The Memo: El-Sayed allies argue Trump’s anti-Muslim attacks will backfire
The timing here is what jumps out at me. Trump chose the final stretch before Election Day to pour more fuel on this fire, and he did it in Michigan of all places, where El-Sayed needs every vote he can get. The argument from El-Sayed's allies, that these attacks will backfire, has some logic to it. Michigan has a sizable Muslim and Arab American population, and this kind of rhetoric tends to energize the people it targets rather than scare them off.
But I'd want to see the polling before getting too confident. Anti-Muslim sentiment is not a fringe position in American politics, and Trump has used it effectively before in other races. The question is whether Michigan voters in the middle, the ones who decide close elections, see this as a disqualifying attack or as a reason to hold their nose.
I also think there's a longer arc here. If El-Sayed wins, this becomes a story about how a Muslim candidate overcame explicit religious attacks in a swing state. If he loses, the attacks become part of the post-mortem. Either way, the way Trump talks about candidates he fears is worth watching closely, because it tells us what he thinks works.