‘The list of his failures goes on’: El-Sayed’s Obama criticism resurfaced ahead of campaign rally

By Andrew Kaczynski, CNN

(CNN) — Former President Barack Obama is set to hit the campaign trail for Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed later this month, years after El-Sayed criticized Obama’s presidency at times as a failure, saying it left the country no “better off.”

In comments reviewed by CNN’s KFile from Obama’s 2012 reelection through the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, El-Sayed faulted him for perpetuating war, eroding civil liberties, overseeing record deportations and preserving economic and healthcare systems that he said favored corporations over ordinary people.

He also dismissed the Affordable Care Act as insufficient and argued that Obama’s incremental approach helped create the conditions for Donald Trump’s rise.

The comments, made in editorials, interviews and panels, stand in sharp contrast to El-Sayed’s current alliance with Obama, who is now campaigning for the progressive doctor as he faces Republican Mike Rogers in a tight Michigan Senate race that could help determine control of the chamber.

El-Sayed’s criticism of Obama was often searing.

In a 2012 HuffPost essay written shortly after Obama won reelection, El-Sayed — who said he had voted for him — accused the president of failing to deliver the “hope and change” that defined his 2008 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,” 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,” El-Sayed wrote of Obama’s first election. “I have little hope because there has been less change.”

“So let’s be clear, for progressives who care about peace, prosperity, civil liberties, and the future of our country, Obama’s reelection last night was no victory. It was the rock we chose over the hard place,” he added.

El-Sayed also took shots at the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature accomplishment and legacy across his two terms, calling it a “watered-down reform that kowtows to the interests of healthcare lobbies.”

El-Sayed went on to fault Obama across a range of issues, criticizing the expansion of the war on terror into Pakistan and Yemen, the use of drone strikes, the economy, widening inequality and what he described as an erosion of civil liberties.

Though El-Sayed made clear he had voted for Obama in both 2008 and 2012, he framed that support as a choice of the lesser of two evils against Republican former Gov. Mitt Romney.

In a statement provided to CNN by his campaign, El-Sayed praised the former president.

“At 24, I watched President Obama win in 2008. 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’s campaign pushed back on the idea that his past criticism reflected a broader hostility toward Obama, providing numerous examples over the years in which El-Sayed praised him personally. The campaign noted that El-Sayed has repeatedly said Obama’s 2008 victory inspired him to believe someone with his background and name could run for office.

It also provided a 2020 exchange in a since-deleted tweet where El-Sayed said he could disagree with “many” of Obama’s decisions and believed the country was “not better off” after his presidency while still viewing Obama as “competent, coherent, and committed to Americans.”

His comments were not limited to 2012.

Five years later, while running for governor of Michigan, El-Sayed again distanced himself from Obama in a 2017 interview with Vox titled ‘Don’t call this man ‘the next Obama. ‘”

Though he praised Obama for expanding perceptions of who could aspire to a career in politics, El-Sayed said there were “a lot of things I disagree with President Obama on” in both domestic and foreign policy and described Obama’s politics as “fairly centrist, middle-of-the-road Democratic policies.”

“There’s frustration [among voters] with the fact that they’re being told by elites that their economy is back and that they should just be happy,” El-Sayed said. “But it’s not. Frankly, the economic comeback has largely benefited corporations and has not really benefited people like them.”

Still, El-Sayed argued Obama did good things as president, like bailing out the US auto industry, but not enough.

“I don’t think he was strong enough on things like health care. 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.”

A year later, El-Sayed again criticized the Democratic Party in an interview with progressive podcast host Katie Halper in December 2018 after she raised Obama’s response to the Flint water crisis.

Asked how Democratic failures helped pave the way for a figure like Donald Trump, El-Sayed said his criticisms came from a responsibility to the people that the government was supposed to serve.

“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. He added that voters could then look at the political establishment from both parties and conclude, “you’re all the same, because all of you have failed.”

Speaking in January 2020 at a University of Chicago Institute of Politics panel titled “Democrats: Whose Party is it Anyway?,” El-Sayed argued that Democrats needed sweeping structural changes to address inequality rather than more incremental policies, warning that otherwise they would repeat what he called the “same mistakes” of the Obama years.

“We are going to continue to make the same mistakes of the past eight years under Barack Obama,” he said. “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.”

“Look at where we are right now. Look at where we are right now. We are debating how we beat the most dangerous president in American history,” El-Sayed added.

El-Sayed added that while Obama had delivered some important accomplishments, his administration had failed to fundamentally change the economic and health care systems that left many Americans insecure, problems El-Sayed argued helped create the conditions for Trump’s rise.

“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. The solutions to actually thinking about making sure that our health care system was equitable and sustainable, that did not change under Barack Obama. And unless we’re willing to admit that, then we’re at risk of going right back to the edge of the cliff we fell off in 2016.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.