Obama, who campaigned hard for Harris, told the public the 2024 election was a choice, not between policies, but between values and character.
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But with Trump’s decisive 312 to 226 Electoral College victory, secured, in part, by Trump becoming the first Republican since former President George W. Bush in 2004 to win the popular vote, this time by almost three million votes, the public’s choice is clear.
That choice has decimated the Democratic Party, which is poised to remain powerless in Washington, D.C., until at least 2026, and has severely undermined the legacy of its defacto leader, Obama.
After he irrevocably changed the Republican Party with his win eight years ago, the political destruction wrought by Trump in 2024 has resulted in Democrats now having to regroup, with many members urging the party to search for new leadership, not rely on its leaders of the past.
‘Yesterday’s voices’
Former Obama Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, for example, is imploring the Democratic Party to “do better than reach back to its glory days to find victory” as Democratic governors, several of whom are predicted to run for president in 2028, form a coalition, Governors Safeguarding Democracy, to better protest Trump.
“It’s no longer the party of Obama,” Johnson told the Washington Examiner. “Neither is it the party of Roosevelt or Kennedy anymore. The Republican Party is certainly not the party of Reagan anymore. A good political party knows how to look forward, not backward.”
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Democratic strategist Tom Cochran, managing director of public relations and public affairs firm 720 Strategies, in addition to being an Obama State Department alumnus, agreed that it is “hard” for the party “to inspire people” with “yesterday’s voices when we’re trying to solve tomorrow’s problems.”
“This problem is magnified when polling numbers reflect dissatisfaction with the status quo and a hunger for significant change,” Cochran told the Washington Examiner. “The Democrats need new ideas, voices, and [to] demonstrate a willingness to listen [for] a clear understanding of what the collective frustrations are in America.”
Obama would not be the first one-time popular former president from whom his own party has distanced itself, according to presidential historian David Pietrusza.
Pietrusza cited Theodore Roosevelt as one example, with that former president acknowledging he had become politically problematic by the 1910s.
“I don’t think Obama has reached that point, but he may no longer wield the power and influence he once had,” Pietrusza told the Washington Examiner. “After a while, time simply moves on. And while you may have once been historic, at some point you simply become yesterday’s news.”
Obama, 63, has been one of the most popular Democrats for years, a former political wunderkind described as a once-in-a-generation presidential candidate who became the country’s first black commander in chief in 2008 when he was 47 years old.
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Obama’s lecturing black men fell flat
Despite his prestigious academic pedigree and reputation for communicating with soaring rhetoric, Obama’s political judgment has not always been sound and he has sometimes been tone-deaf.
One example is Obama’s first appearance on the 2024 campaign trail for Harris. After a stop at a Democratic office in Pittsburgh, the former president was criticized for lecturing black men for not supporting the vice president because of sexism.
“My understanding, based on reports I’m getting from campaigns and communities, is that we have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running,” Obama said last month. “I’m speaking to men directly: part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.”
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Obama also discouraged President Joe Biden from running for president in 2016, preferring instead eventual nominee Hillary Clinton, whom Obama defeated in the 2008 primary. Biden, who has complained that Obama did not defend him more this summer as Democrats mounted pressure on him to suspend his 2024 campaign after his career-ending debate against Trump, has maintained he could have won that election, considering his connection with blue-collar workers, a connection neither Clinton nor Harris had.
“The answer is that I had planned on running for president, and although it would’ve been a difficult primary, I think I could’ve won,” Biden said in 2017.
Obama’s WHCA dinner lives in infamy
Obama’s 2011 White House Correspondents’s Dinner address has been scrutinized, too, for creating the pretense for Trump running for president himself in 2016, with Obama mocking him while he was in the room.
“We all know about your credentials and breadth of experience,” Obama said at the time. “Just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team cooking did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks, and there was a lot of blame to go around.”
He added: “But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership and so ultimately, you didn’t blame Lil’ Jon or Meatloaf. You fired Gary Busey. And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night.”
Obama’s quips were in response to Trump’s peddling of birther conspiracy theories about him. The morning after Obama announced the death of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden during a raid in Pakistan.
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A spokesman for Obama did not respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
Regardless, Democratic strategist and host of the Aggressive Progressive podcast Christopher Hahn stood by Obama’s campaigning for Harris, even though his message, including concerning the economy, did not resonate.
“Obama is the most popular political figure in the nation, but popularity is not transferable,” Hahn, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), told the Washington Examiner. “Whoever emerges as the Democratic standard bearer will need to connect with voters the way Obama did.”
Obama was the second most popular Democrat between July and September, with 59% of respondents telling YouGov pollsters for their third quarter survey that they had a positive opinion of the former president. Former President Jimmy Carter was No. 1, with 61% having a positive opinion, and Harris was No. 3, with 54% having the same opinion of her. All other party members polled at less than 50%.
Democratic strategist Garry South argued that Obama “is one of the most compelling voices we have in the party,” comparing Obama’s endorsement of Harris to George W. Bush’s non-endorsement of Trump.
“No one can blame him for Harris’ loss, that’s on her,” South told the Washington Examiner. “He went beyond the call of duty in campaigning for her, but voters don’t base their vote on surrogates in a presidential campaign.”
But as Democrats look back on 2024 and Harris finds her political footing after the election, as Clinton, former Secretary of State John Kerry, former Vice President Al Gore, and other nominees did before her, the party, “once again,” will “find new standard-bearers going forward,” one Senate Democrat told the Washington Examiner.
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Blame game
Aspersions have been cast on Biden for deciding to seek reelection in the first place, in addition to sexism and racism toward Harris. Others attribute blame to global political conditions after the COVID-19 pandemic, while Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), Harris’s vice presidential nominee, was named as another contributing factor in comparison to Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), a popular Democrat in his own right from the important battleground state of Pennsylvania, as a hypothetical running mate. One more problem was third parties amid anger over how Biden and Harris have approached the Israel–Hamas war in Gaza and Lebanon.
Democrats, including former Secretary Johnson and Hahn, the strategist, have apportioned responsibility to the party’s lack of appeal among blue-collar workers, who, for example, do not approve of diversity, equity, and inclusion and other social policies, such as transgender issues.
For Johnson, a current partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, Democrats are “letting slip away the so-called working class, of all colors.”
“It’s more cultural than political,” he said. “We are perceived to be the party of coastal elites, chardonnay, and political correctness. I have thought for some time that perhaps we need to become the party of John Fetterman. Go for the hoody and crocs.”
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At the same time, Hahn was adamant Democrats are not codependent on Obama, contending that is “more of a conservative meme than a real thing.”
“Democrats clearly need to figure out how to reach working class voters,” he said. “The party will have a robust primary in 2028.”
