El Sayed attributes past criticism of Obama to ‘younger’ and ‘angry’ self
Washington Examiner · RC · trust 67/100
Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed on Sunday blamed his past critiques of former President Barack Obama on his “younger” and “angry” self as the two are set to campaign together ahead of the midterm elections .
In an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press , el Sayed was asked if he had any reservations about the rally with Obama at the end of the month, given his past scrutiny of the former president’s foreign, immigration, and healthcare policies.
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“I think the person who wrote those op-eds when I was younger — I was younger, right, and I was angry about circumstances,” el Sayed said.
The op-ed el Sayed is referring to is one he wrote in the Huffington Post as Obama sought reelection in 2012. In the essay, el Sayed accused Obama of not delivering on a promised progressive agenda, saying “he was not the right choice — he just wasn’t the wrong one.”
El Sayed said he read Obama’s 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father , and related to Obama’s description of himself as “somebody who’s frustrated and wants things to be better.”
“You grow up, you start to appreciate just how hard change is and how important it is to pick up and push,” el Sayed said. “And that’s not to say that there aren’t things that you know we’re going to push on in different ways than his administration led, but it is to say that where we push differently, it is because we’ve learned from what he’s done and because we stand on the shoulders of giants.”
Obama is set to travel to Michigan at the end of the month to rally with el Sayed, who is considered a more progressive Democrat than the former president. Obama disputed the idea that el Sayed is too far left to be in line with older Democrats while speaking at a fundraiser on Wednesday.
“I’m going to go to Michigan to campaign for Abdul el Sayed,” Obama said. “And people are like, ‘Well, he’s really left wing.’ But I don’t know — he’s for a higher minimum wage and healthcare for all, and it doesn’t seem crazy to me. You know, FDR was for that, too.”
Polling in Michigan appears to indicate a neck-and-neck race as el Sayed faces Trump-backed Mike Rogers, leading Republicans to pump hundreds of millions in outside spending in those states and others to protect their narrow majority in the Senate. Democrats are looking to counteract that momentum in the final weeks before the election, with Obama’s increasing involvement signaling his party believes it has a real chance of flipping the competitive seat blue.
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