There’s a sound you never forget if you grew up around a steel mill – the low roar of the furnace, the clang of metal on metal, the rhythm of men building something that lasts. It’s the sound of Middletown, Ohio, where JD Vance’s grandfather clocked in as a welder for forty years and voted Democrat every time because he believed it was the party of union men.
Last Friday, Vice President Vance returned to that same steel plant – Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown Works – and stood where men like his grandfather once stood. But he wasn’t there to reminisce. He was there to deliver a eulogy for a party that no longer exists.
Michigan’s midterm Senate race is shaping up as one of the most consequential in the country. Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants and a darling of the progressive left, is facing Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in a contest that could determine Senate control. And Vance wanted Americans to understand exactly who the Democrats have nominated.
A party that forgot who built it
Vance didn’t mince words. He called today’s Democrats “the party of graduate students, rather than the union and nonunion workers who make this facility run.” Then he turned his attention to El-Sayed – and what he said next should stop every working American in their tracks.
From Fox News:
He once argued, not too long ago, that criticisms of Sharia law were rooted in white supremacy. I’d love to go back in time and tell my papa that there is a man who claims to stand for working people who says not only should we have Sharia law but if you criticize it you’re a white supremacist. That’s not my grandpa’s Democratic party, my friend.
Vance was referencing a 2022 keynote speech El-Sayed delivered at a Council on American-Islamic Relations banquet. There, El-Sayed attacked Oklahoma’s State Question 755 – a ballot measure to prevent courts from considering Sharia law that passed with 70 percent of the vote – by linking it to the Trail of Tears and the Tulsa massacre.
Seventy percent of voters. And somehow every last one of them is a white supremacist? That’s not political analysis – that’s contempt for ordinary Americans dressed up in academic language.
When the mask slips
It doesn’t end there. El-Sayed has accused Israel of committing “genocide” and labeled the Jewish state an “apartheid” regime – rhetoric that has understandably rattled Michigan’s Jewish community. After winning his primary, he offered a carefully worded statement about Jewish safety that read less like conviction and more like a consultant’s memo. Funny how the tone changes once you need a broader coalition to show up in November.
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ducked questions about campaigning alongside a candidate who won’t even commit to backing him as party leader. The establishment knows what El-Sayed represents. They just don’t have the spine to say it out loud.
What’s left of the party of the working man
Here’s the thing that gets me. Vance’s grandfather didn’t vote Democrat because of faculty lounge theories about intersectional oppression. He voted Democrat because the party promised to fight for the guy with grease under his fingernails and a lunch pail in his hand. That man wouldn’t recognize what his party has become – and honestly, would you?
Now their Senate nominee in a must-win swing state thinks your opposition to Sharia law makes you a bigot. He thinks Israel is an apartheid state. And the party leadership? They shuffle their feet and mumble about “new energy.” That’s not a party evolving. That’s a party being hollowed out from the inside.
Steel is forged under heat and pressure. So are political movements. What’s emerging from the Democratic furnace isn’t anything the workers of Middletown would claim. Vance’s grandfather deserved better. So does Michigan.
Key Takeaways
- VP Vance calls Democrats the “party of graduate students” who abandoned working-class Americans.
- Michigan Senate nominee El-Sayed called criticism of Sharia law “white supremacy” at a 2022 CAIR banquet.
- Democrat leadership like Schumer dodges accountability for the party’s radical leftward shift.
- The Michigan Senate race could determine control – and reveals how far left Democrats have drifted.
