This is a lightly edited transcript of the November 26 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.
Perry Bacon: I’m the host of The New Republic show Right Now. I’m honored to be joined by Abdul El-Sayed. He’s running for Senate in Michigan this year in a sort of crowded primary, but he’s one of the leading candidates in that primary. He ran for governor in 2018. More importantly, he’s done a lot of great work in public health in Detroit and in Wayne County.
So, I was going to talk—welcome him and thanks for joining me.
Honored to be here. Thanks for having me.
So let’s start there. Healthcare—I’ve talked to a lot of people both online, but also in my world, people I talk to—healthcare premiums are going up. The subsidies did not get renewed. I’m sure you’re hearing this too. So talk about that issue and talk about: does that build the case for—as it says in the book behind you—Medicare for All?
Abdul El-Sayed: I really appreciate you starting there because frankly, this has been the cause of my public life. I’m a physician and epidemiologist. I rebuilt Detroit’s Health Department.
One of the first things we did in Wayne County was eliminate upwards of $700 million of medical debt. When we found that we ranked number eight nationwide, in medical debt as a county. Our collective medical debt in this country is $225 billion. And I’ll tell you this, Perry, I just don’t think it should exist to be able to be erased because it’s a crazy thing that in the richest, most powerful country in the world, we have a medical debt that is greater than the GDP of half of all U.S. states.
And so we fought a big fight as Democrats. say that one more time.
Bacon: I think there was a good data point. Can you say that one more time?
El-Sayed: So the medical debt is $225 billion. That is greater than the GDP of half of all U.S. states.
Bacon: Oh wow. Okay. Thanks. That crazy.
El-Sayed: And that shouldn’t exist. It just shouldn’t. I don’t think it should be a crazy idea to say that in the richest, most powerful country in the world, that should not be an issue that we have to worry about. And the reason it is, is because we have a healthcare system that has allowed every Tom, Dick, and Harry to make a whole lot of money off of sick people. And I just don’t think that that’s how our system should work as we’re watching it price people out.
So we just had a government shut down over the fact that we’re watching as the premiums will spike for people on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, right? Going to go up in some cases fourfold. And the fact that we need to continue to rely on these subsidies suggest to us that we need to take the fight bigger. It shouldn’t just be about premiums for 25 million people, it should be about whether 350 million people, all of us, have to pay premiums at all.
And I believe in Medicare for All because I believe that in the richest, most powerful country in the world, we can guarantee every single person health care without having to worry about whether or not they’re going to go into debt. And that’s where I think the fight ought to go. And a lot of folks out there tell you, oh, we can’t afford it. Well, what we can’t afford? We can’t afford a system that puts like hundreds of thousands of people into $225 billion in debt. Like we literally cannot afford the system as it is. And I think if we were serious about actually providing people health care, this would be the idea we would pursue. And I want Democrats who are serious about addressing how unaffordable health care has gotten for too many people.
Bacon: I’m not a health policy expert. But I do want to ask this question, which I think is important—can you distinguish between Medicare for All and why you’re advocating for that, as opposed to what is called a quote-unquote public option, meaning Medicare or some kind of public thing if you want to enroll in it on your own?
El-Sayed: Yeah. So let’s think a little bit about what the problems in American health care are. A lot of people don’t have health coverage at all—nearly 10 million people. For a lot of people who have health coverage, it is way too expensive for them to afford; it is crowding out other things that they need in their lives. And even the health coverage that you have, it’s not durable, right?
It forces you to have to wait in long lines to get very little amounts of health care that you have to fight some bureaucrat in some corporation to get. And all of that is because we have this porous system where we rely on private corporations to provide us insurance. Medicare for All would guarantee baseline health coverage for every single American without copays, deductibles, or premiums. It’s just there for you. It doesn’t matter if you turn 26, get married, get divorced, get a job, lose a job, turn 65—all reasons why you can lose your health care coverage. It is there for you.
