LF: Barack Obama Is Quietly Getting into the 2020 Race

Days after the 2016 election, Barack Obama was racked by self-doubt. “What if we were wrong?” he asked his aides, his longtime senior adviser Ben Rhodes recalls in his new memoir of the Obama presidency. Had the administration “pushed too far” in its promotion of cosmopolitan values, neglecting and underestimating the simmering anger of Rust Belt workers, white identitarians, and other culture warriors who worried their country was changing too much, too fast? “Maybe,” Obama said, “people just want to fall back into their tribe.” It’s been a mark of humility, perhaps, that Obama has remained mostly silent since then, issuing only occasional statements criticizing his successor. It may also reflect a degree of political cunning: with Democrats in disarray for much of Donald Trump’s first year in office, the party has needed time to right itself, to find a new message and new leaders.

Behind the scenes, however, Obama has been quietly re-entering Democratic politics, asserting his role as presidential kingmaker ahead of the 2020 election. While Obama has steered clear of the upcoming midterms, Politico reports that he has met with at least nine possible Democratic presidential candidates in recent months, including the nominal democratic-socialist Bernie Sanders, former Massachusetts governor and close friend Deval Patrick, and financial-reform crusader Elizabeth Warren, among others. The secret appointments, which Politico confirmed with multiple sources, represent a diverse prospective field: there is also former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, Los Angeles and South Bend Mayors Eric Garcetti and Pete Buttigeig, and, in a more long-shot bet, former Army National Guard captain Jason Kander, who was widely considered potential presidential material before losing a Missouri senatorial bid in 2016.

According to multiple people familiar with them, the meetings run long, often over an hour. Obama tends to give advice, guidance, talk about the future of the party, and everyone’s places in it. The conversations can be searching, get philosophical, then quickly veer back to brass tacks. He’ll give his thoughts on campaigns. He’ll offer to help make sure donors and party bigwigs are returning calls.

The former president’s advice, per people briefed on the meetings, is classic No-Drama Obama: stick to the issues that matter to people, don’t get distracted, and don’t define yourself in the negative.

Many of the conversations have circled around Obama holding forth about how much Democrats should be heading into the midterms talking about the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election versus focusing on kitchen-table issues. Don’t chase the shiny objects, he tells them. Don’t hyperventilate over the flash of any tweet. Think about what’s going to stick in the long term.

That roughly tracks with the conventional wisdom in Democratic circles as they campaign in 2018: allow Democrats to run local races without national interference, don’t rock the boat with too much progressivism, and don’t make it too much about that guy in the White House. Of course, what works in the midterms won’t necessarily work in 2020, when the stakes will be national and Trump will be unavoidable. “The way to disempower Trump is to ignore him, but it’s too hard even for his opponents to do it,” Columbia Law professor Tim Wu told my colleague Peter Hamby. “It has to be a pure attention battle.” That means Democrats ultimately have to create their own programming, characters, celebrities, and story lines that are just as captivating as Trump. It will require something more than the “‘I Hate Trump’ show,” as Wu called it—but it can’t entirely ignore Trump, either.

Beating Trump at the attention battle will be a tall order for Democrats—especially given how Trump has weaponized liberal discontent to solidify his support. (One recent poll found that after his handling of the economy and his general policies, nearly 8 out of 10 G.O.P. voters in battleground House races said the thing they liked most about Trump was his commitment to “upsetting the ‘elites’ and the establishment.”) While Trump remains historically unpopular overall, he has an incredibly high approval rating within his own party, with 87 percent of Republican voters saying they approve of his performance thus far. If the economy doesn’t weaken, the wind will be at Trump’s back in 2020, despite historic Democratic activism and engagement. Democrats may need Obama-level turnout to beat back Trump’s small but intensely committed voter base.

So far, polling suggests that a generic Democrat would beat Trump, with the latest putting their chances at 44 to 36 percent. But once real Democrats get into the 2020 race, the calculus changes. Trump and his Republican allies have already painted Sanders as a radical and Warren as an opportunist. Landrieu has been criticized as a self-promoter, Patrick’s name would become synonymous with Bain Capital, and Kander could be dismissed as untested. The key for each will be to define themselves, and their narrative, before Trump can brand them himself.

