00:00Democrats have to win a majority in Congress.
00:06We have to win a majority in the House.
00:09And we have to win a majority in the Senate.
00:14And we need a firewall against an administration that is hell-bent on tearing down in four
00:24years what it took this country 250 years to build.
00:35We saw it just a few nights ago in Trump's primetime address.
00:43And for those of you who wisely tuned it out, Donald Trump spent most of his speech rehashing
00:55the same big old tired lie that he actually, quote unquote, won the 2020 election.
01:07And we know he will stop at nothing to stay in power.
01:12And we know that it has nothing to do with true or false.
01:18They will do everything they can to try to overturn our democracy in November.
01:25And if we do not take back the House and the Senate, we're going to make it a whole lot
01:30easier for him and his cronies to do just that.
01:35So Michigan, we have no time to waste.
01:38The question before us is how do we win a durable majority?
01:48How do we get out of this pattern that we seem to have been stuck in for years?
01:56This state knows it well.
01:59It started off six elections in a row, starting in 1992, Democratic presidential candidates
02:08won here in Michigan.
02:09In fact, it wasn't even particularly close in most of those contests.
02:15But then in 2016, something shifted.
02:19Not just here in Michigan, but across the country.
02:22Not just with Democrats, but also Republicans.
02:28And to many political watchers, it seemed that the laws of political nature were totally upended.
02:37But it happened in all directions.
02:38And that's also part of what Bernie's campaign spoke to 10 years ago as well.
02:46And that's also what Trump's victory in the fall in this state represented.
02:52This oscillation in response to the failure of our political system to address the needs of working
03:01people.
03:03These earthquakes and aftershocks.
03:08Two years after 2016, we had another aftershock across the country.
03:13And as a part of that, I went from being a waitress to winning a primary against a 20-year
03:23Democratic
03:23incumbent who was meant to be the next Speaker of the House.
03:35So I get it, Michigan.
03:38Because my frustrations, precisely because the stakes of Republican leadership are so high,
03:49precisely because of their corruption, their discrimination, the gutting of voting rights,
03:56I understood the stakes of cleaning up my own backyard back here at home.
04:04That we had to look at our contributions and why people like my family and my neighborhood felt so failed
04:14by the party in charge of championing the working class.
04:19And saying, how can we be better?
04:22In fact, we have a responsibility to be.
04:27And all of us have been trying to get a handle on what all of that means ever since.
04:34And we do know some of the many contributing causes and factors.
04:40Like yes, one of the causes, deep causes, have been bad trade deals that hollowed out states
04:47like Michigan.
04:52Another cause was the record income inequality and the Great Recession spurred on by unchecked greed on Wall Street.
05:03And yes, yet another cause was the sweet of shameful and quiet bigotries waiting in the shadows in pockets of
05:14our country.
05:16Racism, sexism, fear of our neighbor that seemed to gnash their teeth the strongest the closer we get to uniting
05:27across our differences.
05:28All of these things are true, and yet there's more.
05:34Because it was also due to a political system that had over decades and across parties become totally enmeshed in
05:47a financial and electoral politics that stopped serving working people.
05:54Our entire electoral system has been consumed by big money.
06:02And thanks to this Republican administration, Donald Trump and this corrupt Supreme Court, it is now worse than ever before.
06:15So instead of putting voters first year after year with little exception, Washington now elevates the desires of lobbyists and
06:25powerful corporations at the expense of the rest of us.
06:30And what does that mean in practice?
06:32Real wages are falling behind.
06:36The prices of everything from groceries to houses are skyrocketing.
06:41Our water, food and air are being poisoned to pad the profits of major corporations.
06:49And the accountability for all of this, for hurting everyday Americans, has been far too little if there is any
06:58at all.
06:59Which brings us to right now, Detroit.
07:04There are things happening in this country that people everywhere are shocked by.
07:11A government of, by and for the oligarchs.
07:19Masked ICE paramilitary agents shooting Americans in the street with no further questions.
07:28A president and administration so corrupt that they don't even bother hiding their self-dealing anymore.
07:36Members of Congress and Trump insiders getting themselves rich on insider trading and online betting while you can't even make
07:45your rent.
07:48A genocide in Gaza committed with American bombs and financed by our American dollars while our kids here at home
07:57have to ration their inhalers because politicians tell us that healthcare is too expensive.
08:07And now, big money is flooding our political system more than ever before to make sure that none of this
08:17ever changes.
08:19Because that's always been their reliable playbook.
08:25Special interests.
08:27The people making us sick are dumping, just dump millions of dollars for their candidate, flood our airways with ads
08:36and our mailboxes with glossy postcards a couple weeks before an election.
08:40And they just think that people will go their way.
08:44But when the stakes are so high, when more people than ever are living so close to the bone, eventually
08:53we have to ask ourselves,
08:57is the answer to our problems to turn to the same playbook over and over again.
09:07A playbook that says in order to win, Democrats must rely on the same dark money, 50 million and counting,
09:17from the same people that backed 35 election deniers to Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election.
09:28A playbook that says in order to win, we need to show deference to Trump by thanking his same ice
09:36agency that has shot Renee Good, Alex Pretty, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero.