A public option is literally a government version of health insurance that you can buy if you want to. That doesn’t address the problem, which is that too many people have to deal with the fact that they get bumped off their coverage. Too many people don’t get coverage at all. And for the people who do get coverage, it’s becoming unaffordable. The fact that the government has a plan that you can buy doesn’t automatically mean that it’s going to be less expensive.
Doesn’t automatically mean that you’re covered, doesn’t automatically mean that the sure part of the word insurance actually applies to you. So I just don’t see why folks would push for a public option unless, of course, they do not want to run on the wrong side of the health insurance industry, which is the second biggest lobbyist in American government. And I think that is really the problem. Like that’s really the tell.
And so, when I, when I go up and down my state, right, the first thing I lead on is not actually Medicare for All—it’s money out of politics. Because I think the money that’s being paid into politics, being paid in through corporate PACs to help elect Democrats and Republicans, is the reason why Democrats can’t be full-throated about the actual issues that we need to solve. And you see it on the health care front. You see it on the economic front. You see it frankly almost everywhere.
So we end up being mealy-mouthed because we’re trying to triangulate a message between what we think corporations want and what we think our voters want. I don’t take corporate money at all. I never have. I never will. I ran for governor back in 2018. I didn’t take it then. I won’t take it now. So at least you know what I think, right? And I’m not getting the words put in my mouth by some corporation that wants to make sure that its CEO can continue to make $18 million bucks a year.
Bacon: Since the election in New York, we’ve heard so much about the word affordability, and I’m worried that’s becoming a buzzword that doesn’t mean anything—but talk about your views of what affordability means in your platform.
I think you just discussed healthcare, I think we’ve covered that. What does making life more affordable for Americans, particularly people in Michigan, look like for you?
El-Sayed: Well, Perry, I appreciate the question because I’ve been up and down my state in nearly 70 different cities, and no matter where I go, people tell me the same thing: “It just shouldn’t be this hard.”
And when they’re talking about that, they’re talking about the ability to afford a second bag of groceries. They’re talking about the ability to go see a doctor. They’re talking about whether or not they ever believe they could own a home if they’re under the age of 40 or stay in their home if they’re over the age of 65. They’re talking about whether or not their kid will ever get to see a dentist. In some communities, the waiting line is 2,000 people long.
Some people who are running on affordability think that there are small fixes to a very, very big problem—i.e., it’s just one thing or another: it’s utilities, it’s housing, it’s groceries. And I think the right approach is about understanding that the fact that all of our circumstances have become unaffordable is a function of the same broken system, and it is the way that corporations keep getting richer, more powerful, buying each other up and consolidating across sectors to both suppress the wages that we get paid and to raise the prices that we have to pay for the things we have to buy, and then protect themselves and protect their nearly monopolistic interests by using a small amount of their profits in political giving to buy politicians who will protect the system for them.
And to me, it’s about both recognizing the solutions immediately to the affordability crisis and also being honest and serious about taking on the system that has created the affordability crisis that we see large in every aspect of our lives.
So whether it’s the fact that your utility bills are expanding, it’s the fact that your health insurance has become unaffordable. It’s the fact that you can’t ever believe you could own a home. It’s the fact that you can’t afford meat at the grocery store or eggs. It’s the fact that you’re about to get priced out of Thanksgiving. It’s the fact that when you go to a grocery store, they don’t stock all the things that you want, and the things that are actually healthy are out of reach for you. All of that goes back to the same system, and both you have to provide solutions, and you have to take on the system that created the problem in the first place.
Is the system capitalism? I wouldn’t call it capitalism, right? Because I actually, I’ve read about capitalism, and in all of the essential writing about capitalism, you go read Adam Smith. The biggest risk to capitalism isn’t government regulation. The biggest risk to capitalism is monopoly. And so if you want to sustain capitalism—i.e., free entry or exit into a market, the ability to take an idea, build a business, and sell a good—if you want to protect capitalism, you actually need to protect it from monopoly.
And so I think we’re at a point in late-stage capitalism where our government has failed to protect capitalism as it’s supposed to work. If you’ve got an idea in this economy, guess what the high probability is? You’re going to have to compete against a huge corporation that’s got an army of lobbyists that can come into your community and trust all the local politicians to make sure that they get their way and they crowd you out.
