- Barack Obama told a Detroit crowd the 2026 midterms are the ‘last best chance’ to combat the Trump administration
- Obama endorsed of Abdul El-Sayed, comparing the US Senate candidate’s trajectory to his own
- Donald Trump, JD Vance are also stumping in Michigan this week as both parties battle for Michigan votes ahead of Nov. 3 election
DETROIT — Appealing to a crowd of more than 4,300 Michigan voters on the first day of early in-person voting, former President Barack Obama on Saturday called next month’s elections the “last best chance to at least rein in some of the foolishness” of the Trump administration.
Speaking at a rally at Cass Technical High School, Obama said the mid-terms can be a “circuit breaker” to blunt the negative economic impacts of Donald Trump’s administration.
Though Trump will remain in office another two years, Obama said voters can show “we’re not stuck with a spineless Congress and Republican governors who are enabling all of this lawlessness and corruption and indifference to working groups.”
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His main objective was to support Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who is locked in a tossup race with Republican Mike Rogers for an open US Senate seat, and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson, who faces Republican US Rep. John James.
Obama and other prominent Democratic officials used the event as a show of unity to encourage turnout for the party’s entire slate, highlighting secretary of state and attorney general candidates, the Supreme Court, state House and Senate and competitive congressional races.
Michigan is the latest of several swing states Obama is visiting ahead of the 2026 midterms, coming to Detroit directly from Cleveland, Ohio.
Republicans, too, are prioritizing Michigan as Election Day approaches: Trump will return the volley during a Port Huron campaign stop Sunday, and Vice President JD Vance will return to the state for the second time this month on Tuesday for a stump speech in Howell.
Rogers dismissed Obama’s visit as an act of desperation from a party worried about turnout.
“The Democratic Party establishment begged President Obama to come to Michigan to try to save Abdul’s campaign,” he said on social media, sharing a clip of El-Sayed’s past criticisms of the former president.
Takeaway: Obama’s case for Abdul El-Sayed
Obama’s visit comes amid ongoing concerns among some Democrats about El-Sayed. He entered the general election bruised from a tight primary with US Rep. Haley Stevens, who won a majority of Detroit-area voters.
“Abdul is fighting for change, real change, change that will bring an end to this war (in Iran,) change that will get money out of politics and put money in your pocket,” Obama said.
Addressing concerns that El-Sayed has at times criticized Obama — he suggested in 2012 in a column that Obama’s win over Mitt Romney was “no victory,” comments he’s since walked back — the former president said his wife, Michelle Obama, doesn’t agree with everything he does, either.
“That’s the kind of disagreement we want in a democracy,” he said.
Obama, whose signature domestic policy was an overhaul of the US healthcare system, said El-Sayed would “finish the job we started” with the Affordable Care Act and “guarantee quality, affordable healthcare to every American.”
El-Sayed, a former public health official and longtime proponent of a “Medicare for All” single-payer healthcare system, said the stamp of approval is an honor.
“It’s been the work of my career, and to hear President Obama talk about that and to paint the broad sweep of where we’ve been and where we have yet to go…it’s one of those moments where things really come full circle,” he said.
Fact check: Trump’s second-term record
Obama encouraged Michigan residents to “play back the tape” on Trump’s promises while running for a second term.
Obama blamed Trump for the current state of the economy, including higher costs of living, skyrocketing gas prices, large energy bills, higher taxes on foreign goods.
“The fact is, as a former president, sometimes factors beyond your control ends up foiling your best-laid plans,” he said. “That’s not the case here. In this case, the administration’s actions are directly responsible for rising costs.”
“The current president chose to make a series of bad decisions, the most important of which was he decided to start an unnecessary war nobody had asked for and nobody voted for,” he continued.
Read more: Donald Trump vowed a ‘Michigan miracle.’ How that promise and others are going
Bridge Michigan is regularly tracking Trump’s progress on his 2024 promises during his second term.
