Democrats ignored him in 2024. Now, he wants to show them how to win

[marmar]

Democrats ignored him in 2024. Now, he wants to show them how to win
Uncommitted Movement activist Abbas Alawieh is stepping from behind the scenes to run for state Senate in Michigan

By Tatyana Tandanpolie
Staff Reporter
Published June 2, 2026 6:30AM (EDT)


(Salon) Abbas Alawieh is no stranger to politics. The Michigander spent years as a top aide to progressive ex-Rep. Andy Levin, D-Mich, and Squad members Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and former Missouri Congresswoman Cori Bush. He developed political strategy as a chief of staff, authored bills as a legislative director and worked across the aisle to help deliver results to their constituents. His work largely kept him behind the scenes — until 2024.

Alawieh gained national recognition amid the United States’ support for Israel’s war against Gaza, which a United Nations Commission has since declared a genocide, as a co-founder of the Uncommitted Movement during the 2024 election cycle. The anti-war effort sought an end to the violence through a campaign urging Americans to vote “uncommitted” in their state’s primary to show the Democratic Party the votes they risked losing if they didn’t change course. The campaign’s success resulted in some 30 uncommitted delegates attending the Democratic National Convention that August to represent the more than 700,000 Americans who demanded an end to U.S. material support for Israel.

Alawieh insists he wasn’t the leader of the movement, but there’s no denying he stood at the forefront of it — and was also subjected to the post-election fallout that pushed him and other Uncommitted leaders out of the public eye as President Donald Trump prepared to take office for a second time. Now, just under two years later, he’s stepping in front of the podium to build a campaign for Michigan state senate of his own, and he’s hoping Democrats will actually follow his lead this time.

“The Democratic Party isn’t speaking to the needs of working families more broadly. I feel like anytime I hear about family in the context of our national politics, it’s the Republicans claiming the idea and using it as a way to divide people,” Alawieh told Salon, arguing that Democrats need to reclaim the concept in order to be successful. “So the opening message of my campaign is, ‘My name is Abbas Alawieh. Family is everything to me, and I’m running to represent every single person in Senate District Two like they are family to me.'”

....(snip)....

What inspired you to go from this relatively behind-the-scenes, former high-ranking legislative aide to a Democratic candidate for state senate in your home district?

When I was a chief of staff on Capitol Hill in 2022, I was witnessing from afar the community that I grew up in — working-class communities in southeastern Michigan — being organized by far-right elements using hate and fear around book bans and other anti-LGBT nonsense to convince people that if you ban one book or the other, that’s how you grow your political power. I’m bald, but if I had hair, I would have been pulling it out. It was so difficult to witness that and ask every Democratic official I knew what the party was doing about it, only to learn that the party was doing nothing. For a long time, the Democratic Party has been ceding ground to the politics of the far right or to the politics of disillusionment in key working-class and immigrant communities. ....................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/06/02/democrats-ignored-him-in-2024-now-he-wants-to-show-them-how-to-win/

[gab13by13]

1. I support Democrats

[Fiendish Thingy]

2. AARRGLE BAARRGLE Anti-Semitism AAUUGHH!!!

Did I get that right?

That’s how all “good Democrats” are supposed to respond, right?

I wonder how Alawieh’s fundraising is going, without those sweet, juicy AIPAC dollars that are flowing to some of his competitors…

[Scrivener7]

3. Nope. That shit was too stupid to believe. Which means so is he.

[PatrickforB]

4. I disagree. The real truth is the GOP and the Third Way wing of establishment Dems share many of

the same big donors. Now THIS below is what I have seen during my lengthy career in vocational guidance and economics:

The Democrats didn't do anything when:

1. Lewis Powell laid out the plan for the corporate takeover of our republic in his 1971 US Chamber of Commerce essay titled "An Attack on American Free Enterprise." Crickets.

2. When Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, which allowed the right-wing, led by Rupert Murdoch's Fox Network to create a very sophisticated propaganda network designed to create fear and division. This is when the systematic union busting took union membership in the US down from 22% in 1980 to its present 10%.

3. When Reagan introduced the first of many irresponsible trickle-down tax cuts for corporations and the Epstein class elites, which essentially transferred the BURDEN of funding government services to individual taxpayers while corporations gained most of the benefits of doing business here without paying as much in taxes. Then, corporations contributed 35% to the income tax revenue of the US, while now they contribute only 4%. At the same time, that ratio moved from 45% for individual taxpayers pre-Reagan to the current 50.4%. A gradual Grover Norquist squeeze - government has been STARVED for funding to the point where even Social Security and Medicare are now in danger. The Democrats did NOTHING about this. NOTHING.

$. When Gore actually won in 2000 but we caved in to the GOPs obvious cheating to get W in.

%. When the Newtster's do-nothing house worked with Clinton and the Third Way people to impose NAFTA, the US ended up losing around 800,000 jobs through areas that are now bright red because those good jobs in factories throughout the so-called rust belt morphed over a decade into Wall Mart greeter positions and whole swaths of the American middle class found themselves in a much more precarious economic position. Where were the Dems then? Great for Wall Street! Shitty for the American middle class. It was.

