Donald J. Biden, the MAGA movement, and the politics of the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election: What did he do?

Then there’s the unusual aftermath of the Trump presidency, which reverberates throughout our politics. On Jan. 6, the F.B.I. raided Mar-a-Lago to take away classified documents that Trump is alleged to have taken with him. (Trump, for his part, recently told Sean Hannity that the president can declassify documents “even by thinking about it,” which, sigh.)

Trump also bears responsibility for some of the lackluster candidates causing Republicans such problems. Trump pushed J.D. Vance in Ohio and Herschel Walker in Georgia and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania — all of whom are underperforming in their respective matchups. In a speech to the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, Mitch McConnell admitted Republicans might not flip the Senate and observed, acidly, “Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”

Biden does not take up much room in the political discussion. He is a far less central, compelling, and controversial figure than Trump or Obama or Bush were before him. He’s gotten a surprising amount done in recent months, but then he fades back into the background. It is a choice: Biden could easily command more attention by simply trying. When he picks a fight, as he did in his speech on Trump, the MAGA movement and democracy in Philadelphia last month, the battle joins. He just doesn’t do it very often.

With less than three weeks until Election Day and polls suggesting Democratic enthusiasm is waning, Mr. Biden’s strategy is clear: He will help Democrats raise money and will continue to hopscotch the country talking about infrastructure, negotiated drug prices, student debt relief and investments in computer chip manufacturing. But his decision not to participate, so far at least, in rallies that are normally a staple of campaign season highlights how little the president can do to help his fellow Democrats, even with the megaphone of the Oval Office.

Biden has seen how his reputation as a Democrat who was unafraid to venture places other could not has faded over time. Biden frequently went to red states and conservative districts to campaign for vulnerable members of his party, often seen as more palatable than his boss, Barack Obama.

Candidates are desperate for help in the upcoming election in order to determine control of the Congress and governments in the states, and Barack Obama is receiving requests for his assistance from people all over the country.

The American system of government is at stake in next week’s election, like Biden, he told a crowd in Arizona.

Advisers who have spoken with Obama say that the former president’s approach to the fall campaign will be limited and careful. As Obama tells people that his presence fires up GOP opposition, just as much as it lights up supporters, that he has more of an impact if he does less and that he cannot cloud out the up and coming generation of Democrats, he is cautioning against overreacting to what he says.

Biden has held a lot of official events with campaign undertones. It is Biden’s main mode of campaigning in the run-up to the elections, as other presidents have done.

Even though Obama’s appeal is changing, Democratic operatives want to see him play a role in areas like Philadelphia and Detroit that still have Black voter turnout high. Among the disinterested voter blocs are a rising generation too young to remember his 2008 win, those who argue that his failure to deliver on soaring promises helped set up the crisis of faith and political despair that has followed and those who have gotten tired of seeing how little he’s engaged.

He will be campaigning for candidates for Senate, governor and Secretaries of state in order to argue that winning those races is essential to preserving democracy.

Even the limited amount of appearances Obama has continued to do – as he’s tried to get back to the kind of post-presidency he was hoping for before Trump’s election – demonstrate how worried he is about anti-democratic trends on the rise and progressives giving up hope.

Ben Rhodes, a longtime adviser who has been helping plan the Democracy Forum, said that the foundation’s work is removed from politics but will reflect Obama’s priorities.

If democracy is to survive, and if the worst-case outcome happens in terms of WHO in charge of countries, then climate change, health care, and avoiding war are all related to that. He sees it as a link between everything that he is doing.

Obama had been putting out mass campaign endorsements for state legislators since leaving the White House. People he has been working with say that the decision to stop the lists is a function ofstepping back from an extended leadership role in the Democratic Party that he never wanted.

Obama continues to occupy a unique place in politics: A former President who really wants to leave politics behind but whose popularity is growing; a man already six years out of office who is still more than a decade younger than Biden and other top Democratic leaders – not to mention Donald Trump, the man who succeeded him and appears set to run again in 2024.

Mike Levin, who was one of six first-time House candidates in California with whom Barack Obama did a joint event for in 2018, said he wasn’t sure if the former president was an elder. The six went on to win. Levin in an interview last week was still talking about the 2008 race almost as if it just happened.

Much of Obama’s focus has been the multi-million-dollar deals continuing his transformation from president to brand. If his company is included, he can become an EGOT if he won the national parks documentary for the Emmy last month.

Some Democrats mock his various ventures as “Obama, Inc.” Among them: His second volume of memoirs will be published in 2020 after the killing of Osama bin Laden, as well as the addition of a second deal with Audible and a new deal for his streaming service.

When it came to wooing donors, Obama moved from flashy PowerPoint presentations to actual beams and columns on the South Side of Chicago.

