Obama

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.