Elon Musk is a white male Gen Xer. I’m a white male Gen Xer. He owns Tesla; I own a Tesla. Furthermore, we both guarantee we’d kick Mark Zuckerberg’s scrawny little arse in a cage fight. (If Zuck weighs more than a buck 40, I’m the pope.)
So basically, me and Musk are one and the same — which is why I deserve that $10 billion bank loan, please.
It’s one of the oldest — and stupidly obvious — sales ploys: Take something bad (me) and compare it to something good. The intent, of course, is to persuade your audience that the bad thing is therefore good, too.
And it’s also the sales pitch of Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. His sycophants and/or publicists in the mainstream media are hammering away at that theme — and their comparison of choice is ex-president Barack Obama. It’s their strategy to normalize the most radically extreme, far-left Senate candidate ever nominated by a major American political party.
Case in point: check out this week’s morsel from The Spectator, “Is Abdul El-Sayed the Next Obama?”
The opening two paragraphs stuck to that sales strategy like flippin’ Velcro:
Twenty years ago, as America fought in the Middle East, a junior Democratic senator from the Midwest, a forty-something man with a Muslim name, decided he was going to run for president. Against the odds, Barack Hussein Obama of Illinois, who’d dabbled in Marxist academia and whose father was born in Kenya, went on to become the first non-white commander-in-chief.
Two decades on, as America fights another war in the Middle East, an even more unconventional Midwestern Democrat is rapidly advancing. Dr Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, whose father was born in Egypt, is currently the favourite to win his senate race in Michigan in November – even as Republican campaigners spend millions of dollars branding him a terrorist sympathiser.
Whether or not you think President Obama is “good” doesn’t matter. He was mainstream enough to be a two-term U.S. president. That makes him, to paraphrase his quote from the 2008 debates, “good enough” for the comparison to fly.
After all, Barack and Abdul both have wacky names, foreign-born dads, and controversial ties to unpopular ideologies — so they’re practically interchangeable! Why, if you squint your eyes, you’d swear they were twins!
Yessir, six of one, half a dozen of the other.
That’s our intended takeaway: Since Barack Obama is normal and mainstream, Abdul El-Sayed must be normal and mainstream, too. Nothin’ weird or scary about him.
Which is yuuugely problematic for Mike Rogers, El-Sayed’s Republican opponent. His entire strategy is to brand El-Sayed as a dangerous extremist.
Comparisons to President Obama neuter that strategy.
Meanwhile, El-Sayed has played the comparison game beautifully. (Say what you want about him — and Lord knows I have — but he’s excellent at PR. It’s one of the reasons why he’s so dangerous.) El-Sayed “denies” the comparison — by first reminding audiences how and why he’s so gosh-durn similar to Obama:
“I get compared to Obama because my name is funny, and I’m brown, and my politics are about inspiring us to believe in each other again,” El-Sayed said. “But when it comes to our political positions, I believe that right now we need a set of solutions that remind us that the people should be the core of what we do in government.”
Golly gee, I totally see why people keep comparing Scott Pinsker to Elon Musk, ‘cause we both have kids, drive electric cars, and waste time on X. But c’mon, we’re different people, too!
So how should the GOP respond to the attempted Obamafication of Abdul El-Sayed?
Simple: Launch the Lloyd Bentsen protocol.
El-Sayed and Barack Obama may share superficial similarities, but they’re dimensionally different people. Obama began on the left (and finished on the left), but was still within the Democratic Party mainstream on foreign policy, American culture, economics, and spirituality. The daylight between him and the DNC was minimal.
That’s not true about El-Sayed, who’s far more aligned with the offshoot DSA. He’s championed causes like defunding the police, abolishing ICE, and arresting Benjamin Netanyahu, and he said American football represents “toxic masculinity.” El-Sayed is light years outside of the political mainstream.
Pretending he’s just a normal, run-of-the-mill politician would be a cataclysmic PR mistake.
Back in 2008, if Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground hosted a podcast, then-candidate Barack Obama NEVER would’ve appeared on it. Because Obama ran to the middle; when minister Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America” sermon was exposed, Obama severed ties and never spoke to Wright again.
By contrast, El-Sayed has appeared on socialist-bigot Hasan Piker’s podcasts multiple times — campaigning and fundraising in tandem as tag-team partners. They even participated in an Election Day pool party.
The same Hasan Piker who said that “America deserved 9/11.” The same Hasan Piker who said Hamas was “a thousand times better” than Israel.
In style and substance, El-Sayed and Obama are not the same.
Which is why the best way to respond is to expose El-Sayed’s bull[feces]. Find the most high-ranking, Obama-connected politician who opposes El-Sayed’s candidacy — and issue a direct rebuttal:
“I served with Barack Obama. I know Barack Obama. Barack Obama is a friend of mine. El-Sayed, you’re no Barack Obama.”
Because he’s exponentially closer to Hasan Piker than Barack Obama — and it’s the GOP’s job to make sure nobody in Michigan ever forgets it.
Recommended: AI and Data Centers Are Politically Losers. That’s Why Trump and the GOP Should Go All In.
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