Abdul El-Sayed stands by criticism of fireworks, tells Americans to find other ways to ‘show your love’

Abdul El-Sayed had a chance to walk back his fireworks gripe and instead he leaned into it. On "The Breakfast Club" he told Americans to find other ways to "show your love" for the country than shooting bottle rockets off in the backyard. This is a Senate candidate in Michigan, a state with a serious fireworks industry and a lot of regular folks who spend every July 4th doing exactly what he's now telling them not to do.

The thing is, nobody made him relitigate this. He could have said "look, I was talking about noise complaints near hospitals" and moved on. Instead he doubled down with a lecture about better ways to love your country. That's the tell. It's not really about fireworks. It's about a candidate who can't help correcting people's patriotism even when the smart political move is to shut up and let it go.

Fireworks on the Fourth are corny, loud, occasionally someone loses a finger, and Americans have been doing it since before there was a United States to celebrate. Telling people there's a more enlightened way to mark independence is the kind of thing that sounds fine in a seminar room and terrible coming out of a candidate's mouth on drive-time radio. Voters don't need a senator to teach them how to feel about their own country.

If El-Sayed wants to run on infrastructure or prescription drug prices, fine, that's a real campaign. Running on "your fireworks are the wrong kind of love" is just handing his opponents a clip that plays itself.