That’s exactly what’s actually happening in our community. You’ve got Sheets, which is a Pennsylvania-based corporation that’s coming in and crowding out all these local owned gas stations and communities like Sterling Heights in Macomb County. They can get away basically changing zoning rules to enable them to move in because they got all kinds of money that they can apply into the campaign coffers of local electeds, and they’ve got lobbying arms and lawyers that can work through the thick of bureaucracy that small businesses could never dream of, right?
That’s anti-capitalist behavior. That is not capitalism. And so a lot of folks, when you come in and start talking about guaranteeing health care or providing high-quality schools, come in and be like, “Oh, well you must not understand capitalism.” It’s like, “No, I actually do understand capitalism, and I understand that there are some baseline things you’ve got to provide in capitalism, and you got to actually protect capitalism.”
Tax the biggest winners, and you’ve got to make sure that there’s regulation enough so that winners don’t win forever, right? This is not a game of Monopoly, right? That’s not what we’re trying to play here, although that’s what our economy has become. And so I don’t think the problem is essentially capitalism. I think the problem is a failure to recognize what it means to have a healthy, functioning capitalism where everybody gets a fair shot to play in accordance with the rules because the rules are getting rigged by the biggest players in the system.
Bacon: It looks like it’s a picture of Bernie Sanders behind you. Is that correct?
El-Sayed: That’s right, yes.
Bacon: Alright, so let’s confirm this. There’s a story in the New York Times today that basically says there’s sort of a new caucus emerging in the Senate—among Senate Democrats—called the Fight Caucus. Senator Warren is in it, Bernie Sanders is in it, Tina Smith, Senator from Minnesota—great senators—are in it.
And it seems like their objection is they feel Senator Schumer and Senator Gillibrand are putting their hand on the scale and saying: we prefer certain candidates for the Senate. I think it’s Angie Craig in Minnesota, it’s Janet Mills in Maine, and in your state I think they believe Haley Stevens is the sort of quote-unquote anointed candidate.
So I’m not going to ask you to confirm any of this, but what I do want to know is: you seem proud of the support you have from Senator Sanders. Why do you want to align with him?
El-Sayed: Well, Perry, the first rule of Fight Club: You can’t talk about Fight Club, but…
Yeah, I love the fact that you’ve got Senators who are willing to stand up against a system that has tried to tell us who it is that we can vote for in communities like Michigan. I’ll just be honest with you, Michigan is an extremely diverse state and a microcosm of the broader country. You’ve got communities like Detroit and Grand Rapids. You’ve got rural communities in places like Three Rivers in Antrim County. And I know, cause I’ve been to all of them. Folks in Michigan will tell you we are deeply proud of our political heritage and we decide who we get to vote for, not anybody else. And certainly not people out of D.C.
And I think what you’re seeing is a group of Senators coming up and saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got to let democracy play itself out,’ right? And we need to make sure that folks understand what these different candidates believe in, so we get an accurate picture of what our country believes in.
Right. And I’m proud to have earned the endorsement of Senator Sanders, not because he’s trying to come in and tell people who to vote for, but because he has run in Michigan successfully in the past, and he understands what he learned about the voters in this state. And right now, to go back to the point that you first made, folks are so frustrated about how difficult it has become to afford the basic means of a dignified life. And they understand that the real issues in our politics aren’t between left and right. They’re between the people who have been locked out and the people who’ve been doing the locking out. And I’m proud to earn the endorsement of folks like Senator Sanders because he’s been trying to unlock that system for a very long time.
For folks, because I’ve been about talking about the corporate domination of our politics. I’ve been about Medicare for All. I’ve been about putting money back in pockets for a very long time across my public service and my public advocacy. Earning his endorsement is about that consistency and integrity—that I am who I say I am, that I’m about what I say I’m about.
And then the last point I’ll just make on this question, because I think it’s really important, is this: Too often our politics tend to get dominated by the power of folks who can appeal to the most powerful. And I think what a lot of the candidates you named, who tend to be the party favorites, have in common is that they’ve taken oodles and oodles of cash with corporate money.