6. When Moscow Mitch McConnell refused to allow advice and consent to 73 of Obama's judiciary appointees, including the limp noodle Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court. I didn't see anything but strongly worded letters and gentle admonishments when what SHOULD have happened is the Dems grinding the government to a halt and forcing the issue. But nope...didn't happen.

7. When Moscow Mitch waited until Trump was elected to ramrod 245 judicial appointments of right-wing judges who were groomed to legislate the desires of billionaires and Wall Street from the bench. Crickets. And worse - many Dems actually voted FOR confirmation of these dirtbags.

8. When October 7 happened, our hearts went out to Israel, but Bibi Netanyahu's genocidal response lost the support of many rank and file Democrats. Like me. Biden and the Democratic establishment, afraid of AIPAC, acquiesced to these mass killings by giving Bibi $21.7 BILLION of our tax dollars to Israel while the world watched in horror as IDF forces killed nearly 73,000 Palestinian civilians and injured over 172,000. And, surprise! In 2024 we saw a lot of people sit out because they DID NOT AGREE WITH THIS, which caused a schism in the party between progressives and establishment Democrats.

9. I also spent, as an economist, Biden's entire four-year administration being told how great the economy was WHILE CARRYING AROUND $10K in HEALTHCARE DEBT!!!! I was mad in 2009 when the Dems, who had majorities in Congress AND the presidency, FAILED to impose single-payer healthcare. They FAILED the American middle class and US small businesses across the board because they caved into the big pharma, for-profit healthcare and insurance industry lobbies instead of DOING THE RIGHT THING. And please do not tell me we didn't have the votes. That is bullshit. We FAILED to use the bully pulpit effectively to move the Overton window is what actually happened.

So now here we are. This shit is NOT too stupid to believe. Sorry. The American middle class has been squeezed mercilessly by the modern billionaire robber barons, who have waged a class war over the last 100 years that has been so successful that our economy is about to tank, we are fighting an ILLEGAL FUCKING WAR IN IRAN because the Democrats have not ground the government to a halt, and now the institutionalists are making lip noises about going back to business as usual.

But the truth? As I see it, and I am quite sure you will virulantly disagree with me, the truth here is that the big superpac, billionaire and corporate donors donate to election campaigns to ensure that things stay just the way they are because Wall Street's doing GREAT.

Main Street? Not so much. Now our fucking grandkids can't even get jobs out of college because of this giant AI boondoggle. WE ALREADY HAVE AI. Why do we need so many new data centers when they suck around 5 million gallons of water a day and drain the power grid? They are like giant mosquitos sticking their probes directly into the earth itself. Talk about parasites! And we're doing nothing.

Even Gavin Newsom is against the wealth tax on CA's ballot because he is worried about the 'flight of the billionaires' to other states. Sh-eeeeee-it! And the limp noodle Polis in Colorado bowed to Trump's threats and released the nut job Tina Peters, who is now on podcasts with the same tired election denial bullshit.

The last time the US Congress did ANYTHING that actually benefitted me and my kids and grandkids was FMLA under Clinton. Even Biden's inflation reduction act was geared mainly to stimulate business. Medicaid expansion was the exception there, but now that is gone.

Many Americans are reeling from high prices, war, union busting, student and healthcare DEBT.

I mean, if we are honest here, Scrivener, both parties have given the Military Industrial Complex all it wants AT OUR EXPENSE and now Trump has unleashed a new secret police complete with concentration camps.

And the Epstein files? The government knew about that shit for decades. WHY did we not address it early in the century? And don't tell me 'it was under investigation'. These Epstein Class elites are nothing but child rapists and killers and we have allowed Trump to do all kinds of destructive shit to distract us from that, the Iran war being the latest.

So, as I sit here at my desk writing this, I think about how I'm getting nickel and dimed to fucking death by everything while we are spending A TRILLION a year on the fucking war budget, and a BILLION a day on this feckless war in Iran.

In the meantime, my prices are spiking, there is no end in sight, and the Dems aren't leading us out in the streets to grind everything to a halt until this crap can be fixed. Bottom line, we need hundreds more Mamdanis, AOCs and this guy here you don't like.

Because I paid in OVER $18K into the federal government in taxes last year and I'm getting FUCKING NOTHING IN RETURN. I am being taxed without representation. And don't tell me I have representation - not when Congress has IGNORED what the people want in favor of corporations since way-back-when. I want BALANCE. Sure, business is important, but so are the workers. So are the consumers, and so is this sacred earth.

We will choose what arises as a phoenix out of the ashes of Trumpism, and my fear is that the establishment people within the beltway will be so tone deaf there will end up being a revolution. Already I'm seeing 1789 and guillotine memes. Maybe Chuck and Hakeem and the rest, including my Senators, Hick and Bennett, should take that seriously. People are FUCKING PISSED.