With the midterm elections a month away, Barack Obama will have a ‘limited’ presence on the campaign trail, helping out Democrats.
I have noted that so far, President Biden hasn’t really appeared with Democratic candidates at rallies and joint events this autumn. (One event scheduled with Florida gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist was canceled because of the hurricane.) CNN notes that former president Barack Obama will not be appearing on the trail as much as some Democrats would like, either:
Requests for Barack Obama are pouring in from Democrats around the country – candidates are desperate for his help in what they feel is an existential midterms battle, one in which each race could help determine control of Congress and governments in the states.
To these candidates, American democracy itself is on the line. And while Obama agrees with them on the stakes, many of those invitations are about to get turned down.
More than a dozen advisers and others who have spoken with Obama say the former president’s approach in the fall campaign will remain limited and careful. That cautious approach comes as Obama tells people his presence fires up GOP opposition just as much as it lights up supporters, that he has more of an impact if he does less and that he can’t cloud out [sic; I think they mean “crowd out”] the up-and-coming generation of Democrats.
CNN says Obama will make “a handful of appearances on the campaign trail, bundling appearances for candidates for Senate and governor and secretaries of state.”
It’s clear the Obamas’ minds and attention are at least partially focused on non-election priorities. Obama is touting the progress on the construction of his presidential library, and Michelle Obama is readying a post-election book tour. Obama’s Twitter feed barely mentions the midterm elections or particular candidates; it promotes a book by one of his former speechwriters, birthday greetings to former president Jimmy Carter, Hurricane Ian relief, and congratulations to the Las Vegas Aces for winning their first WNBA title.
This morning, Obama announced the “Obama Foundation Democracy Forum,” scheduled for November 17 in New York City, where the former president “will join pro-democracy thinkers, leaders, and activists from around the world to focus on the biggest challenges democratic institutions face today.” No doubt, many Democrats will believe that one of the biggest challenges democratic institutions face are all the Republicans elected nine days earlier.
Obama will always hold a special place in the hearts of Democrats, but that doesn’t mean they’re loving every aspect of his post-presidential life. For starters, it is harder for them to see Obama’s presidency as an unalloyed success when it led to the presidency of Donald Trump.
Last summer, Obama’s (ultimately scaled-back) lavish 60th birthday party, held as the Covid-19 pandemic continued, led New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd to nickname the former president “Barack Antoinette.” Dowd fumed, “Barack Obama gave a big, lavish, new-money party at his sprawling mansion on the water because he wanted to seem cool. Being cool is important to him. . . . As president, he didn’t try hard enough on things we needed. He was a diffident debutante with a distaste for politics. Post-presidency, he is trying too hard on things we don’t need. The culture is already swimming in Netflix deals, celebrity worship, ostentatious displays of wealth, not to mention podcasts. Did the world really need ‘Renegades,’ his duet with Bruce Springsteen?”
No doubt Obama prefers President Biden to Republican alternatives, but the relationship between the two men is more complicated than the happy pictures would suggest. When Obama returned to the White House for the first time in April, there were little hints that Obama still sees Biden as his sidekick:
When former president Barack Obama returned to the White House for the first time in April, he received a hero’s welcome from Democrats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi kissed Obama’s hand. White House staffers eagerly angled for photos. And Democrats celebrated the Affordable Care Act, the former president’s signature domestic-policy accomplishment.
Then Obama opened his remarks by saying, “Thank you, Vice President Biden.”
President Biden laughed and saluted, and Obama walked away from the podium and gave Biden a hug, vowing he was just making a joke. “That was all set up,” he said.
But for some longtime Biden staffers, the zinger punctured the celebratory mood. They saw the quip, intentional or not, as part of a pattern of arrogance from Obama and a reminder of the disrespect many felt from Obama’s cadre of aides toward Biden.
As Gabriel Debenedetti’s new book, The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama, lays out, Obama sees the same aged Biden as the rest of us: “What occupied him more, though, was Joe himself. Obama had thought his old VP seemed tired ever since they’d first caught up after leaving office, and the prospect of him going through a draining campaign seemed unthinkably painful.”
Obama may well feel that his time as the Democratic Party’s campaigner in chief is over, and now it’s time for Biden to sink or swim on his own terms. In Obama’s mind, he’s LeBron James, and everyone else is just a lesser version of what he can offer. Obama endured two brutal midterm election cycles of his own; maybe he’s not so motivated to save Biden from another brutal midterm.