I have never. I ran in 2018, I rejected corporate money then. The local health insurers spent $300,000 to beat me. The local utility spent $200,000 to beat me. I happen to be a customer of both of them, and I sometimes wonder how much of my own money they used to beat me in an election. Everyone else in this race, every single other person has taken money from those same PACs. And so as someone who’s not taking that money, I find it frustrating when people say that what they think is good for the party is what’s good for the corporations who’ve controlled the party for too long.
And I think what’s good for the party is what’s good for the people we talk to every single day. And that’s what I’m going to be about.
Bacon: Let me use one of my least-favorite words in the English language right now and talk to you about it. The word is electability, which I’ve written for a long time is usually wielded against women, people of color, people who are not Christians, and other marginalized groups in our society. It’s almost always used against them.
But I do want to ask you—like I said, I want to make sure to be clear—I believe Michigan voters are not racist and will elect a Muslim man named Abdul. And I don’t like the idea that a white woman is ‘electable’ because she is not Muslim.
But I do want you to talk about what is your plan? In a general election, how would you win?
El-Sayed: Let me say a couple things about this. You’re not going to vote for somebody because their name is Abdul, or they pray like this instead of like this. You’re probably not voting for a Democrat anyway.
Number two, remember what happened in 2024 in Michigan? Our party failed to follow its own stated principles when it came to the genocide in Gaza, and it cost the Democratic ticket a lot of votes here in Michigan. I’m about principle, as I’ve been clear. Like, I don’t play the game that says that if you only say certain things and not others, then you can get elected. To me, there are some politicians out there who change their beliefs to get elected, and there are some politicians out there who try to get elected because of their beliefs. I choose always to be the latter, and there are a lot of folks in this state who will vote for me because they understand that I’ve been honest, clear, and direct about how we should be using our money: rather than buying tanks for foreign militaries abroad, buying schools for our kids here at home.
But the third thing is this. I was raised by my immigrant father who came to this country from Egypt, believing in an America big enough for him too. And my stepmom Jackie, who’s a Daughter of the American Revolution, I was raised in that household. I mean, I want you to imagine having to explain one grandmother of yours to the other.
So I’ve been explaining myself my whole life, and I know this Michiganders are really good people, and they care less about what you pray or how you pray, but what you pray for. They care less about what your name is and more about whether or not you care to figure out their name. And I’m finding that when we go up and down the state, folks are coming to listen to what we have to say and to share what they have to say in droves.
I was in Holland, Michigan—nobody’s idea of a progressive stronghold on the west side of the state. This is the part of the state that produced the DeVos family, for God’s sake. And we had 150 in a room on a Sunday, right, to listen to me talk about guaranteeing health care for everybody.
So I think that if you are authentic and you are direct and you are willing to be honest about why you want the work, not just the job, I think you can earn votes. And don’t forget: Barack Hussein Obama won Michigan twice. Right? And so my job is not to have a debate about whether or not I’m electable. My job is to go have the conversations that will get me elected. And I think a lot of people out here who are trying to hem and haw about what my name is, first, they’re just not doing the math appropriately about what voters we lost and who we need to win back. And second, they’re too busy prognosticating with the most cynical take on who Michiganders are. And I’m out here campaigning with the most hopeful take on who we can be if we come and do that together. And I think that’s what wins.
Bacon: Last question. You used the term genocide, and I think that’s an important one. One of the other candidates was pressed on this—Mallory, who I respect—was sort of pressed on this and kind of said, yes, it’s a genocide, but in this sort of I-will-concede-the-activists-are-annoying kind of way, in my view. That’s how I watch it. I’m going to speak for myself and say it that way.
You’ve been earlier on that issue. Some people would say maybe it’s easier because of your religion or ethnicity, but I don’t think so. I think—why is it important to have somebody who used that word and described the conflict earlier compared to the other two candidates? Why is it important, in your view, that you used that word earlier to describe this conflict?
