El-Sayed Said Obama Left America No Better Off. Now He Wants His Help.

Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is turning to former President Barack Obama for help on the campaign trail, years after arguing that Obama’s presidency left the country no better off.

Obama is scheduled to campaign alongside El-Sayed in Detroit on October 24, less than two weeks before Election Day, in a major show of support for a candidate who once offered a blistering assessment of Obama’s eight years in office.

The appearance is part of El-Sayed’s effort to consolidate Democratic support after his narrow primary victory over Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI). El-Sayed has recently appeared with former Vice President Kamala Harris and announced campaign appearances with other prominent leftist Democrats.

But years before seeking Obama’s help, El-Sayed argued that the former president had failed to deliver on his promises, according to a CNN KFile review of his past comments.

In a 2012 Huffington Post essay written after Obama’s reelection, El-Sayed said he had voted for Obama but criticized his failure to deliver the “hope and change” promised during his first campaign.

“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,” El-Sayed wrote. He concluded that Obama’s reelection was “no victory” for the far-left, calling it “the rock we chose over the hard place.”

He also attacked the Affordable Care Act, calling it a “watered-down reform that kowtows to the interests of healthcare lobbies.”

Five years later, while running for governor of Michigan, El-Sayed rejected comparisons between himself and Obama, telling Vox that there were “a lot of things I disagree with President Obama on.”

“I don’t think he was strong enough on things like health care,” El-Sayed said. “I don’t think he was strong enough when it comes to regulating big banks. I don’t think he was strong enough when it came to campaign finance reform, or strong enough on immigration.”

El-Sayed also argued that the economic gains under Obama had disproportionately benefited corporations rather than ordinary Americans.

Then, in a 2018 interview with leftist podcast host Katie Halper, El-Sayed criticized the Democratic Party after Halper raised Obama’s response to the Flint water crisis.

“When Democrats buy into an ideology that says that we all ought to focus on the well-being of corporations rather than the well-being of real people, when we forget what suffering looks like, then we make mistakes,” El-Sayed said.

Voters could consequently look at both parties and conclude, “you’re all the same, because all of you have failed,” he argued.

By January 2020, El-Sayed was making an even broader argument about Obama’s legacy.

“We are going to continue to make the same mistakes of the past eight years under Barack Obama,” he said during a University of Chicago Institute of Politics panel. “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.”

El-Sayed acknowledged that Obama had accomplished important things but that he had failed to fundamentally change the economy and healthcare system.

“The structure of the economy did not change under Barack Obama,” he said. “The solutions to actually thinking about making sure that our health care system was equitable and sustainable, that did not change under Barack Obama.”

Now, El-Sayed is preparing to share a Michigan stage with the same president whose administration he once argued had failed to make the country “better off.”

The October 24 event coincides with the beginning of Michigan’s in-person early voting period. Obama is expected to rally support for El-Sayed, gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson, and other Democrats in a state he carried twice.

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