NBA champion Kyle Kuzma just said what every working-class Michigander has been thinking: Barack Obama's religious identity pitch for Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is a desperate psyop, and people are struggling to survive out here.
Obama flew into Michigan to rally for El-Sayed, gushing over a prospective "power duo" with Jewish Sen. Elissa Slotkin—because El-Sayed is Muslim and Slotkin is Jewish. That's the pitch. Not jobs. Not the cost of living. Not the 1 in 4 Black Michiganders living below the poverty line. Religion.
Kuzma, a Flint native who knows something about what happens when the establishment forgets a city, wasn't having it. "This desperate pysop is unbearable to watch in Michigan. so tired of listening to it," he wrote on X. "1 in 4 black people in Michigan are below the poverty line and the message is Muslim/jewish duo is what we're talking about."
He drove the point home: "Last thing that Michiganders care about is a religious identity pitch. And on top of that Michigan is a state where the population of Muslims and Jews are both 1 percent. What are we talking about."
What indeed. A September Fox News poll confirmed what Kuzma already knew—voters said cost of living was extremely important in their Senate vote, along with immigration and U.S. policy toward Israel. Not a single respondent listed "interfaith Senate duos" as a priority.
The Detroit Free Press, meanwhile, ran letters from readers calling Republican candidate Mike Rogers' campaign one of the "most disgusting" in memory, with one editorial headline declaring "Rogers bets on racism." Another letter writer, a 73-year-old who had never voted Republican, wrote: "there is a first time for everything." That's the tell the establishment doesn't want to read. When lifelong Democrats are breaking ranks while the Free Press screams about racism, the ground is shifting.
Here's what's really happening: the old coalition is fracturing because the old messaging doesn't work anymore. Obama's celebrity aura used to be enough to move voters. Now a Flint kid who made it to the NBA can counterpunch on social media and reach more people than a former president's stage-managed rally. The populist awakening isn't confined to one party or one demographic. It crosses lines—exactly the kind of lines the establishment needs to keep drawn to stay in power.
The race between El-Sayed and Rogers is within a single point. Both parties should be sweating. But only one is still running a playbook from 2008.
