Abdul El-Sayeds long history of trashing Obama resurfaces ahead of rally with former prez

WASHINGTON — Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed repeatedly rebuked former President Barack Obama as insufficiently progressive in writings and comments that have resurfaced ahead of a high-profile rally featuring the two men later this month.“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,” El-Sayed wrote in a 2012 HuffPost piece right after Obama’s re-election victory.“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.”On the campaign trail, El-Sayed has recounted the excitement he felt when Obama won the presidency in 2008.“In 2008, a guy named Barack Hussein Obama runs for and wins the presidency.I got to be honest with you all, it’s the first time I ever saw myself reflected in politics at all,” El-Sayed, 41, said at an August rally.But in the 2012 op-ed, El-Sayed repudiated his feelings of four years earlier.“The jubilation of his 2008 election will forever live with me,” he wrote.

“But for me, 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.”The future candidate went on to assert that the US was not “better off” under Obama and trashed the 44th president’s signature Affordable Care Act as “watered-down reform that kowtows to the interests of healthcare lobbies.”El-Sayed’s critiques of Obama continued even after the first black president left office, according to a chronology by CNN.During his unsuccessful Michigan gubernatorial bid in 2017, El-Sayed gave an interview with Vox in which he attacked Obama for his “fairly centrist, middle-of-the-road Democratic policies.” The result...