DETROIT — Barack Obama spent Saturday rallying voters for Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, a man who once looked at Obama's entire reelection and filed it under "eh."
In a Huffington Post essay published the day after Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012, El-Sayed declared the win "no victory. It was the rock we chose over the hard place." Fourteen years later, the rock is headlining his rally.
That's not a reunion. That's a hostage video with a walk-up song.
The essay didn't stop at geology. El-Sayed wrote that "Obama was not the right choice -- he just wasn't the wrong one," then listed the charges: war, civil liberties violations, and deportations. Most people save that kind of review for a gas-station sushi counter. He saved it for the leader of the free world.
Now the leader of the free world is cutting ads for him. Obama's spot ran October 12, asking voters to support El-Sayed for the United States Senate. Not "consider." Support. Obama read a one-star review of himself and responded by co-signing the reviewer's car loan.
El-Sayed's explanation has been through more drafts than the essay. The Washington Post reported he blamed the old column on his youth. On NBC's "Meet the Press," he said Obama "was handed a really difficult set of circumstances, and he did his best," and that Democrats "stand on the shoulders of giants."
In 2012, the giant was a hard place. In 2026, he's a step stool.
Here's the part nobody on stage will say out loud: this rally isn't about hope. It's about arithmetic. A Fox News Digital poll in late September found 77% of Black voters backing El-Sayed, soft for a Democrat in Detroit. So the campaign called in the most popular Democrat alive to fix a number. Kamala Harris already campaigned with him about a month ago. The number apparently needed a second opinion.
And Detroit voters aren't exactly fainting in the aisles. One undecided voter told Fox News Digital the Obama endorsement was a turn-off, because she's seen too many candidates use him to manipulate the Democratic vote. Another said she didn't want to be pushed toward a candidate just because somebody famous is backing him.
That's Michigan for you. People there have been sold "change" before. They remember what it cost at the pump, at the grocery store, and on the rent check. Nobody in a Detroit checkout line gets a discount because a former president flew in for the afternoon.
The rally was set for 5 p.m. Saturday, the state's first day of in-person early voting, with gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson also on the bill. Supporters were urged to head to the polls.
So El-Sayed finally gets the full Obama experience he wrote about back in 2012: a big crowd, a bigger speech, and a lot of voters walking out to the parking lot trying to decide whether it was a victory or just another rock.
This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.
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