Kamala and Al-Sayed

Democratic progressives were understandably concerned about whether Kamala Harris’ appearance with Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed on Tuesday would help El-Sayed more than hurt him. They appeared together at a roundtable discussion focused on material health for African-American women.

MS NOW carried the appearance live: (1)

Fitting for the setting, she makes a solid Democratic indictment of Trump’s cutbacks in health care opportunities via Medicaid. Including declaring, “The attack on DEI is an attack on maternal care.” She can make this kind of appeal when she puts her mind to it, as many California voters are likely to recall from her years as Senator. This is a style she did not adopt often enough in her role as Vice President.

The setting was a good one to allow El-Sayed to remind voters that he is a medical doctor who takes health care policy issues very seriously who can convey urgency and seriousness in addressing such issues. The discussion is a also good reminder that issues of health and social justice are also proverbial “kitchen table” issues, the cliché of which Democratic political consultants seem to be so fond.

Kamala is highly likely to be a candidate for the 2028 Democratic Presidential nomination. So going to Michigan for a high-profile appearance with one of the current new starts of the Democratic Party is an obvious move for her. But criticisms of her and the Biden Administration by grassroots progressive Democrats have made her somewhat less than a highly-desired campaign supporter in various statewide races. As the New York Times reports:

Democratic candidates, wary of campaigning with someone tied to the unpopular Biden administration, have not rushed to take Ms. Harris up on [her offers to make campaign appearances for them]. In recent weeks, Democratic Senate candidates in Alaska [Mary Peltola], Iowa [Josh Turek] and Kansas — states without large Black populations — have pre-emptively and publicly uninvited her from campaigning with them.

Several Democrats mentioned in the Harris donor document as candidates who could use her help do not appear eager, either. Aides to James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominees for the Senate and governor in Texas, as well as to Gov. Katie Hobbs in Arizona, told The Times that they did not want Ms. Harris to come.(2)

So her joint appearance with El-Sayed may be more significant for Kamala’s future electoral prospects than it is for El-Sayed’s current campaign. She also has plans to appear together with Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia, who is running to retain his current seat.

Without rehashing the whole sad story of her Presidential candidacy after Biden’s withdrawal from the race, it seems to be a fair assumption that lack of enthusiasm for her candidacy among the Democratic base contributed a lot to the lower Democratic turnout in 2024 compared to 2022. Her refusal to criticize Biden over his effectively unconditional support for Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct of the Gaza War was a serious discouragement to many potential Democratic voters. Grassroots Democrats were also very concerned about Trump’s xenophobic positions, and with very good reason.

Democrats and Immigration

But Harris in the 2024 campaign also complained that the Democrats wanted to be even tougher on deportations than Republicans but the mean Republicans were blocking those proposals in Congress!

The last big federal immigration reform was passed during Ronald Reagan’s Presidency with his support that created a quick path for longer-term undocumented residents but failed to create a realistic legal program for needed immigrant workers, which are particularly essential in US agriculture and construction. George W. Bush as President proposed an actual liberal immigration reform that would have addressed that as well.

Sadly, neither Presidents Bill Clinton nor Barack Obama nor Joe Biden proposed anything similar, though Obama’s “Dreamers” programs was a decent gesture but far from what the Bush proposal would have been. Clinton adopted a cruel policy violating international law that refused to allow Haitian asylum-seekers to land in the US and instead set up an ugly program of detaining them in Guantanamo Bay, which including denying urgently needed medical aid for HIV patients. Democrats can rightly claim high deportation rates of undocumented immigrants during the Obama and Biden Presidencies - but they couldn’t be bothered to try to pass constructive immigration reforms even as liberal as those of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. And Kamala Harris as the 2024 Presidential candidate had only more hardline anti-immigrant rhetoric to offer.

The ACLU in 2024 appealed to Kamala and the Democrats for a more constructive policy: “As shown in poll after poll, the American public wants policies that provide status to longtime undocumented residents and provide an orderly, fair, and secure path to apply for humanitarian protection in the United States.” Her campaign did not take the advice.

Human rights advocates, progressives, and anyone with a concern for a pragmatic and realistic immigration policy are right to be critical of the Democrats’ poor record in this regard. And of course under Stephen Miller’s draconian anti-immigrant policies during Trump 2.0, it’s difficult for anyone to imagine Republicans advocating the kind of pragmatic and even decent immigration reforms enacted by Reagan and advocated by Bush II.

And Harris’ campaign managers somehow thought it would be a great idea for her to campaign together with Liz Chaney, who supported her father’s war in Iraq and the torture program he championed. Except perhaps for “Trump”, the name “Cheney” is about as toxic a signal to Democratic voters as it could be.

Harris in 2026

One of the establishment Democrats’ arguments that became standard in the 2016 primary campaign between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders was to argue that Sanders received fewer Black votes than Hillary and to claim this showed an inadequate commitment by progressives to the establishment version of “identity politics.” This trope is still around, and its advocates point to the fact that El-Sayed’s primary opponent Haley Stevens. Stevens immediately endorsed El-Sayed after the primary.

Harris’ appearance with El-Sayed should help reassure any Democratic-leaning voters who might actually worried about that tired argument. With just over a month left before the election, it’s entirely normal that the party's last Presidential nominee would want to boost the official Democratic Senate candidate in a large state like Michigan! And this is Kamala endorsing him and his candidacy, not him endorsing her for a new Presidential run.

Moral of the story: It’s much better for Democratic Presidential candidates to campaign with leaders like Abdul El-Sayed instead of Liz Cheney!

Originally posted in the ProDA-Progressive Caucus of Democrats Abroad Substack.

Notes:

(1) LIVE: Kamala Harris stumps with El-Sayed. MS NOW YouTube channel 09/23/2026. <https://www.youtube.com/live/EmsZsYsmzz0?si=DP-n8M8QxaOD3Fct> (Accessed 2026-23-09).

(2) Epstein, Reid (2026): Many Democrats Are Avoiding Kamala Harris. Abdul El-Sayed Is Welcoming Her. New York Times 09/225/2026. <https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/us/politics/kamala-harris-el-sayed-michigan-midterms.html?searchResultPosition=1> (Accessed: 2026-22-09).