Remember When El-Sayed Trashed Obama? That Was Awesome.

As PJ Media previously reported, former President Barack Obama heads to Michigan later this month to stump for Abdul El-Sayed, a clear sign that his campaign is in trouble. It turns out we were more right than previously thought, because El-Sayed has spent the better part of a decade calling Obama’s presidency a failure. Why have Obama campaign for you if you believe his presidency was a failure?

Panic.

Democrats in Michigan nominated Abdul El-Sayed instead of a more electable Democrat, and now he is stuck in a tight race with Republican Mike Rogers that could help decide who controls the Senate. So his campaign called in the biggest name the party has left: Barack Obama. The trouble is that CNN's KFile went digging through El-Sayed's old editorials, interviews, and panel appearances, starting with Obama's 2012 reelection and running through the 2020 Democrat primary, and hoo boy, there’s quite a paper trail.

Start with the HuffPost essay he published right after Obama won his second term. "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 was just getting warmed up.

Reflecting on election night in 2008, he wrote, "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 added, "I have little hope because there has been less change."

Even Obamacare got the same treatment.

El-Sayed called it a "watered-down reform that kowtows to the interests of healthcare lobbies." He says he voted for Obama twice, but the second vote was a lesser-of-two-evils job against Mitt Romney. "It was the rock we chose over the hard place," he wrote. I've heard warmer endorsements of gas station sushi.

ICYMI: These Numbers Should Terrify Democrats Ahead of the Midterms

The complaints kept coming for years. When he ran for governor in 2017, El-Sayed sat for a Vox interview headlined "Don't call this man 'the next Obama.'" No danger of that now. He gave Obama credit for the auto bailout, then got back to business. "I don't think he was strong enough on things like health care," El-Sayed told Vox. "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."

By January 2020, at a University of Chicago panel called "Democrats: Whose Party is it Anyway?," he had the whole indictment down pat. "We are not, as a country, better off eight years after Obama was elected in 2008 than we were when he was elected," El-Sayed said. "And I say this as somebody who loves him deeply."

That last line is the political version of "bless his heart." He even blamed Obama for the rise of President Donald Trump, warning that unless Democrats admitted nothing had changed, "we're at risk of going right back to the edge of the cliff we fell off in 2016."

Fast forward to this week, and the guy who mocked his own "silly emotions" about 2008 curiously rediscovered every single one of them. "At 24, I watched President Obama win in 2008," his campaign statement to CNN reads. "He changed what was possible for someone like me, with a name like mine." It ends, "We stand on the shoulders of giants—and I can't wait to tell him myself later this month."

What a phony.

His campaign insists none of his past criticisms add up to hostility, and offered proof that he has praised Obama personally. One exhibit was a 2020 tweet in which El-Sayed said he disagreed with "many" of Obama's decisions and thought the country was "not better off," while calling Obama "competent, coherent, and committed to Americans." He has since deleted it.

When your best evidence is a tweet you erased, you’ve got problems.

Let's be honest, here: Nobody trades years of conviction for an 11th-hour photo op because things are going well. A candidate who meant what he said would keep saying it, and a candidate who is winning wouldn't need to take it back. This is a Hail Mary thrown by a campaign that knows what the scoreboard says, and El-Sayed's sudden love for the man he spent years tearing down is the clearest sign of how desperate things have gotten.

Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

Help PJ Media continue to report on the Democrats’ radicalism and inform voters as our nation faces a crossroads. Join PJ Media VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.