There is a restlessness in the U. S. electorate these days, a general air of discontent. While a minority of the population strongly supports the direction in which the nation is heading (30% believes it is going in the right direction, July of 2026), a much larger number of people think the country is headed in the wrong direction (64% in 2026). In such restive times, people generally look for someone to lead them who can bring change, someone who can improve the country's trajectory and the outlook for the future.
The widespread disquiet in the U. S. electorate no doubt explains why, in recent elections, many people are voting for candidates who break with the so-called establishment. The rupture with institutional authority may be seen most dramatically in the Democratic party.
The recent win of Abdul El-Sayad in the Michigan Democratic senatorial primary was reported by many media and political observers as a victory of the extreme wing of the party. Almost every establishment Democratic leader opposed El-Sayed in the primary. This opposition in his own party included the Senate and House Democratic leadership. It included the governor of the state. And it included the very senator El-Sayed was vying to replace.
Not only were powerful politicians aligned against El-Sayed, but so were powerful outsiders. The amount of money raised to support his opponent dwarfed the El-Sayed campaign's financial resources. Here are two graphs that show the disparity in fund raising between El-Sayed and his primary opponent, Haley Stevens.
In the pie chart, the tiny green slice represents El-Sayed's campaign resources. The fat blue section of the pie represents Haley's resources. Such a disparity in resources was intended to result in El-Sayed's defeat.
It did not. He won that primary battle.
Here is another chart that shows the financial imbalance between the two candidates. Again, the tiny green bar represents E-Sayed's resources. The giant blue bar represents Haley's. And yet El-Sayed won.
Charts created by Chartgo
Fund amounts derived from Mother Jones
Please note: when it comes to individual, small donors El-Sayed out-raised Haley significantly. Her huge campaign war chest came from PACS and large institutional donors, mostly from out of state.
A lot of very powerful people did not want El-Sayed to win.
Ever since he won that Democratic primary contest El-Sayed has been described by media representatives and many Democratic party representatives as being "far left". He is extreme, even radical, many say. There is consternation in the upper echelon of the Democratic party at this politician's success. What is it that politicians and media heads find so extreme about El-Sayed?
I thought I'd look at some of his major policy positions and compare these to how the general public feels about the same issues. Amazingly (actually to my surprise), El-Sayed's positions are largely in line with the majority of the U. S. populace. When it comes to the Democratic party, overwhelmingly members of that party agree with El-Sayed's positions.
If you look at the charts I made below, it is Haley who is out of step with popular opinion.
Poll Sources
As you can see, on each of the policy positions El-Sayed is in agreement with the majority of the electorate. If one isolates opinion polls taken of Democratic party members, the alignment with El-Sayed is even greater. For example, 78% of Democratic voters support Medicare for All. The figure cited in my chart reflects the sentiments of Independent voters, who are considered to be the least partisan and most persuadable of all voters.
Poll Sources
As you can see from my charts, the person who is out of step with the majority of voters is Stevens. She apparently is not out of step with mainstream Democratic politicians. Nor is she out of step with many media representatives.
Despite the negative characterization of El-Sayed by many in media and by mainstream Democrats, and despite Haley's overwhelming financial advantage, she lost and El-Sayed won.
People are hungry for change. They no longer believe 'the establishment'--be that political or media establishment--is telling the truth. People, the vast majority of them, live a reality that does not jive with what they are told. People are looking for something different.
We Live in Dangerous Times
The GINI Index for the United States is 41.8--that figure represents the 2024 U.S. economy (number from the Fed Reserve of St. Louis). The higher a GINI coefficient, the greater is wealth inequality in a country. If you look at this map produced by the World Bank (https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/the-geography-of-high-inequality--monitoring-the-world-bank-s-ne) you will see that the U.S GINI coefficient places it in the company of less economically advanced nations. Many nations with poorer economies than the U.S. have greater wealth equality. That is, their GINI coefficients are lower.
Check out this (World Bank) list of nations across the world and their GINI coefficients. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=US
While by any metric the U.S. is the wealthiest nation in the world, that wealth is distributed with greater inequality than most places in the world.
Note in the graph below that the lowest 50% of the United States' population (half!) holds only 2.5% of the wealth.
Graph derived from U. S. Federal Reserve Page. Chat created by RotaryKing. Public domain
As bad as things were in 2024 (where the wealth data in the map ends), they've gotten worse since then. According to a report issued by CBS News,:
The top 1% of households owned 31.7% of all U.S. wealth in the third quarter of 2025, the highest share on record since the Federal Reserve began tracking household wealth in 1989. That share has increased even as wealth growth for the rest of the population has stalled or slowed, the data shows.
We live in dangerous times. If you don't sense it in the air, look at the data. According to one survey 70% of the people in the U.S. think the system is rigged against them. Certainly the GINI coefficient and the wealth graph I present give credence to this view. This is a destabilizing sentiment for such a large percentage of the population to have.
History tells us that if people feel they do not have a path forward through legitimate channels, they will seek other ways to bring about change. They will be receptive to ideas that suggest truly radical change.
If we look at Germany before Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, the country had been hit hard by the Great Depression. This doubled down on the losses inflicted by WWI and the Versailles Treaty. According to a report published by the universities of Bonn and Koln:
From 1929 to 1932, GDP dropped by 25%, unemployment tripled, and stock market prices fell by more than 60%...the top 10% virtually held all equities recorded in the statistics.
The middle class was destroyed and the Nazis offered a solution. The picture below shows a homeless shelter in Germany, 1932, after the Great Depression hit. It was the same year the National Socialists won 33% of the popular vote, which gave the party the power to install Hitler as Chancellor the following year.
Credit:Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R96268 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.
The same story can be repeated across national boundaries: Italy, 1920s and rise of Fascism. China 1940s and the communist revolution. Economic despair in Russia and the Russian Revolution. A look back at history from Ohio State University describes the days before the Russian Tsar abdicated:
On March 8, 1917 (February 23 on the Gregorian calendar then used in Russia), working-class women in Saint Petersburg, exasperated by rising food prices and rapidly deteriorating living conditions, led a demonstration calling for an end to war and political autocracy. Once unleashed, their cries for “Bread and Peace’” could not be quelled. By March 12, Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate.
Homeless on Main Street in Los Angeles, USA, 2022
Abdul El-Sayed and Other "Progressives"
It is obvious that the people who are in power in this country do not like the change proposed by Abdul El-Sayed. By 'people in power' I intend to say both political and economic power. Who owns the media in the U.S.? Billionaires, corporate conglomerates. While the media outlets purport to give a fair accounting of the 'news', it's apparent where their sympathies lie--not with reformers like El-Sayed, certainly.
People with entrenched power and wealth are not willing to relinquish any of their privilege. How very unwise they are.
The changes El-Sayed proposes are not radical. They are changes, though, and they may chip--minimally--at the advantages held by the privileged. It's obvious from the polls that the majority of U.S. citizens are hungry for progress. They are looking for candidates who can offer some light, some hope for a more equitable society.
If the powers that be stifle voices for change, if they characterize modest advances for the middle and lower classes as extreme, then they are cutting off a civil path to reform. These powers would be wise to consider that El-Sayed, and candidates like him, offer reasonable alternatives to lopsided wealth division in the United States. If reasonable alternatives are taken from the electorate, they may look...they will surely look...for other ways to secure economic opportunities for themselves and their families.