Obama, who always maintained close control of his image and personal story, may be indispensable in that regard, especially at this early stage of the 2020 race. He will almost certainly emerge as a party kingmaker, whether he covets the role or not. According to Politico, Obama won’t get involved in midterm endorsements until this fall, and is not expected to endorse anyone for president until after the party coalesces around a nominee. Still, it’s possible Obama has his favorites. He remains close with former vice president Joe Biden, who is reportedly leaning toward running, and the two talk on the phone frequently. “The 2020 race and what Biden’s going to do haven’t come up in those discussions,” people briefed on those conversations said, with Obama “waiting on his friend to make a decision.”

IF a REAL AG and DoJ and FBI were to release the hounds and expose this treasonous America-hating seditionist, ValJar and rest of his co-"Resistance" for what he and they ARE.

Donald "The Hammer" Trump at some point is going to have to kick some azz and fire Deep-State assets Sessions and Rothenstein and replace them with a REAL AG and DoJ. It's ridiculous that they remain.

An actual and real mega-investigation into the coup and 0bama-Hitlery-ValJar Axis of Evil MUST be conducted and concluded with INDICTMENTS.

KICK OPEN ALL THE FILES. 0BAMA. MUST. BE. EXPOSED. AS. A. SABOTEUR. This charade has gone on long enough.

Sometimes I wonder if Sessionszzzzzzz is just sitting there, collecting evidence on all these 0bama operatives and we'll wake up some morning and find out that Holder/Lynch/Brennan/Rosenstein/Comey/McCabe/Mueller have all been arrested on the orders of the A.G.

There is something uncharacteristic about the way Sessions is behaving. For a while I thought maybe they had something to blackmail him with. Then I thought he was just incompetent or something. But those don't add up when you see he's still quite aggressive.

Hopefully, one day he'll prove me wrong by arresting the entire bunch along with some NSA/FBI/CIA holdovers.

Sometimes we ALL wonder/hope if that's the case. Long shot, isn't it? (Santa Claus ain't ever coming down that chimney.)

(Instead it appears Sessionzzz' arrest is also likely among those "Christmas Morning" presents under the tree.)

Yet there is nothing snoozy about his career as a prosecutor or his time in the Senate. So you do wonder if he's just waiting for these Deep State types to make a Big Mistake and he'll move in to roll them all up in one shot.

That was obviously a different Sessionszzz. Maybe before the Deep State's blackmail for Jeffy's presumptive closet activity.

So you do wonder if he's just waiting for these Deep State types to make a Big Mistake and he'll move in to roll them all up in one shot.

IF that were the case he'd have busted a move long ago and not let the Fake "RUSSIA!!" anal probe deepen to this absurd point. You're obviously still hoping for a best case scenario and ideal resolution -- that Sessions was merely patiently waiting for the right time to pull the pin.

Unfortunately I see Sessions either as a hostage and casualty of Deep State shenanigans OR Trojan Horse/ally of the Deep State, Dems and GOPe.

Yeah, I'm way too hopeful, given the paucity of anything to confirm my suspicions.

OTOH, Jeff isn't so snoozy when it comes to border enforcement and other matters. So he hasn't gone entirely senile or lax on the job.

(CNSNews.com) - Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a conference of the nation’s federal immigration court judges that he has instituted a “zero tolerance” policy for people who illegally cross the Southwest border and that all illegal crossers should be prosecuted.

“I have put in place a ‘zero tolerance’ policy for illegal entry on our Southwest border,” Sessions told the judges. “If you cross the Southwest border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. It’s that simple.

“If someone is smuggling illegal aliens across our Southwest border, then we will prosecute them,” Sessions said.

“Period,” he said.

Here is the transcript from the part of Sessions remarks where he explained his “zero tolerance” policy:
“I have put in place a ‘zero tolerance’ policy for illegal entry on our Southwest border. If you cross the Southwest border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. It’s that simple.

“If someone is smuggling illegal aliens across our Southwest border, then we will prosecute them. Period.

“I have sent 35 prosecutors to the Southwest and moved 18 immigration judges to detention centers near the border. That is about a 50 percent increase in the number of immigration judges who will be handling cases at the border.

“All of us should agree that, by definition, we ought to have zero illegal immigration in this country.

“Each of us is a part of the Executive Branch, and it is our duty to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed.’

“Ours is a public trust. A responsibility.

“And the United States of America is not a vague idea. It is not just a landmass or an economy. Ours is a sovereign nation state with a constitution, laws, elections, and borders.”

Not too snoozy in that speech. My guess is that the judges at that conference who don't keep up their quotas of case processing might soon find themselves choosing between retiring or joining those 18 judges in those lovely border courtrooms. That would be like the Jeff Sessions I recall. He can be very tough.

The former president plots his return—as Democratic kingmaker.