayed sitting down on Fox News matters. It would have been easy for him to stay in friendly rooms, talk to people who already agree with him, and hope it was enough in November. Instead, he walked clear-eyed into an unfriendly interview because that’s where some of the people he needs are watching.
Put another way: he went in with the goal of talking to them, not winning a fight with the host.
That’s exactly what this moment demands. A lot of Americans are exhausted by Trump right now, and some of them are looking for a door. Our job is to make sure it’s open, with someone standing in it waving them through.
Bernice Johnson Reagon understood something about coalitions that’s easy to forget. A coalition isn’t home. It isn’t supposed to feel cozy. Home is where you go to be with people who agree with you about everything. A coalition is the work you do with people who don’t, because something bigger is at stake than your disagreements.
So if you look around this November and feel a little uncomfortable about who’s standing next to you, good.
That means it’s big enough.
— Adam
My comment this morning is not related to this article although this was valuable. I’m somewhat upset after waking up this morning and finding out that President Trump addressed a group in Grand Island Nebraska and during his so-called campaign rally, he suggested that Iran take out LA and San Diego as they were not valuable cities. This absolutely got to my core. I am so upset. I cannot believe an American president would speak this way to a group of people. The president represents every citizen in America and to think he’s involved in a war with a Ron right now and says they have been obliterated of all of their weapons and yet he’s telling them to go ahead and take out two valuable cities in our country. Who talks like this? This sounds like a person that is very dangerous and deranged. I cannot believe that people are not upset this morning whether you’re a republican or a democrat this absolutely is no way for an American president to speak to people, and I can’t understand why people are not calling him out this morning.
The comments he makes get worse every day. He is the most unprofessional president we have ever had. I’m trying to understand what other countries think about America when our own president speaks like this about the very people he’s trusted to take care of and look out for their well-being. Obviously, I’m upset this morning. I’ll get off my soapbox and maybe you can provide some insight to us today …thank you.
I am one of those Independents who can’t stand Trump but I am also leery of some Democratic positions. The Democratic Party is the vehicle we must use to rid ourselves of MAGA.