Former President Barack Obama is preparing to ride into Michigan to help save Democrat Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, who is now locked in a tight race with Republican Mike Rogers.

CNN’s KFile just unearthed a major problem with that rescue mission.

Footage and interviews reviewed by the network show El-Sayed spent years calling Obama’s presidency a failure and insisting the country was no better off after his eight years in the White House. Finally, something we agree on.

Will the unearthed comments create friction even as Obama is forced to grit his teeth and pretend Abdul is the right man for Michigan? Probably not. Democrats are well-trained theater kids. They'll keep up appearances.

Still, El-Sayed's criticisms will surely sting.

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In a 2012 HuffPost essay penned right after Obama’s reelection, El-Sayed wrote that “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.”

And to my point on how the Resistance Party sticks together no matter how they feel about their colleagues, El-Sayed admits he still held his nose and voted for Obama.

El-Sayed continued, dismissing hope and change as “flowery prose and a winning smile,” calling Obama’s reelection “no victory” and “the rock we chose over the hard place,” and branding the Affordable Care Act a “watered-down reform that kowtows to the interests of healthcare lobbies.”

He basically took a machete to everything that defined the Obama years. And it wasn't a one-off.

By a January 2020 University of Chicago panel, the Michigan Democrat was still at it, warning his party not to repeat “the same mistakes of the past eight years under Barack Obama.”

“We are not, as a country, better off eight years after Obama was elected in 2008 than we were when he was elected," he told panelists. "And I say this as somebody who loves him deeply.”

It gets much, much juicier. El-Sayed argued that Barack was significantly responsible for the rise of Donald Trump.

The progressive "doctor" argued that Obama never changed the economic and healthcare systems that left Americans insecure, and that those failures helped create the conditions for Donald Trump. 

“I appreciate the fact that we don’t give him credit for what he did for the economy in the short term. But the structure of the economy did not change under Barack Obama. The solutions to actually thinking about making sure that our healthcare system was equitable and sustainable, that did not change under Barack Obama," he said.

"And unless we’re willing to admit that, then we’re at risk of going right back to the edge of the cliff we fell off in 2016.”

They'll be shaking hands, patting each other on the back, and forming a united front to try and take out Rogers later this month. But it's going to be hard to ignore the backdrop of 'Hey, Barack, thanks for giving us the second coming of Hitler.'

El-Sayed responded to the KFile report with a wholly expected groveling reassessment of the former president.

“At 24, I watched President Obama win in 2008. He changed what was possible for someone like me, with a name like mine," the campaign said in a statement.

"Despite being dealt one of the toughest hands of any American president — he handled it. And despite all he did, there remains so much left to do. That’s where the next generation, inspired by him and his leadership, picks up," it reads. "We stand on the shoulders of giants — and I can’t wait to tell him myself later this month.”

Nobody had an easier hand as president than Barack Obama. Nobody had the full force of dinosaur media propping him up and pretending his biggest scandal was a tan suit. Nobody had his opposing political party kowtow to his incompetence for fear of being branded a racist.

Dealt a tough hand. Pffft.

As my colleague Nick Arama wrote, Obama's appearance signals that, despite mainstream polls suggesting El-Sayed is performing well in his race against Rogers, the campaign has some issues. And they know it.

"I'm thinking those internal polls must not be looking great for Michigan's Democrat nominee for the U.S. Senate," Arama wrote.

That tracks. It seems clear he's struggling not only with Jewish voters, but also with black voters. Black Democrats. And Obama is a means for him to show he has a black friend.

In a recent MS NOW focus group, black Michigan voters said Abdul El-Sayed was taking their support for granted because they are Democrats. One woman said she planned to mark uncommitted rather than vote for him, and another said he had missed chances to explain himself to black voters.

"If you're going to Congress to represent me, I need you to talk about what's going on in this community," one individual said.

Obama, the man he described as a failure, is being flown in to fix that problem. Will it work?