A Conversation with Obama at the White House Summit on Understanding and Proving the Promise of Preparing for the 2016 Inflation Reduction Act

“One person is still in the ring as the one we look to to advance our values. The other guy is a celebrity,” said one high level Democratic operative. “If your passion is politics, you want to be with the person in the arena.”

Still, Obama has quietly strategized with political leaders at home and abroad – from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to new, young, leftist Chilean President Gabriel Boric or British opposition leader Keir Starmer – while avoiding getting into the daily fray.

“This idea that he should be the guy to sway people’s minds is just silly. His role is not that of that one. Does he speak inspirationally? Yes,” said the Obama friend. “But he’s a pragmatist.”

If he wasn’t aware of what was happening elsewhere, he wouldn’t have been at the summit on democracy here in America.

As much as Obama likes to insist that he’s ready to start playing a more background part, he consulted with both Biden and Schumer about the failed attempt to push through a bill on voting rights. He backed the idea of snicking down the bill to make it more climate change focused in order to get Joe Manchin’s support.

In the spring he gave a speech in which he called for the elites and intellectuals to get involved with social media companies that are unregulated.

The New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Columbia University School of Journalism, and Washington Post all gathered several black journalists over the course of a few weeks.

“He was in a space of how he could be helpful, how he could help to move things along from the seat he is in currently,” said Rashad Robinson, the president of the advocacy group Color of Change, who also attended the meeting.

Obama’s staff, meanwhile, has remained in regular touch with Biden’s political staff at the White House, strategizing about opportunities to speak up on the President’s behalf. He released a strong statement of support for Biden after he was a sounding board on the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Obama is still important stamp of approval during moments of celebration as well, like when he called in August to congratulate the President after passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/10/politics/barack-obama-midterms/index.html

Tieless at the White House: Changing the direction of the U.S. presidential campaign and the work of a young leader in Zimbabwe

Tieless appeared at the San Francisco event in a large chair in the co-founder’s home, with a handheld microphone, to deliver long answers to a room full of tech billionaires.

The intensity of his attacks on the Republicans struck them. But they also noted how he seemed to be reflecting fresh on harbinger moments from his own presidency, like when he pleaded with Republican senators not to blow up the norms of government by blockading Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court and marveling again how he said they didn’t care.

Biden and the White House say he’ll be campaigning a lot on the road in the coming weeks though it’s not clear where or which candidates he’ll appear with.

Her last campaign appearance was a recorded speech played at the virtual 2020 Democratic convention. She told friends at the time that she felt too dejected about the state of the country – between Trump, the Covid-19 pandemic and the racial divisions that were freshly exposed that summer – to bring herself to campaign more than that.

She said she knew she was talking about peaceful transfer of power, when she spoke at the White House portrait unveil last month. But she won’t be hitting the trail again, despite the many campaigns who believe her power is unmatched in connecting with the Black women who have proven the most important constituency in winning elections for Democrats.

The Obamas decided to stick with a rhythm that had developed in the earlier cycle: He will campaign and she will be the leader of a non-profit that focuses on voter turnout.

A Martin Luther King quote about the “long arcs of history” has remained the core of Obama’s focus even when his interest waned during the next couple of years.

Gift Siziva, a young leader from Zimbabwe, who is running for his nation’s parliament in the elections next year, thinks that seeing democracy threatened in America has made him more connected to Obama and the new work of the foundation.

It’s also a reflection of the type of young people who’ve been brought in – when Sheila Babauta was introducing Obama at last year’s international climate conference, for example, she had already been part of a march outside demanding more. While protesters were literally taping themselves to the streets in Glasgow, other activists were already waiting to speak to Obama in a small two-hour session he held after his speech.

“These moments are like an electric car when it goes to a charging station. Juan Monterrey, a delegate to last year’s climate convention from Panama, said it fills his battery and gets him going.

Babauta, a local lawmaker in the Northern Mariana Islands, said that she has an association with a former president that goes back to their days as a foundation young leader. The children asked if they were friends after they found a picture of them together.

Obama likes to get advice even though he’s the only one usually asking it, like at a closed meeting with European leaders during his speech in Copenhagen when he pushed back on a question about how to handle opposition.

“Sometimes it just turns out they’re mean, they’re racist, they’re sexist, they’re angry. CNN obtained a transcript of Obama saying that his job was to just beat them because they were not persuadable.

He warned them that they can get filled up with self-righteousness. We’re so convinced that we’re right that we forget what we are right about.”

Do Doughnuts Give the First Democrat a Blue State? The Case for 2020 Oregon Governor Markovian Biden and the Search for Jesus Christ

At a Union Hall in Portland, Ore., volunteers with the state’s Democratic Party sat shoulder to shoulder at long tables, dialing voters on their cellphones, when in walked President Biden holding a pink and white box of doughnuts.