El-Sayed: It’s important to me, honestly, ’cause that’s what it is. I’m not running for this office to lie to people about what’s happening around them. I’m running for this office to tell the truth and to fix it.
The second thing is that I’ve been trying my whole life to get people to see all people as equal and as deserving of basic dignities. But every dollar we spend sending abroad to drop bombs on other people’s kids is a dollar we’re not spending here at home. And so as a matter of caring for people here in Michigan, I believe that we should stop wasting tens of billions of dollars killing tens of thousands of children so that we could care for our own.
And then the third thing is this, Perry. I think people, when they’re looking to make a decision about who to vote for, they’re asking, Who is this person? And if I were to ask you what color the sky is, I should hope you just say it’s blue, right? I should hope you wouldn’t be like, Well, it depends on who’s asking. I don’t know. That’s, it’s a complicated question. Are there clouds? It’s like, the sky is blue, Perry. It’s blue. I shouldn’t have to argue with you. I shouldn’t have to make some big, caveated OK, fine. If you push me enough, I’ll say that it’s blue. The sky is blue. It is the color of the sky.
Now why wouldn’t you say it was blue? Well, because you’re worried about what some folks who are dead set about shifting our politics to make us all believe that the sky is brown, right? Or some other color. You are worried about what they’re going to say about you. And what that tells me is you are not a person of conviction. What that tells me is you are not a person who is more worried about being right about and finding the truth than you are about being politic. And what that tells me is when it comes to other hard questions, you’re probably going to bend. Because if you’re not willing to call the sky blue, what are you willing to say?
And I just think that this is a Rorschach test on our values because it tells folks, if you can’t name the murder of 20,000 children and tens of thousands more adults, the destruction of their basic infrastructure, their homes, their universities, their hospitals, and the attempt to move them out of their own lands, because people in other countries speak the same language as they do. If you can’t call that a genocide, part of me is just like, I’m so sorry, but it tells me that you are morally corrupt. I’m like, you just… it takes too much. Some people, though, in our politics, want to pretend that none of this is true.
I actually give credit to Senator McMorrow for finally being pushed there. But it does also tell me that you are not somebody who leads with your morals first. You lead with what you think is politically feasible and then let the politics follow from there. And if that’s who you are, I think Michiganders are sick and tired of that kind of politician leading, because we want people who are actually fighting on their values.
Bacon: Anything else you want to add? Is there anything you want to add from what you’re thinking or what you saw in Michigan specifically?
Let’s finish there.
El-Sayed: Yeah. I think we’re at a crossroads in our politics. I think that this is a moment right now where the old way wasn’t working. I ran in 2018, and I said something folks weren’t quite ready to hear: Donald Trump himself is not the disease of our politics. Donald Trump is just the worst symptom of the disease of our politics.
Are we willing to deal with the disease? And the disease is the way that huge corporations and billionaires and would-be oligarchs buy and sell politicians to do their bidding. In order to deal with that system, we are going to have to lead on the courage of our convictions. We are going to have to be able to say the uncomfortable, true things, and to say them everywhere. And I think if we do, we have a chance. But if Democrats continue to play this hemming and hawing game where we are more interested in whether or not we’re going to get a corporate PAC check than whether or not our values are clear and direct—if we’re more interested in worrying about some special interest like AIPAC and less interested in whether or not we’re telling the truth about the murder of innocent kids, I worry that we’re not going to get there.
And we’re going to be down this path one more time, and we’re going to watch as our society continues to ratchet in a direction that is increasingly dangerous. This is a moment for courage. It’s a moment for truth. It’s a moment for honesty and integrity. And frankly, that’s the only reason I ran. I’m not that excited about the job. I’ll be honest with you. Like, I don’t even know what I’d talk about with Chuck Grassley. I’m interested in the work, and we need more politicians who are willing to stand up because they care more about the work than they care about the job.
Bacon: That’s a great place to end on. Thank you for joining me. I appreciate it. Happy Thanksgiving to you and everybody else as well.
El-Sayed: Bye-bye to you as well. Thanks everybody.
