The Democrats who want to be president can't quite figure out how to talk about the most popular figure in their party. Former President Barack Obama still casts a long shadow over the 2020 primary campaign: Preserving Obama's legacy is the heart of former Vice President Joe Biden's pitch to voters — which has allowed his rivals to mark him as complacent. More left-leaning candidates, like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, say the next president needs to do more to push for health care reforms and combat income inequality — but lately, she's struggling to sell her proposals. Former Obama Cabinet Secretary Julián Castro has ripped his ex-boss' record on immigration and deportation. South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg raced to have a reporter correct a story that misquoted him citing "failures of the Obama era." Picking and choosing which parts of Obama's tenure to embrace, and how much, has become a delicate game in the primary season.
And now Obama himself is working to cool down what he sees as an overheated political climate. In October, at a panel discussion for his foundation, he warned against the pitfalls of "woke" online cancel culture, telling a gathering of young activists that "if all you're doing is casting stones, you're probably not going to get that far." This month, at a gathering of influential Democrats, he cautioned the 2020 contenders against pushing too far, too fast on policy: "This is still a country that is less revolutionary than it is interested in improvement."
That distinction helps explain why so many of the candidates' proposals seem so far to the left of Obama. The former president was skeptical of sweeping change, bullish on markets, sanguine about the use of military force, high on individual responsibility and faithful to a set of old-school personal values. Compare that with the agenda of his would-be successors: Medicare for All, free college, a wealth tax, universal basic income.
Given the political climate, it's no surprise to see the party's base clamoring for something more dramatic. But the contrast between Obama's steady approach and the seeming radicalism of his Democratic heirs can't simply be chalked up to changing times. It's because the former president, going back at least to his 2004 Senate race, hasn't really occupied the left side of the ideological political spectrum. He wasn't a Republican, obviously: He never professed a desire to starve the federal government, and he opposed the Iraq war that Republicans overwhelmingly supported. But to the dismay of many on the left, and the continuing disbelief of many on the right, Obama never dramatically departed from the approach of presidents who came before him.
There's a simple reason for that: Barack Obama is a conservative.
No, he isn't a Republican. He never professed a desire to starve the federal government, and he opposed the Iraq war that Republicans overwhelmingly supported. But he was, and remains, skeptical of sweeping change, bullish on markets, sanguine about the use of military force, high on individual responsibility and faithful to a set of old-school personal values. To the dismay of many on the left, and to the continuing disbelief of many on the right, Obama never dramatically departed from the approach of presidents who came before him.
Obama's perspectives don't line up with every position now seen as right-of-center: He joined the Paris climate accords, he signed Dodd-Frank financial-sector regulation and he's pro-choice. But even on that issue, in one of the first times he outlined his stance on abortion to a national constituency, Obama explained that as the father of daughters, "if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby" — a framing that outraged anti-choice advocates, but also hinted at a patriarchal sensibility. He flip-flopped to supporting same-sex marriage, but with an emphasis on marriage.
His constant search for consensus, for ways to bring Blue America and Red America together, could lead him to policies that used Republican means to achieve more liberal ends.