Former President Barack Obama’s Saturday appearance with Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul el Sayed will be hailed as a moment of party unity, but it will also represent a changing of the guard.
The rise of socialism within the Democratic Party, to which el Sayed is at least adjacent, is a repudiation of Obama’s legacy even as he remains personally popular among progressives and Democrats.
Obama will rally Democrats in support not only of el Sayed but also gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson and others on the party’s ticket in the fast-approaching midterm elections.
The former president could give el Sayed a boost with black voters, who were resistant to the progressive’s charms during the Senate primary in August.
Despite the relative blueness of Michigan, which voted for President Donald Trump in two of the last three presidential elections but hasn’t elected a Republican senator since 1994, el Sayed is up by 2 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average.
This is in the midst of an election cycle in which Democratic Senate candidates are leading in Texas and Ohio, both states Trump won by double digits just two years ago, and are virtually tied in deep-red Kansas, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932.
El Sayed also badly underperformed his poll numbers in the Democratic primary, and a fake polling scandal drove one of his primary opponents from the race based on bogus data.
This all suggests el Sayed could benefit from Obama’s presence on the campaign trail. But the Michigan Democrat hasn’t always seen eye to eye with the man behind hope and change.
In fact, el Sayed took umbrage at frequent comparisons to Obama when the former was running for Michigan’s Democratic gubernatorial nomination. He described Obama as promoting “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 at the time. “But it’s not. Frankly, the economic comeback has largely benefited corporations and has not really benefited people like them.”
The 2017 Vox interview with el Sayed was headlined, “Don’t call this man the ‘next Obama.’”
When Obama was reelected in 2012, el Sayed wrote in HuffPost, “I have little hope because there has been less change.” El Sayed dismissed his enthusiasm about Obama’s first election four years earlier as 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.”
“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,” he continued. “It was the rock we chose over the hard place.”
That’s not what el Sayed would say now, of course. His campaign issued a celebratory statement on Oct. 6 announcing Obama’s campaign swing.
“I cannot wait to welcome former President Barack Obama back to Michigan,” el Sayed said then. “As a champion for healthcare access and a historical trailblazer of our time, President Obama was one of the first politicians who inspired me to believe that there was a place in politics for people like me. He knows what it means to deliver for Michiganders — that’s why he won our state twice. His support is critical as we fight to put Michigan families first by bringing down costs and ending Trump’s chaos in Washington.”
But el Sayed’s earlier sentiments are not uncommon among the hard Left. Many who gravitated toward Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) during two Democratic presidential campaigns thought Obama’s eight years in office had been a wasted opportunity to make the rich and corporations pay for the 2007-08 financial meltdown that helped sweep him into the White House. Sanders had floated a 2012 primary challenge against Obama, though there have been disputes over how serious the Vermont socialist was.
Obama’s presidency also fueled the rise of populism on the Right, culminating in his replacement as president by Trump.
Sanders’s implicit criticism of Obama and more overt complaints about the Clintons cost him black support both times he did seek the Democratic nomination. El Sayed’s past comments about Obama and slowness to embrace former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 were among the reasons black voters balked at him in the Senate primary.
Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), el Sayed’s primary opponent, hugged Obama tightly and touted past favorable comments he had made about her.
El Sayed has downplayed his radicalism in the general election. “Abdul is not a socialist, has not been endorsed by the DSA, and is a capitalist who wants to have a healthy and functional system of capitalism in America,” his campaign said in a statement after a debate with Republican challenger Mike Rogers earlier this week.
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But just as Obama personified Democrats moving away from the centrist politics of Bill Clinton, el Sayed and company represent Democrats more radical than Obama.
Even if these new progressive Democrats still need Obama and Clinton on the campaign trail sometimes.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
