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After failing to succeed as a queenmaker, a former president’s message of hope was discarded with “yesterday’s voices” as Democrats considered themselves absent a standard-bearer.
The waning days of President Joe Biden’s administration also marked an end to what some had considered the third term for former President Barack Obama. Unable to help pass the baton to Vice President Kamala Harris, officials from his own administration readily contended the Democratic Party is “no longer the party of Obama.”
As the left was ostensibly set to lose power at the beginning of 2025, with President-elect Donald Trump returning to the White House as the GOP held the House and gained control of the Senate, Obama’s former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson addressed the need for his party to “do better than reach back to its glory days to find victory.”
“It’s no longer the party of Obama,” he told the Washington Examiner. “Neither is it the party of Roosevelt or Kennedy anymore. The Republican Party is certainly not the party of Reagan anymore. A good political party knows how to look forward, not backward.”
Similarly, Tom Cochran, a Democratic strategist who served in Obama’s State Department, spoke to the challenge of inspiring with “yesterday’s voices when we’re trying to solve tomorrow’s problems.”
“This problem is magnified when polling numbers reflect dissatisfaction with the status quo and a hunger for significant change,” he said to the Examiner. “The Democrats need new ideas, voices, and [to] demonstrate a willingness to listen [for] a clear understanding of what the collective frustrations are in America.”
New ideas were hardly a staple in Obama’s stumping for Harris as he took heavy criticism for lecturing black males, (a demographic Trump ultimately had record success with for the GOP), where he challenged their energy and turnout.
“Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and reasons for that. I’ve got a problem with that,” he told a group of young men in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “And now, you’re thinking about sitting out or supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you, because you think that’s a sign of strength because that’s what being a man is? Putting women down? That’s not acceptable.”
Obama lectures black males, takes credit for Trump’s economy: ‘It was my economy!’ https://t.co/dpG6hgNVix via @BIZPACReview
— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) October 11, 2024
“It’s more cultural than political,” suggested Johnson. “We are perceived to be the party of coastal elites, chardonnay, and political correctness. I have thought for some time that perhaps we need to become the party of [Pennsylvania Sen.] John Fetterman. Go for the hoody and crocs.”
Tempering the argument some, presidential historian David Pietrusza told the Examiner, “I don’t think Obama has reached the point, but he may no longer wield the power and influence he once had.”
“After a while, time simply moves on. And while you may have once been historic, at some point you simply become yesterday’s news,” he added as Christopher Hahn, podcaster and former aid to Senate Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), had the gentlest brush-off of them all.
“Obama is the most popular political figure in the nation, but popularity is not transferable,” he suggested. “Whoever emerges as the Democratic standard-bearer will need to connect with voters the way Obama did.”
Their arguments were not unique as MSNBC’s Jen Psaki made the case during an appearance on “Meet the Press” that “Democrats are in the wilderness” and “there is no clear leader of the party.”
“There are a lot of governors and other people who might emerge,” she continued. “Maybe people we don’t know yet, but there is no clear leader of the party right now. That to me is an opportunity because people have to decide. Nobody’s given it, right? You seize the mantle or you don’t.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn’t researching current events and their impacts, you’ll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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