Kathrine Frich
The Senate hopeful was far less friendly toward Obama back in 2012.
Old words have a funny way of coming back around when people least expect it.
Anyone who has ever put sharp opinions in writing knows the internet never forgets.
In politics, however, yesterday’s harshest critic can quickly turn into today’s closest partner when a big election is on the line.
Burying the hatchet
Former President Barack Obama has stepped in to back Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, the Irish Star reported. The warm endorsement comes despite a trail of old opinion pieces in Vox and The Huffington Post where the progressive
Democrat tore into the 44th president’s record and blamed him for fueling the rise of the MAGA movement.
Rather than holding a grudge, the former commander-in-chief appeared in a new campaign video right after the two men announced an upcoming joint rally in Detroit. In the spot, Obama highlighted the candidate’s background as a physician and his push for better jobs.
“El-Sayed has never taken corporate money. He understands that healthcare is a human right,” Obama said in the ad, according to the Irish Star.
“America was founded on a simple idea. This country belongs to all of us,” the former president continued. “Not just the wealthy, not just the well-connected, everyone. Today, that idea is under attack. And Michigan is where we fight back. That’s why I’m asking you to support Abdul El Sayed for the United States Senate.”
A harsh paper trail
More than a decade ago, the Senate hopeful sounded far less friendly toward the man now helping his campaign. After the 2012 presidential election, El-Sayed wrote an article for The Huffington Post laying out a long “list of failures” from the White House, the Irish Star noted.
In that 2012 piece, El-Sayed argued that “Obama was not the right choice” and claimed he “just wasn’t the wrong one” for voters. “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 wrote at the time.
While the young writer noted that seeing America elect its first Black president “will forever live with me,” he brushed off those early hopes as 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.”
When asked about those sharp attacks during a recent interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, the candidate stood by his old columns while softening his tone. “I know that President Obama was handed a really difficult set of circumstances, and he did his best,” El-Sayed told host Kristen Welker, as cited by the Irish Star.
Now, the two Democrats need each other to win a tight battleground state that Donald Trump carried by over one point. El-Sayed is facing Republican Mike Rogers, who lost his 2024 Senate bid to Elissa Slotkin by less than half a percentage point.