09:45A playbook that says in order to win, we must be defenders of the same status quo that is drowning
09:54us and tells us the aspiration to change our government and the ambition to even try is foolish.
10:02No, it's not foolish, Michigan.
10:07It is the responsible and right thing to do.
10:16I believe Michiganders, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents believe that good leadership swings for the fences.
10:33Good leadership gets big money out of our system.
10:38It takes on the corruption that blocks common sense solutions that lift working people.
10:45And by the way, it knows that in order to do that, it helps not to take their money in
10:52the first place.
11:00Pundits want to dismiss this idea as naive, but I want to tell you something.
11:09The last time Democrats won in the House won our largest majority since Watergate in 2018, 185 Democratic candidates of
11:23all backgrounds, rural and urban, progressive and moderate, ran by not taking a dime in corporate money.
11:35It's not naive.
11:38It's not naive.
11:38It's how we win Detroit.
11:41And it's not just how you win a primary.
11:43It's how you win a general election.
11:49We can't be in cahoots with the same money that is oppressing us.
12:01It's not naive Detroit.
12:03It's what we need.
12:04And it, most importantly, is what you deserve.
12:10You deserve a government that answers to you.
12:15And yes, compared to how things work today, admittedly, a government that listens to you more than it listens to
12:24big money is revolutionary.
12:29To take on big companies, to take on the big companies scamming you, lowering your bills and putting more money
12:38in your pocket is revolutionary.
12:40To fight corporate greed everywhere we find it.
12:45To make healthcare a guaranteed right in the richest nation on earth.
12:54You deserve a politics that treats the disease and not just the symptoms of what brought us Donald Trump.
13:03That doesn't negotiate with or placate corruption, but one that defeats it once and for all.
13:12You deserve it.
13:14Because you matter.
13:17But we all know that it will not come as a matter of course.
13:21It won't come by waiting patiently.
13:25Nor by making the same decisions that we have always made.
13:31This is something that we have to choose, Michigan.
13:36It is something that we have to elect to do.
13:41And right now, there is a very clear choice before us.
13:45We can choose $50 million and counting in dark money trying to buy the state of Michigan.
13:59Or we can choose Dr. Abdul El Sayed.
14:09But the choice is up to us.
14:11Right now.
14:14Michigan.
14:22Michigan.
14:24You can choose a different future.
14:27It's waiting in your mailbox right now.
14:30And it will be waiting for you and your friends at the polling booth on August 4th.
14:35Because as much as we may be appalled at what is happening, ultimately, our democracy is our responsibility.
14:46It is our choice.
14:49And if we want a different politics, we have got to elect different politicians.
14:57And I came here to deliver one simple message.
15:02That Abdul El Sayed represents the politics of the future.
15:11And if we want to not only win a Senate majority, but win a Senate majority that means something new
15:20for us.
15:21That does something new for us.
15:24If we want to pass the legislation that we need, and if we want to build a coalition big enough
15:30to actually change this country, then we have got to elect Dr. Abdul El Sayed to the United States Senate.
15:40Abdul is a son of Detroit.
15:44And that means something.
15:47Because we also know that his integrity didn't just start, did not begin with Abdul himself.
15:55It began with his family and the workers who built this city.
16:00It's in his parents and in the parents who kept their families together.
16:05Or rather, it's in the parents here in Detroit who kept their families together through bankruptcy and disinvestment.
16:12In the neighbors who kept showing up for one another when powerful people had written Detroit off.
16:20Abdul doesn't just bring those values to Detroit.
16:23He carries those values with him day in and day out.
16:27And you all knew him before the rest of the country learned his name.
16:32You know that when this city was coming out of bankruptcy, when the consultants and the creditors lined their pockets
16:41to pick this whole place clean,
16:44Abdul came home to rebuild its health department as a public health official.
16:52And you know that when kids who were struggling couldn't see the blackboard, he wasted no time and got them
17:04glasses.
17:08Abdul is a man of integrity and discipline.
17:15Make no mistake about it.
17:17He is a man of faith.
17:20A man devoted to his family and to his beautiful daughters.
17:25Abdul is a good man.
17:28It is why he earned the endorsement of the UAW, an institution that knows Michigan workers.
17:38Because the UAW looked at all the candidates in this race and chose him.
17:44Because they have fought alongside him.
17:47And they know.
17:48They know him.
17:50And I want to close with this Michigan.
17:53Because this moment right now is bigger than ideology or party.
18:00It is one of country.
18:02I want to tell you what they're whispering about Michiganders out in Washington.
18:08Because I've heard it myself.
18:11They're saying a state like yours and a people like you can't elect an American like Abdul.
18:26Because when we talk about electability and I ask what is it?
18:32Do we really think that Michigan doesn't want to guarantee health care to every American?
18:40I don't think that's right.
18:42I believe that Michigan wants to establish health care as a right to every person in this state.
18:50Michigan wants to strengthen our unions in every state in America.
18:57Michigan wants to establish a government that is finally no longer for sale.
19:02And those are all what Abdul believes.
19:06So when you strip away the euphemisms and concerns at these highfalutin cocktail parties,
19:13it's not about what he believes.
19:16It's about who he is.
19:19And it's about their assumptions about what they think Michigan is.
19:28And we know they're wrong.
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