Former president Barack Obama just couldn’t help himself. Barely a week out of office, he inserted himself into the fray. He gave his benediction to the protests against President Donald Trump’s executive order on travel. “President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country,” said an official statement from 44’s spokesman. “Citizens exercising their constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake.”
This occasioned little analysis about how Obama plans to take on Trump. But the more important question, it would seem, is whether it’s in the best interest of Democrats for Obama to be stepping back into the ring.
You see, the left was doing fine, thank you very much, without Obama’s help. Better than fine: Democrats are on a grass-roots run, mounting an impressive string of semi-spontaneous protests over everything Trump. With the airport demonstrations, the anti-Trump movement hit its stride, turning out instant crowds in opposition to an executive order so slapdash and amateurish that Republicans have been at an utter loss to defend the policy. The energy of the revolt was unmistakable. And what happens next? Mr. Cool grabs the microphone and replaces the roar of the crowd with bloodless bromides: “the level of engagement taking place…” No doubt that will be gratifying to the protesters—when they wake up.
Consider the plight of the man who would be the next Obama, New Jersey senator Cory Booker. He has done his best to step up and lead Democrats, showing up at Dulles Airport, outside the Supreme Court—wherever anti-Trump protesters can be found. It’s Booker’s moment! Or at least it might have been if his pal, the former president, hadn’t big-footed him.
For eight years, Obama used up all the oxygen in the Democratic party, leaving the next generation of party politicos suffocated and stunted. The young lion, Obama was none-too-interested in mentoring cubs who might be in a position someday to challenge him for pride of place. It’s telling that his chosen successor was not someone who developed her standing in the party during his presidency. His key congressional allies were a pair of septuagenarians, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Cultivating new talent in his party was not an Obama priority.
Obama could have done much more in the way of state-level recruiting, but he didn’t seem that interested in the farm teams: 2016 was hardly the first election of the Obama era to prove catastrophic for Democrats cross-country. The losses in 2010 and 2014 may have emptied the party pipeline but they were mere inconveniences for the president, doing nothing to blunt the adulation he enjoyed (and, need it be added, enjoyed too much).
Now, starved of that adulation for a withering week and change, Obama has come up for air, and immediately is gulping all the oxygen that would otherwise be fueling his party’s activities.
Republicans may be rolling their eyes that Barack is Back—and so soon, at that. But for the GOP, there could be no better leader of the opposition than Barack Obama, one of only two living Democrats (the other being Bill Clinton) constitutionally barred, thanks to the 22nd Amendment, from running for president. Which makes Obama a spent political force. Yes, he could still act as a king-maker, but he has yet to demonstrate the slightest interest in crowning anyone other than himself.