Florida was an ideal launching point for Biden’s mid-year message. It was previously slated as the location for a major rally, but after the President was diagnosed with Covid-19 and Hurricane Ian canceled the event, it has been chosen as the location for Biden’s final rally before the elections.

Biden is hardly irritated or even surprised that Obama is more of a draw on the campaign trail this year than him, according to officials. He has talked with his former boss and he thinks Obama is both appealing to voters and helpful to his own campaign.

“The history books show that an incumbent president is not a boost to their party in their midterms. If Jesus Christ himself were an incumbent president, members of his political party would probably stiff-arm him in a midterm election,” said Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist.

But Oregon is a very blue state that Biden carried handily in the 2020 presidential election. Biden told the volunteers that it was nice to win by 16 points.

Two years later, Democrats are nervous about the tough three-way race for governor. There’s an independent candidate — a former Democrat — who could peel off enough Democratic votes to open the door for the first Republican governor of Oregon in more than a generation.

Joe Biden’s First Rodeo: Helping a Candidate to Win a National Monument and Help a Campaign for the Preservation of Camp Hale

The next day, Biden attended a grassroots fundraiser for Kotek and the pair stopped at a Baskin-Robbins for some ice cream. There, as he waited for his double scoop of chocolate chip in a waffle cone, Biden said he was confident Kotek would win.

Brendan Doherty, a politics professor at the U.S. Naval Academy who tracks presidential travel says that it’s a shift from his predecessors. Barack Obama and Donald Trump held more traditional rallies in their first years in office.

Biden is raising money for party committees in order to aid candidates without being tied to them.

It has been claimed that there are scheduling conflicts when Biden comes to town. Republicans have roundly mocked Biden and his party for this. Smith is a strategist for the Democratic party and author of Any Given Tuesday.

This is not Joe Biden’s first rodeo. He lived through the 2010 elections where Barack Obama was so visible, it hurt the Democrats. He is trying to learn from his mistakes and put his ego in the back seat. It’s the best thing for the party as a whole.

In places where the Democrats have an edge in voter registration, Biden can help them. In Colorado, Biden designated an important World War II training site, Camp Hale, as a new national monument. He made sure to give Sen. Michael Bennet some love and support while at the picture-perfect site.

“I want Michael to come back up here a second,” Biden said before regaling the crowd with a story about Bennet’s hard sell to get Biden to designate the monument.

Joe Biden, the Future of the City, and the Challenges of Trump and the GOP: Addressing a Low-Key Campaign with the American Public

In Los Angeles, local officials lined up on a blue tape line on the tarmac to greet the president after he walked down the stairs of Air Force One. The congresswoman got a hug from the airplane in the background while running for LA mayor.

The next day, Biden touted the infrastructure law at a construction site for a new metro line, calling Bass the “soon-to-be Ms. Mayor” in a speech where he delivered the core of his midterm message.

We have an election in a month. Voters have to decide,” Biden said. Democrats are trying to bring down the cost of things that people talk about at the dinner table, from health insurance to energy bills.

” We’re always getting requests, and we’re always traveling with the president,” said press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Of course. Of course. We have a lot of good things to talk about.”

When President Joe Biden arrives in Florida on Tuesday for a final campaign stop, he will be in the perfect place to warn against the harmful effects of Donald Trump and the GOP.

It is a remarkably low-key campaign effort by a president facing what could be among the biggest criticisms of his political life: Republicans are poised to wrest control of one or both houses of Congress, an outcome that will likely end any hope that Democrats have of making progress.

The goal of the campaign has been to get the attention of the electorate in Florida that the election is a choice and not a referendum, and that Biden is trying to get them to vote for him.

He pointed out the policies of Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott would hurt the economy and put popular entitlement programs at risk. And with senior-heavy Florida as the backdrop, Biden will also hold an official event before the rally, calling attention to Republicans’ Social Security and Medicare proposals.

Among his chief foils is Scott, the head of Republicans’ campaign arm who had laid out a policy agenda that would put Medicare, Social Security and other government programs up for a vote every five years. Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis are likely to run for president in 2024, making them the face of a new more extreme Republican Party.

A second senior Biden adviser argued that Biden’s contrast argument, with Florida as the backdrop, is “even more relevant” in the closing week of the midterms.

Two Democrats who are familiar with the decision say that Biden is holding the rally in Florida because of Crist’s support for him.

The president will campaign with Crist in the final weeks of the campaign, as he hopes to deny a reelection by DeSantis, according to an interview with CNN.

Crist said that he was the most important man in the world. The fact that he’s coming down to Florida with a week to go before election says a lot about the importance of Florida.

