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.”

Obama isn't quiet. He's just stealthy. People think he's quiet becase they are too stupid to hear what he's saying.

By remaining in DC, he's made it obvious that he and ValJar are plotting and planning AND extending their War on America. You wonder how "stealthy" they can actually be given Trump technically still controls the FBI and other monitoring agencies.

(OH WAIT -- there are still innumerable 0bama-holdovers and operative still left within the Feeb.)

Until agencies are sanitized and de-infested from within of these 0bama holdovers/sentries, Trump/America are going to have problems with these seditious troublemakers.

TRUE. (IF we assume the inner-workings and government dynamics indeed worked constitutionally AND as intended, it might have been.)

What's rarely considered or presumed is the extent and depth that 0bama Admin purposely and methodically booby-trapped as much of the personnel and process as possible.

From the recent IG Report we can clearly see that the entire high echelon of FBI were run by 0bama-ites whose disdain and contempt for Trump precluded them from running an honest department.

Donald Trump could not possibly know just how deeply and pervasive the degree of sedition and corruption went. Remember -- from the outset many feared serving under this President (or were Republican "NEVER TRUMPERS"), which left Trump short of personnel AND way too many 0bama-holdovers, aka saboteur still within the Deep State agencies (which many STILL remain entrenched"). OF SUBSTANTIAL NOTE: Jeff Sessions FOOLED Trump.

Our ONLY chance in extracting any real justice and de-infestation of traitors and members of the still ongoing coup may have to wait out a SECOND Trump Admin.

The former president plots his return—as Democratic kingmaker.