"Cars are the modern-day cigarette. They're just — they're like — like why do we do it this way."
That's Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in 2016, comparing the product that built Detroit, employs hundreds of thousands of Michigan workers, and defines the state's entire economic identity to a cancer-causing habit Americans should kick.
He'd like those same workers to vote for him now.
The NRSC didn't mince around — they called El-Sayed "a Green New Deal socialist who wants to completely dismantle Michigan's auto industry."
El-Sayed's comparison wasn't some offhand quip taken out of context. It was a complete thought — cars are cigarettes, and the question is why do we keep using them. The logic tracks perfectly with the Green New Deal vision of replacing personal vehicles with public transportation and redesigned cities. It's a policy worldview. He meant it.
The problem for El-Sayed is geography. You can hold that position in San Francisco. You can hold it in Brooklyn. You can probably hold it in Ann Arbor over craft beer. But you cannot hold it in a state where the auto industry isn't just an employer — it's the origin story. Michigan doesn't make cars the way Ohio makes tires or Texas makes oil. Michigan is cars. The assembly lines, the engineering, the supply chains, the union halls, the family businesses that feed off the whole ecosystem. Calling that product "the modern-day cigarette" isn't an environmental observation. It's an insult to the thing that pays the mortgage.
Left-wing politicians have been making this argument for years — that American car culture is an environmental problem that needs to be engineered out of existence through public transit expansion and urban redesign. The difference is most of them are smart enough not to say it in states where the check engine light is practically on the flag.
The NRSC apparently has more El-Sayed material in the vault. They've also highlighted footage of him calling funding for breast cancer research "disgusting" and suggesting the disease primarily affects "people with social power and privilege." One in eight American women develop breast cancer. That's not a privilege demographic.
What makes the car quote so useful isn't the policy behind it — it's the contempt baked into the analogy. Cigarettes aren't just unhealthy. They're embarrassing. They're the thing your doctor lectures you about. They're the habit educated people quit in the '90s. Calling cars "the modern-day cigarette" doesn't just say they're bad for the environment. It says the people who depend on them are behind the times, clinging to something the smart set already moved past.
That's the message El-Sayed would be bringing to a Michigan Senate race. In a state Trump carried. In a state where auto workers watched the EV mandate debates with their livelihoods on the line.
The clip is from 2016. El-Sayed hasn't publicly walked it back. The Senate race is now.
