What will Obama say at convention?
Former president can offer assurance, a spark
The popular former president faces some tricky politics as Joe Biden’s validator-in-chief. Insiders say he will use his remarks to rally Black and young voters.
WASHINGTON – A freshman senator from Illinois turned to Joe Biden twelve years ago to quiet voters’ questions about his readiness for the White House, and to bridge the generational and racial divides that were cleaving the Democratic Party at the time.
Now, it’s Barack Obama’s turn to repay the favor.
As he speaks to a pared-down, virtual Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, party insiders hope that the former president – among the most popular politicos in America – will fill the role of validator-in-chief for his former No. 2, reassuring voters that Biden can usher in a sense of “normalcy” after four years of President Donald Trump.
“Right now President Obama’s role, primarily, is to remind Americans what a stable and thoughtful administration looks like,” said Rep. John Yarmuth, DKy.
Obama’s address, perhaps the most closely watched after Biden’s own, comes with some delicate politics as Obama seeks to rally the coalition of young, Black and women voters who twice propelled him to the Oval Office while simultaneously depriving Trump of new ammunition he could use to reinvigorate his own base of supporters.
“The first thing in this convention is to not hand them something,” said former Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, who also made Obama’s shortlist of potential running mates in 2008. “I would be surprised if President Obama did anything that really became a lightning rod.”
Democrats are road testing an unprecedented national convention this week as the coronavirus pandemic curbs the pomp and sense of excitement campaigns usually build around the formal nomination of a presidential candidate. Though the glitzy stage performances and balloon drops of past years will be missing, the event will nevertheless steer the party’s path as the Democratic faithful coalesce around Biden.
But before they can look forward, voters will be forced to wrestle with the past. And Obama remains arguably the most important figure in that reckoning.
Ushering in a ‘new era’
Obama left office in 2017 with an almost 60% approval rating, and he has maintained his appeal on the left as Trump slams him nearly every day. When asked which president in their lifetimes has done the best job, 44% of Americans chose Obama as their first or second pick compared with 33% for Bill Clinton and 32% for Ronald Reagan, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey.
A CBS News/YouGov poll this week found 92% of Democrats are eager to hear Obama at the convention, compared with 91% who said the same of Biden or his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris. The same CBS survey found 63% of Democrats want to hear liberal superstar Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., at the convention compared to roughly 58% who said the same of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Yarmuth, chairman of the House Budget Committee, said the party must use this week’s convention to calm anxieties about what Democrats plan to do if they prevail in the fall.
“I’m not sure I want everybody out there talking about Green New Deals, and that type of thing, but if we take over the government this is where the country needs a comfort level,” he said.
“We’re going to be under a lot of pressure to talk about reparations, universal basic income (and) Medicare for all,” he added. “And what Obama can do is, ironically, reassure people we are not going to go off the rails – even though we may.”
Obama, party leaders say, must demonstrate Democrats can still connect with Rust Belt voters even as the convention is likely to elevate debates around liberal demands: From looser immigration rules to tighter environmental controls to address climate change.
That’s part of the reason Democratic operatives predict Obama will look to deliver an aspirational address, touting Biden as a traditional candidate who can dial back the drama of the past four years, inch the party toward a more progressive path and begin to heal racial wounds that have continued to resurface during the Trump presidency.
In other words, Democrat strategists say, classic Obama.
Reigniting the bromance
Democrats have long framed the Biden-Obama relationship as something like the Hollywood formula for the buddy cop movie: An interracial pair with noticeably different temperaments and styles forging a friendship as they move through a thickening plot.
Together they carry closely synced messages to different constituencies. That was evidenced in a video released by the Biden campaign last month that featured the two palling around before launching into a “socially distanced” conversation in which they accused Trump of refusing to take responsibility for anything during the pandemic.
“We were different in age, different in background, his politics were a little bit different than mine, but it was precisely those differences that I thought made him ideal,” Obama said during a recent podcast interview with former adviser
David Plouffe. “What we shared (were) some core beliefs . ... And as a result, I had a basic trust in him.”
Despite the affection, which former aides say is genuine, there have been cracks in the bromance, some of which have been brought back to the fore in recent weeks.
Biden’s description of Obama in 2007 as the “first sort of mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean” is the kind of racial gaffe that has hounded him for years – including this year, when he has drawn fire for his insensitive comments at a time when the nation is grappling with the death of George Floyd, protests and violence in major U.S. cities and Trump’s remarks supporting symbols of the Confederacy.
Others have pointed to Obama’s relatively quick embrace of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the 2016 presidential race, musing aloud in June of that year whether anyone had ever been “so qualified” for the job. Since leaving office, Obama has kept mostly out of view, and that has meant a less visible role for him on the Biden campaign trail, even before the coronavirus pandemic struck.
Obama aides have said the former president has remained less visible in part to avoid creating a target for Trump.
Antoine Banks, a University of Maryland political scientist, predicted that Obama’s role in the 2020 campaign will be the most consequential for a former president. But there’s a risk with the approach, Banks warned: Relying on Obama’s popularity and mass appeal with the party too much could mean overshadowing the current candidates.
“Trump will criticize him and say, ‘he’s not on the ticket’ so they have to balance this where they get people mobilized but still understand Biden and Harris are the candidates,” Banks said.
Return to normal
Democrats insist that the party’s internal ideological squabbles over health care, immigration and the environment will be eclipsed by a shared determination to deny Trump a second term.
If that’s true, several said, the most important thing Obama can confer on Biden during the convention and in the weeks ahead is a sense that the former vice president would restore comity to American politics.
“President Obama is still widely viewed as the most gifted messenger of the Democratic agenda in America,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne, who worked on Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “The most important thing he can do in this moment is remind voters of contrast between his presidency and the first four years of the Trump presidency.”
Another benefit Obama could provide is to remind people of the work Biden undertook on the administration’s behalf for eight years.
Voters know who Biden is but they may not know Obama tapped him to administer the 2009 Recovery Act. Obama also frequently turned to Biden, who had deep friendships on both sides of the aisle after nearly four decades in the Senate, to close deals with Republicans.
“So this is one of the best chances of the cycle to give people some color and dimension as to who Joe Biden is and what he stands for, all from the mouth of the most trusted character witness on the planet,” said Teddy Goff, a Democratic strategist who ran Obama’s digital operation in 2012.