Podcast Host, Marxist Scholar Fault Michigan Senate Nominee Abdul El-Sayed

Briahna Joy Gray, the host of the Bad Faith podcast, said Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is giving capitalism a friendly makeover that it does not deserve.

In the episode, Gray played two recent podcast interviews in which El-Sayed calls himself a capitalist and blames the economy's failures on "corporatism." She said that framing hides capitalism's built-in drive for growth. The criticism is aimed at one of the most prominent progressive candidates on the ballot next week.

"He's sort of dressing it up, the wolf of capitalism in sheep's clothing, and selling it to an audience that frankly has an appetite, potentially, for a kind of more durable socialism," Gray said.

Briahna Joy Gray's Caveats on Abdul El-Sayed

Gray made a point of saying what her criticism was not. She said El-Sayed "is not a DSA candidate, never held himself out as a socialist," adding, "The critique is here is not that he's like misrepresenting his values or anything like that."

She also said El-Sayed has been the target of Islamophobic attacks during the campaign. "So it feels a little difficult to critique him in the context of all of that, but we're gonna trudge ahead regardless," she said.

El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former Detroit health director, narrowly won the Democratic Senate primary in August, defeating Representative Haley Stevens with backing from Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He faces Republican former Representative Mike Rogers for the seat Democratic Senator Gary Peters is leaving. El-Sayed leads by 3.3 points, 48.4 percent to 45.1 percent, in PolitiKool's polling average for Michigan.

Gray called him "a lefty vanguard Bernie world candidate who ran for a governor back in 2018 on a statewide Medicare for all program."

El-Sayed's 'Corporatism' Argument

In the clips Gray played, from Van Lathan's Higher Learning podcast and a podcast hosted by the rapper Vic Mensa, El-Sayed compared capitalism to an engine that only needs a sound chassis around it.

"We just don't have capitalism here. What we have is corporatism," El-Sayed said. "I would like to regulate and undo corporatism, meaning break up big corporations, make sure that they can't buy politicians."

Gray said that argument treats antitrust law as part of capitalism when it is really a constraint placed on it. "I think it obscures the inherent dangers to capitalism and leaves us open to having to re litigate these fights over and over again," she said. Later in the episode, she grouped El-Sayed with other figures she said were distorting the debate: "You have Abdul El-Sayed selling that real capitalism has never been tried."

Her guest, Marxist geographer David Harvey, a distinguished professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, rejected the idea that monopoly is a departure from capitalism. He said Karl Marx taught him that "the end product of competition is always monopoly."

"monopoly capital is a form of capital. So no, it's not as if monopoly is an anti-capitalist, because monopoly is part of what capitalism is about," Harvey said. He pointed to Amazon as an example of a company that grew toward monopoly power.

What Gallup Shows About Democrats and Socialism

The "appetite" Gray described shows up in survey data. Gallup's latest reading, conducted August 3-24, found that 43 percent of Americans view socialism positively. That is the first time the figure has gone above 39 percent since Gallup began tracking it in 2010.

Among Democrats, 65 percent view socialism positively and 35 percent view capitalism positively. A year earlier, Democrats' positive rating of capitalism was 42 percent. Adults ages 18 to 34 also favor socialism over capitalism, 57 percent to 43 percent, and 45 percent of independents now view socialism positively.

Republicans remain the exception. In Gallup's 2025 survey, 74 percent of Republicans viewed capitalism positively and 14 percent viewed socialism positively. That gap helps explain why a candidate in a state Donald Trump won in 2024 would describe himself as a capitalist.

What Happens Next

Harvey said most of the current talk about socialism is "just redistributive socialism," meaning taxes and public programs such as health care and education, and that "I like that." Gray said she would "settle for that as well from someone like Abdul El-Sayed," but that it is not what she hears from him, since he is defending capitalism itself. Harvey also argued that the climate and housing crises will eventually require changing how goods are produced.

Gray said electoral races are when most voters first hear these ideas, so candidates' definitions matter. Election Day in Michigan is Tuesday. El-Sayed has not changed how he describes himself: in Gray's words, he has been "very clear" that "he's a capitalist."