source: Libération October 19, 2018
author: Frédéric Autran
translation: doxa-louise
Obama remains the star of the Democratic Party
The ex-president is being heard from again for the midterms. But his
backing and influence are not without risks for candidates.
‘Obama is back’. Thanks to a particularly pugnacious speech in early
September delivered at the university of Illinois, the ex-president is back
in the political arena. With but a few weeks to go to a crucial vote, Obama
is using his talents as a speaker and personal charisma to stir the conscience
of Democrats. «You need to vote because our democracy depends on it»,
he extolled, criticizing explicitly Donald Trump for the first time since
the beginning of his presidency. Good-bye Obama the wise man above-it-all,
hello the huckster. The 44th president of the United States maintains a
level of popularity to enrage his successor: 63% favorable with 95%
among Democrats, according to a Gallup Poll from June 2017.
Factions
The media response to Obama’s political come-back shows the crying
lack of leadership in the Democratic camp. Still traumatized by the slap
in the face from Republicans in 2016, the party remains weighed down
by internal divisions between centrists and progressives, living memory
of the killer primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. If it is
going into the midterms as the favorite and with the hope of a ‘blue wave’
that could give it a majority in the House of Representatives, the Democratic
party owes this advantage more to Donald Trump than to itself. Contempt
for the current president is today the only common ground between the different
factions within the party.
‘The leadership of the party are almost all over 65, if not 70, and the
majority, men and women, are white. Yet, all the energy of Democrats
at the moment comes from young people, mostly women, and minorities, says
David Andersen, Political Science professor at the university of Iowa. This
old guard should let go but seems determined to hold on to power.’
In the eyes of many, Nancy Pelosi represents this refusal of renewal. At 78,
with thirty years as a representative and fifteen as leader of the Democrats,
the representative from California shows no sign of wanting to pass the flame.
Some sixty elected and candidate members have expressed their refusal to vote
for her for president of the House should the Democrats gain control. but this
opposition would not be enough to stop her election. ‘Dethroning Pelosi would
be one of the best things Democrats could do’, argues David Andersen. More
moderate in her approach, political scientist Ruth Bloch Rubin, fro the university
of Chicago, finds ‘very unfair’ the attacks on Pelosi, yet still recognizes that ‘the
Democratic leadership, who belong to the old guard, no doubt do not share the
same priorities or sensibilities as the younger generation’.
With leaders that are too divisive, too little charismatic or too old, the
Democratic party thus relies on Barack Obama, the only person today who
can fill this void. Since the beginning of September, the 57 year old president
has amassed meetings. He has also given his endorsement, a kind of official
pass, to more than 340 candidates across the country. This personal involvement,
rare on the part of an ex-president, is nonetheless something that can backfire,
according to Ruth Bloch Rubin: ‘Obama can no doubt bring out a segment of the
Democratic vote, but if he becomes too visible, this can also galvanize the Republican
base, which detests him still’. Yet does Barack Obama have a choice in the matter?
‘His recent decision to implicate himself more is totally necessary. He owes it
to the party because he is largely responsible for this leadership vacuum, points
out David Andersen. Obama ran a solo presidency. He built around himself
an extremely strong campaign team but never tried to become the leader of
the party or develop it.’ With the result: during the Obama era, the Democratic
party was splintered, loosing more than 1 000 seats in Congress and at the local
level, in particular during the devastating 2010 midterms.
Now that the campaign of Democratic primaries for the 2020 presidential
election nears, there are at least ten names of potential candidates. If it is too
early to predict who Trump will be up against in two years’ time, Obama wants
a say in the matter. According to Politico, he has secretly met with this year, in
secret, at least nine possibles, from the more progressives (Bernie Sanders and
Elizabeth Warren) to the more centrist (Joe Biden). With what in mind? ‘One
of the difficulties for the Democrats is to avoid prolonged primaries, wherein the
candidates would present attacks the Republicans could later use. Barack Obama
is perhaps trying to clear the field, by advising certain younger people to hold
off becoming candidates’, guesses Ruth Bloch Rubin. From the sidelines, the
ex-president seems to be dreaming of becoming king-maker.
