Abdul El-Sayed softened years of sharp attacks on Barack Obama by comparing the former president to his own father, just as the two prepare to campaign together in Michigan.
Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed for an open Michigan Senate seat told NBC’s “Meet the Press” he now intensely appreciates the former president he once blasted in print. The Sunday exchange with host Kristen Welker came after his campaign announced Obama would appear at an October 24 rally.
Daily Caller reporting detailed how El-Sayed framed the shift as personal growth while still leaving room to push differently than the Obama administration once did. The midterms wrap November 3.
Welker pressed him on earlier criticisms and any awkwardness. El-Sayed answered by turning the conversation to family and mentors.
He said he knows Obama faced tough circumstances and did his best after “two Trump terms.” Then he asked Welker about her parents and offered this comparison:
"Mine are too, and I think about my dad. I wouldn’t have my life but for my dad’s efforts. So grateful for him. At the same time, there’s a lot of things about my dad I would do differently, right? And it’s because when you intensely appreciate somebody who’s done so much to make something that you’re doing possible, you’re both going to see the best of them and you’re also going to see the things that you want to change."
El-Sayed added he cannot say how much he appreciates Obama, calling him the president of his 20s and the first time he saw himself in politics. He said mentors let you grow up, and the younger man who wrote those op-eds was angry about circumstances. He even tied the feeling to Obama’s own book “Dreams From My Father.”
That younger version was blunt. In a 2012 Huffington Post op-ed written as a 28-year-old assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, El-Sayed questioned whether Obama could deliver on earlier promises.
"Maybe, but not if we continue to brush his poor choices under the table because he’s better than the alternative, or because they were ‘hard choices,’ or because we like the guy."
He went further on the record of the 44th president:
"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."
The same failure list and related lines have drawn fresh attention now that the two men plan to share a stage. National Review noted El-Sayed once said the country was not better off under Obama and, in a July 2026 New Yorker interview, argued the former president could have done more to advance a progressive vision even while crediting him as essential to his own path.
Fox News reported the October 24 event is set for Detroit and that Obama skipped a formal endorsement in the primary and has still issued none. The joint appearance therefore sits short of a full-throated blessing even as the candidate courts the former president’s help.
Obama has told donors that midterm races hang on a razor’s edge, underscoring why a high-profile stop in Michigan carries weight for Democrats defending or flipping seats.
The New York Post laid out a longer pattern. Beyond the 2012 op-ed, El-Sayed in 2017 during a gubernatorial bid attacked Obama’s fairly centrist, middle-of-the-road policies. In 2020 he warned Democrats against repeating the mistakes of the prior eight years, saying the country was not better off and the economy’s structure had not changed.
Those earlier rebukes painted Obama’s reelection as compromise rather than victory for progressives focused on peace, prosperity, and civil liberties. El-Sayed now casts the same history as youthful frustration that mentors allow to mature.
On October 6 the El-Sayed campaign announced Obama’s presence at the October 24 rally. In the Meet the Press sit-down the candidate insisted his job is to pick up the baton and run hard, while allowing that some items will be pushed differently than the Obama years.
He still praised the former president’s elegance and commitment under pressure, language that sits beside the old charges of perpetual war, civil-liberties violations, and record deportations. The contrast is the point voters are left to weigh.
Private outreach has marked other recent Obama activity, including a call to a prominent commentator after public criticism of President Biden that stayed off the record, as one account described.
El-Sayed’s current posture treats the earlier op-eds as products of a younger, angrier self. He told Welker the best mentors let you grow up, and he sees echoes of frustrated ambition in Obama’s own writing.
Yet the operational record he once condemned remains the same. Progressive activists who wanted sharper leftward movement heard those 2012 and later complaints as validation. Now the same voice seeks the benefit of Obama’s draw in a Senate race.
Staff tensions inside Obama-linked institutions have drawn their own scrutiny, with foundation employees pushing to unionize over benefit cuts and ignored complaints, another reminder that legacy brands face ordinary accountability pressures.
El-Sayed closed the family analogy by stressing gratitude alongside the desire to change certain things. He positioned Obama as foundational to his own political identity while claiming space to run harder left where he chooses.
The timeline is compact. The 2012 critique sat for years. Later interviews repeated the shortfall theme. The campaign announced the joint rally on October 6. The Meet the Press defense aired on the following Sunday. The Detroit event lands October 24, days before voters decide the open seat.
Anniversary tributes and public warmth from the Obamas have continued in other settings even amid earlier divorce speculation, complete with beach photos and messages that keep the former first couple visible.
None of that resolves the gap between the 2012 bill of particulars and the 2026 embrace. El-Sayed says appreciation and critique can coexist the way they do with a father. Michigan voters will decide whether that explanation holds when the former president appears beside the man who once catalogued his failures.
Political convenience has a long memory on the left, and the old quotes still read clearly.
