‘This leader has perpetuated war, violated our civil liberties, deported more people from our shores than any other president before him.’
Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed once said the U.S. was not “better off” under President Obama and that “the list of his failures goes on.” Now, the Michigan progressive is preparing to hit the campaign trail with the president he spent years criticizing.
In a July 2026 interview with the New Yorker, El-Sayed credited Obama as an inspiration but argued that the former president could have done more to advance his progressive vision.
“I don’t get to do what I’m doing without President Obama doing what he did,” he said.
“At the same time, when you love somebody like that, you’re going to look at them and say, Could we do more? It’s kind of like the way you think about your parents,” he added. “You love and revere your parents, and you’re grateful for all they did to help you. And, at the same time, anybody who watches their parents will always look and say, Hey, if I don’t build off of what I saw, then what am I even doing here? I kind of think about President Obama the same way.”
But El-Sayed did not always take such a gentle approach to criticizing the former president.
In a HuffPost essay published right after Obama’s 2012 reelection victory, El-Sayed wrote, “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.”
“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,” he added.
While El-Sayed has confirmed he voted for Obama in both 2008 and 2012, and said as recently as August that Obama’s win was “the first time I ever saw myself reflected in politics at all,” he criticized his younger self in the 2012 essay for his excitement around Obama’s first presidential campaign.
“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.”
He argued the U.S. was not “better off” under Obama.
“I feel no more dignified, no more accepted as cops throughout the country have usurped my right to walk the streets freely without fearing unjustified interference. Inequality has accelerated and the divide between the haves and have-nots in our country has never been starker,” El-Sayed wrote.
“At home our economy continues to stagnate; its victims are so many of my peers who had also invested in ‘hope and change’ four years ago, who cannot find meaningful work.”
He also blasted Obama’s Affordable Care Act as “watered-down reform that kowtows to the interests of healthcare lobbies.”
El-Sayed still held onto many of the same criticisms in 2017, when he unsuccessfully ran for Michigan governor. He criticized Obama’s “fairly centrist, middle-of-the-road Democratic policies” in an interview with Vox. The outlet ultimately published the interview under the headline, “Don’t Call This Man ‘The Next Obama.’”
A recent CNN article resurfaces other criticisms from El-Sayed, including his January 2020 comments at a University of Chicago Institute of Politics event in which he warned Democrats not to repeat “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,” he said, arguing that the president’s flaws helped create the political environment that gave rise to President Trump.
El-Sayed offered a more diplomatic criticism of the ACA during his New Yorker interview over the summer.
“I was in medical school during the Affordable Care Act fights. And the big frustration I had is, like, why are we not going all the way? Why are we accommodating the private-health-insurance industry? And that, to me, was a righteous kind of frustration,” he said.
“And, at the same time, I have had my career in the world of the A.C.A., and I can’t imagine just how much worse it would be had we not gotten that,” he added. “So you can both say the A.C.A. was incredible, and, as the President said, this was a starter home. I think it’s about damn time we move out of the starter home. We’ve outgrown it.”
The senate candidate is shifting his tone as he prepares to campaign with Obama in Detroit on October 24, the first day of in-person early voting in the state.
“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.”
Obama said in a post on social media he is “looking forward to being in Detroit on 10/24 to campaign for [Democratic gubernatorial candidate] Jocelyn Benson, Abdul El-Sayed and Democrats up and down the ballot in Michigan.”
The former president did not issue an endorsement in the Senate primary race between El-Sayed and Representative Haley Stevens.
El-Sayed now narrowly leads his Republican opponent, former Congressman Mike Rogers, in the general election, according to a polling average from RealClearPolitics.
The Democratic nominee has been outspoken in his far-left beliefs, both on the campaign trail and on his website. He supports abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, expresses anti-Israeli sentiments, and wants to end the Senate filibuster. He also supports Medicare for All, which is one of his most talked about issues — aside from Israel — with supporters on the campaign trail.
El-Sayed’s rhetoric is out of step with the more moderate stances of his opponent, and many establishment Democrats in the state.
But he has maintained he’s not “technically or practically” a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
He told CNN during the primary race, “I am not somebody who is a socialist. I believe in capitalism, I just believe that capitalism has to be regulated.”