Abdul El-Sayed’s 2012 broadside calling Barack Obama “not the right choice” is back in view just as the former president prepares to campaign with Michigan’s progressive Senate nominee in Detroit.
Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed once told progressives that Barack Obama’s reelection was “no victory.” Now the former president is preparing to share a Detroit stage with him.
Fox News Digital reported that a 2012 HuffPost op-ed by El-Sayed has resurfaced ahead of Obama’s planned Oct. 24 campaign appearance with the nominee and other Michigan Democrats. The timing lands after El-Sayed won the party’s Senate nomination and as Democrats push a left-leaning agenda in a pivotal midterm fight.
Obama highlighted the stop in a social media post, saying he looked forward to being in Detroit on 10/24 to campaign for Jocelyn Benson, Abdul El-Sayed, and Democrats up and down the ballot in Michigan. He did not endorse El-Sayed in the primary against Rep. Haley Stevens and still had not issued an official endorsement when the old critique returned to public view.
The El-Sayed campaign did not immediately respond when asked about the 2012 essay and his current view of Obama’s legacy.
Days after the 2012 presidential election, El-Sayed published a HuffPost piece that left little doubt about his disappointment. He said he had voted for Obama in 2008 and again in 2012, yet still unloaded on the record.
El-Sayed wrote that the change he expected never arrived.
"I realize that I have little hope because there has been less change,"
He went further on the man he had just backed at the ballot box.
"But 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."
That is not mild disagreement. It is a progressive activist telling his own side that the party’s standard-bearer failed the test on peace, prosperity, and civil liberties.
El-Sayed attacked Obama’s international record, including strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. He said inequality had accelerated and that the divide between “haves and have-nots” had never been starker. He described an economy that “continues to stagnate” and left peers who bought “hope and change” without meaningful work.
"We really like the idea of Obama... let’s be clear, for progressives who care about peace, prosperity, civil liberties and the future of our country, Obama’ reelection last night was no victory. It was the rock we chose over the hard place,"
He also wrote that he felt “no more dignified, no more accepted,” and claimed police had “usurped” his right to walk the streets freely without fearing unjustified interference. In the same breath, he still cast Obama as preferable to 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
El-Sayed captured the Democratic Senate nomination after a primary fight with Rep. Haley Stevens. The New York Post reported he defeated Stevens by less than a percentage point in August with progressive backing, then turned to the general-election sprint against Republican Mike Rogers.
Photo captions from the coverage place El-Sayed at a primary election night event and a post-nomination news conference in Detroit on Aug. 5, 2026. Obama, for his part, spoke at the dedication of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on June 18, 2026, before later putting Michigan on his midterm calendar.
Just the News reported that Obama will join El-Sayed on Oct. 24 in Detroit in the closing stretch of a tight race, with Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson also featured as she runs for governor. The Michigan Senate contest sits among a handful of competitive races that could decide control of the chamber.
The Post added that the Detroit rally falls on the first day of Michigan early voting and that Obama has already taped two dozen ads for Democratic candidates while planning more stops. Party leaders are treating the state as a must-hold front in the fight for the Senate.
El-Sayed has championed a larger role for government as the answer to top issues. Coverage of his campaign ties him to Medicare for all, opposition to corporate tax carve-outs, tuition-free access to higher education, and a push to lower housing costs.
Fox News framing around the same reporting says El-Sayed claims he is a “capitalist” while defending that progressive platform, and asks what the real plan is. The body of the report does not supply a separate verbatim quote of that label from El-Sayed himself. Voters are left with the policy list and the 2012 record of scolding Obama from the left.
That mix matters in a Senate race this close. A nominee who once said Obama was merely “the rock” over “the hard place” now takes help from the same former president to mobilize Detroit and lock down statewide Democratic turnout. Obama’s post named El-Sayed and Benson together and cast the visit as support for Democrats “up and down the ballot.”
The 2012 op-ed was not a private grumble. El-Sayed put it on HuffPost for a national progressive audience, complete with the line that Obama’s reelection was “no victory” for people who care about peace, prosperity, and civil liberties. He said he had held the critique in “throughout his campaign,” then released it once the votes were counted.
Fourteen years later, the same writer is the Democratic nominee in Michigan, fresh off a narrow win over a more moderate House member, and booked for a high-profile Obama visit as early voting begins. The campaign’s non-answer on whether those old judgments still stand leaves the contrast in plain sight: harsh reviews when Obama held power, shared staging when a Senate seat and chamber control are on the line.
Michigan voters can read the HuffPost record for themselves. They can also watch who shows up in Detroit on Oct. 24 and which agenda rides along with the applause lines.
When today’s progressive standard-bearers need turnout, even a former president they once dismissed as the lesser hard place suddenly looks useful again.
