Barack Obama, Party Pooper

A lot of people, noting President Biden's impressive record in the past quarter decade and change, think the Democratic Party is on the mend and Donald Trump's desperate attempt to avoid prison will finally destroy the Republican Party.  Don't you believe it.

Not only does Trump have the consistent message and die-hard base to win back the White House in a squeaker presidential election in 2024, the Democratic Party remains emaciated and gutless when it comes to fighting for the voters that should be but are not part of their base.  And we can blame Barack Obama for that.

WHAT?  Some of you have obviously elected not to read on, but for those of you who are sticking with me, here's the very inconvenient truth.  Obama did nothing to build up the Democratic Party while he was President of the United States.  He farmed out that duty to establishmentarian Democrats who, as is typical with elitists in any party, thought they knew it all.  The 2016 election proved they most certainly did not, and if the Democrats aren't careful, the 2024 presidential election will prove the same.

When Obama took office in 2009, Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Howard Dean had spent four years working on a fifty-state strategy to cultivate and expanded the Democratic Party in every state in the Union, which Democratic insiders dismissed as a waste of time and money.  Obama, who had won the Presidency in 2008 without Texas or Utah (but did win Indiana and North Carolina, two states no Democratic presidential nominee has won since then, which was clearly evidence that Dean's strategy was working), seemed to agree, as he decided not to give Dean another four-year term as DNC chairman.  Obama gave the job to incumbent Virginia governor (now U.S. Senator) Tim Kaine, who agreed with Obama that reaching out to the opposition to find consensus and concentrating on swing voters was far more effective than trying to expand, say, the South Carolina Democratic Party beyond its largely black constituency into white communities.  Kaine was given full autonomy while Obama chose to remain above politics and concentrate on being a President for all for the people, even the ones who had voted for his Republican opponent John McCain.

Obama's decision was a disaster.  The Republicans had no desire to work with Obama.  Indeed, they had already settled on a plan of obstruction and reached out to the Tea Party movement that purported to be concerned with economic issues but also were concerned about social issues, like the need to end abortion and the desire to put a white man back in the Oval Office again.  Meanwhile, Kaine failed to capitalize on Obama's presidential campaign apparatus Organizing For America to keep the Obama base of women, minorities, blue-collar voters, and young people engaged at a time when the economy still had not fully recovered from the 2008 financial crisis and Democrats, enjoying huge majorities in Congress, were quickly blamed for what was still going wrong.  And so the Democrats lost big time in the 2010 midterm elections, allowing Republicans to vigorously gerrymander state legislative and U.S. House districts as a result of 2010 being a census year.  Kaine was replaced as DNC chair by U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, whose own cluelessness and cravenness you already know about.  Needless to say, Obama left her to her own devices - and she continued the policy of concentrating on swing voters, though consensus with the GOP was clearly out of the question.  And, she readied the party for Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee for 2016 by scaring off potential challengers to Hillary and punishing those who dared to challenge Hillary.    

The result?  When Obama came into office in 2009, the Democrats had a 257-178 majority in the House and a 60-40 majority in the Senate. At the start of 2017, when Obama left office, Republicans controlled the House 241-194 and and the Senate 54-46.  In the states, Democrats went in that eight-year period from 59 percent of state legislatures to 31 percent; and from having 29 governors to 16.  Republicans had won governorships in Democratic states like New Jersey and Massachusetts but Democrats could not win governorships in Republican states like Utah or Mississippi.  When Obama entered office in 2009, pundits were talking about a new multiracial Democratic base rising and the Republican party looked to be on the wane as they had been in the 1930s and 1940s.  James Carville was even talking about a new Democratic era in American politics similar to the one that began in 1932 and petered out by 1980.  Fast forward to 2017, and Donald Trump became President with strong Republican majorities while pundits were asking if the Democrats even mattered.  It was a rhetorical question; of course the Democrats didn't matter.

Since then, the Democrats have bounced back, having retaken the Senate and won the House twice since 2016.  And Joe Biden won back the Presidency in 2020 with a clear popular majority, however much Trump tries to deny it.  But the Democrats are still in bad shape overall.  Republicans have not only taken back the House, they've strengthened their hold so much in states such as Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio that the Democratic parties in those states no longer have a need for full-time secretaries and clerks.  Democratic campaign committee chairs still refuse to give money to Democratic candidates in GOP-leaning states even when they have a shot at winning, for fear of throwing good money after bad, and the decision not to invest in races they think they'll lose means that they do lose.

So why should we still blame Obama for the current state of the Democratic Party?  Mainly for this reason - their bench is devoid of any possible party leaders at a time when most Democratic leaders have one foot in the grave.  Democrats who were rising stars in the 2010s and could have been big players today instead lost key races never to try for office again.  I don't need to tell you again that Kentucky Democrat Jack Conway, once considered to have a brilliant future in Democratic politics, quit politics after losing a U.S. Senate election and a gubernatorial election and was a hasbeen before he was fifty years old.  Florida Democrats once considered the future of the party in that state lost bids for the governorship so much that the party kept recycling ex-Republican ex-governor Charlie Crist as a fallback until Ron DeSantis buried him in a 22-point landslide.  A new generation of Democrats who could have provided new leadership in Washington and the state capitals are now answers to trivia questions because the party in the 2010s didn't get the leadership they needed from Obama.  

Given all of that, is it any wonder that there are no Democratic presdiential possiblities ready for prime time and the party has to renominate President Biden, now 80 years old, over the lack of desire among American voters to see him serve a second term and cross their fingers?  Biden was elected President not so much because people were for him but because they were against Trump.  With Biden's support among Democrats much softer than Trump's rock-solid base of support in the GOP, of course Trump could be the first President since Grover Cleveland to win a second nonconsecutive term.  Only, unlike Cleveland, Trump wouldn't leave office after another four years.  Top Democrats still cling to the hope that, after his one term and the January 6 insurrection, there's no way Trump can possibly win another presidential term.  They forget that they thought there was no way Trump could win a first term in 2016. 

You know, there's a reason DNC chairs not named Tim or Debbie by their mothers have complained that they're nothing but clerks when a Democrat is President - it's because Democratic Presidents not named Barack by their mothers have always taken a hands-on approach to building the party.  They listen to the working-class and middle-class voters and the women and minorities that sustain them.  They formulate policies designed to help those voters.  They constantly engage with them.  Joe Biden has done all of that in his Presidency, but after a decade or so of neglect by Obama, and after disappointing results for Democrats in congressional elections in 2022 that they should have won, especially in the House (*cough cough*, New York State, *cough cough*), the Democratic Party may be so damaged by Obama's hands-off attitude that maybe nothing can strengthen the party now.