The most recent analysis in September found that in several ways, the economy is worse in Michigan today than before Trump took office, though he’s made good on a number of promises to Michigan, from an immigration crackdown to ending EV subsidies.
Many costs are up or stable compared to the beginning of Trump’s term, including most food prices and inflation reached 3.4% in August, up from 3% when Trump took office. Mortgage rates remain about 7%.
In Michigan, unemployment is 5%, down from 5.2%, and average wages are up 3.6%, though the national average increased by 5.3% over the same time frame. And the stock market remains a bright spot: The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 22% since Trump took office.
Tariff revenue was $233 billion from January through late September, though experts say tariff refunds ordered by the US Supreme Court are cutting into that, with about $140 billion to be counted as federal revenue. The import tax was about $77 billion in 2024 before Trump was reelected.
Experts say Michigan consumers are paying $26 billion more for goods since January 2025 as a result of the tariffs. The Michigan Smart Trade Alliance estimates that is about $6,419 per household.
Takeaway: Direct appeal to Black voters
Obama remains extremely popular among an important demographic for any Michigan Democrat: African Americans, particularly those in Michigan’s largest majority-Black city.
Secretary of State candidate Garlin Gilchrist addressed that group directly, telling the crowd he understands that many feel like “they’re being asked to step up for everybody else, and some of us are just straight up tired of it.”
But Gilchrist, who is a Detroit resident, said “if you don’t use your power to win, the other side will use theirs to ensure that you lose.”
El-Sayed did not perform well with Black voters in the primary. Of the 12 Michigan counties with at least 133,000 residents and a Black population of 11%, Stevens won seven by an average of 8.5 percentage points, including Wayne, Saginaw and Genesee counties.
Stevens won Detroit with more than 60% of the vote, making El-Sayed the first Michigan Democrat to win a statewide primary without winning the city since the 2018 primary, when now-Gov. Gretchen Whitmer narrowly lost Detroit to Shri Thanedar.
Rogers has attempted to appeal to Stevens’ voters. In August, he unveiled a Democrats for Rogers coalition, led by former state Rep. Karen Whitsett, an elected Democrat who frequently aligned with Republicans in the Legislature. More recently, Rogers’ wife handed out $10 gift cards at a Detroit gas station.
There are about 1.4 million Black residents in Michigan. They accounted for about 11.5% of all Michigan voters in 2024. Many prominent Black officials have endorsed El-Sayed and downplayed concerns about voter enthusiasm.
Fact check: Ties to Trump, Muslim Brotherhood claims
Though Obama reserved most of his criticism for Trump, he questioned the sincerity of Republicans distancing themselves from his most controversial policies shortly before Election Day.
James, Rogers and other Michigan Republicans haven’t “done anything to stop any of this nonsense,” Obama said, adding, “most of them supported him every step of the way.”
Now, he said, “they’re pretending they’ve never heard of the guy” and are instead attempting to paint El-Sayed and other Democrats as “radicals, communist, jihadist, woke police.”
“We are not going to be bamboozled like that,” he said, later referencing Trump’s own attempts to undermine his eligibility for the presidency. “We have seen this movie before, I starred in it…This stuff didn’t work on me in Michigan, it’s not going to work for Abdul.”
Public comments and congressional records reviewed by Bridge Michigan show Rogers and James previously backed the Iran war, which Trump has said was necessary to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
More recently, both Republican candidates called for a quick end to the war. Rogers has also backed off his earlier support of Trump’s tariff policy towards Canada.
Rogers told reporters this week that his relationship with Trump makes him uniquely positioned to push back on policies that would hurt Michigan.
Rogers has continued to raise questions about El-Sayed and the Muslim Brotherhood, citing past social media posts from family members and El-Sayed’s commentary on Egyptian affairs in the early 2010s.
El-Sayed has denied affiliation with the group multiple times. Bridge Michigan analyzed some of the Muslim Brotherhood claims in September and found no evidence that El-Sayed had “pledged his support” to the group.
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