The president is due to speak at the rally for Crist and Val and Crist said he wanted Biden to focus on the issue of abortion rights. DeSantis’ record as governor on the issue speaks for itself, Crist said, adding that abortion rights is the “number one issue” in his race.

When Biden visited Florida last month to tour damage from Hurricane Ian, the president and DeSantis put aside their political differences to emphasize an effective response.

But a few weeks later, the governor made clear Biden was still in his sights as a potential rival, even as he demurred about a potential national run during a debate with Crist.

While Biden is foremost focused on the upcoming elections, campaigning for the Democrat trying to oust him this week could offer a glimpse of a Biden-DeS anti-DeSantis match up in four years. In a debate last week, DeSantis would not commit to a full four-year term if he were to win reelection.

The first and last questions of the man are: what do I need to do to succeed? That is the same conversation that Trump has with himself,” said Cedric Richmond, a senior adviser to the Democratic National Committee.

Why is Barack Obama so popular? He said he didn’t attend any rallies in the last three months. But he doesn’t seem popular

Biden insisted to reporters that he was not in demand on the trail because more than a dozen different campaigns were asking for him.

“That’s not true. There have been 15. When a reporter suggested he had not been holding many rallies in the last few months, he said count, kid, count.

But he has grown frustrated at coverage suggesting he is political albatross, according to people familiar with the conversations, arguing his policies – when properly explained – are widely popular with voters.

Democrats familiar with the decision-making acknowledge that Biden is not in demand from campaigns that are more competitive. They said rallies are less valuable and costly than they used to be.

The most sought-after Democrat for the marquee races is the former president. He held rallies in Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin over the weekend, and will visit Nevada and Arizona this week.

Obama and Biden last appeared at the White House together in September, when a portrait of Obama was unveiled in the East Room. The event was put off because neither the Obamas nor the Trumps were interested in a show of friendship.

On the event side, Biden scaled back battleground state political rallies in favor of political speeches in Washington and official events where he has called attention to his accomplishments – like infrastructure and manufacturing investments – and warned of the Republican alternative.

Three Presidents, One Sitting, Two Former: The End of a Key Campaign for a High-Density Republican State Senate Candidate

Three presidents – one sitting and two former – descend on Pennsylvania Saturday for a final-stretch midterm push that underscores the stakes of one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races.

John Fetterman will be under a lot of political stress in his home state because of the appearance of President Joe Biden and Former President Barack Obama.

A win by Dr. Mehmet Oz could prove to be a boon for Donald Trump’s campaign in the state he narrowly lost in 2020.

The consequences last well beyond the election. As Trump prepares to announce a third presidential bid, potentially in the coming weeks, Biden’s aides are taking their own initial steps toward mounting a reelection campaign. A potential 2020 rematch will be laid bare for several hours on Saturday afternoon.

The moment marks a historic anomaly. Current and former presidents typically don’t criticize the men who were in office while they were in office. It’s not been since 1893 that a lost president has regained the White House.

The convergence of presidents in Pennsylvania, each warning of dire consequences should the opposing party prevail, reflects the altered norms Trump precipitated when he took office nearly six years ago, quickly issuing false accusations against Obama of spying and general malfeasance.

Biden, who spent much of his first year in office trying to avoid saying Trump’s name, is no longer so cautious. He said he was calling out President Trump and all his supporters at a rally in California this week, and that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was also a Trump incarnate. Trump plays a video reel of his gaffes at rallies, but hasn’t gone after Obama as often.

Obama, meanwhile, has issued his harshest criticism to the cast of candidates backed by Trump, many of whom deny the 2020 election results and have modeled themselves after the 45th president.

“It doesn’t just work out just because somebody’s been on TV. Turns out, being president or governor is about more than snappy lines and good lighting,” Obama said in Arizona last week of the Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, a former local news anchor.

Still, their joint appearance Saturday will only serve to underscore their divergent styles and political abilities – a comparison even some Democrats say ultimately favors Obama.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/05/politics/barack-obama-joe-biden-donald-trump-pennsylvania-campaign/index.html

Biden and the prospects for a 2024 presidential campaign in the next few years: how well will the GOP spend the next five years?

“I know you don’t think it, but I think we have pretty good crowds. They’re fairly enthusiastic. You don’t write it that way, but they are,” Biden said as he was departing California on Friday.

As he campaigns for his endorsed candidates this fall, Trump has made little attempt to conceal his larger intentions: to buttress his own likely presidential campaign he hopes will return him to the White House.

Top Trump aides have discussed the third week of November as an ideal launch point for his 2024 presidential campaign if Republicans fare well in the midterm elections, sources familiar with the matter said.

The decision may take a little longer for Biden. He pointed to his own family discussions when asked about his own timelines. Members of his political team have made early preparations for a campaign infrastructure, operating under the assumption he will decide to run again.