WASHINGTON — Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed repeatedly rebuked former President Barack Obama as insufficiently progressive in writings and comments that have resurfaced ahead of a high-profile rally featuring the two men later this month.
“I have to say now what I’ve been holding in throughout his campaign, and what I think all of us have to admit: Obama was not the right choice — he just wasn’t the wrong one,” El-Sayed wrote in a 2012 HuffPost piece right after Obama’s re-election victory.
“This leader has perpetuated war, violated our civil liberties, deported more people from our shores than any other president before him, and the list of his failures goes on.”
On the campaign trail, El-Sayed has recounted the excitement he felt when Obama won the presidency in 2008.
“In 2008, a guy named Barack Hussein Obama runs for and wins the presidency. I got to be honest with you all, it’s the first time I ever saw myself reflected in politics at all,” El-Sayed, 41, said at an August rally.
But in the 2012 op-ed, El-Sayed repudiated his feelings of four years earlier.
“The jubilation of his 2008 election will forever live with me,” he wrote. “But for me, that memory will serve not as a reminder of the history we made that night — but of the silly emotions of a naïve young man who didn’t understand that hope and change required more than flowery prose and a winning smile.”
The future candidate went on to assert that the US was not “better off” under Obama and trashed the 44th president’s signature Affordable Care Act as “watered-down reform that kowtows to the interests of healthcare lobbies.”
El-Sayed’s critiques of Obama continued even after the first black president left office, according to a chronology by CNN.
During his unsuccessful Michigan gubernatorial bid in 2017, El-Sayed gave an interview with Vox in which he attacked Obama for his “fairly centrist, middle-of-the-road Democratic policies.” The resulting piece was titled “Don’t Call This Man ‘The Next Obama.”
Three years later, in January 2020, El-Sayed warned Democrats at a University of Chicago Institute of Politics panel against repeating “the same mistakes of the past eight years under Barack Obama.”
“We are not, as a country, better off eight years after Obama was elected in 2008 than we were when he was elected. And I say this as somebody who loves him deeply,” he said.
“I appreciate the fact that we don’t give him credit for what he did for the economy in the short term. But the structure of the economy did not change under Barack Obama,” added El-Sayed, arguing the Democrat’s shortcomings set the stage for President Trump’s rise.
“At 24, I watched President Obama win in 2008,” El-Sayed told CNN in a statement. “He changed what was possible for someone like me, with a name like mine. Despite being dealt one of the toughest hands of any American president—he handled it.
“And despite all he did, there remains so much left to do. That’s where the next generation, inspired by him and his leadership, picks up. We stand on the shoulders of giants—and I can’t wait to tell him myself later this month.”
El-Sayed is locked in a tight race against Republican former congressman Mike Rogers and has been criticized by both Jewish and black groups for his near-obsessive focus on the Middle East and Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Last month, he stumped with former Vice President Kamala Harris, despite El-Sayed backing the 2024 “Uncommitted” movement — which refused to endorse Harris against Trump in the crucial state.
El-Sayed’s campaign and representatives for Obama did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The pair are scheduled to appear together and alongside other Michigan Democratic candidates Oct. 24 in Detroit.
