The opening of Barack Obama’s presidential library in Chicago this Friday has inspired a new round of conversations around his remarkable rise and presidency. And there’s so much to celebrate. The election of a Black president was a landmark event in American history. From the Affordable Care Act to the legalization of gay marriage, Obama and his team helped advance a wide swath of policies that made life better for Americans. And Barack and Michelle Obama acted with such poise, grace, dignity, and humility that most Americans were proud that they were our First Family.
But while Democrats and liberals should look back upon the Obama years with fondness, they must finally and fully move on from them. The Democratic Party has something of a cult of Obama, a “What Would Barack Do?” mindset, and a fixation with 2008. Liberal columnists call for the party to return to Obama’s policy positions and rhetoric, voters and donors make every presidential primary a search for the next Obama, the words of David Axelrod, David Plouffe, and others involved in the 2008 campaign are treated like gospel. Enough. Barack Obama is a great man. A great Democratic Party will treat Barack Obama as a person, not a messiah.
What’s wrong with Democrats harkening back to their best recent politician, who won in a landslide, got reelected, and governed the country effectively? Three things. First of all, while Barack Obama still walks the earth and looks remarkably similar to when he first ran for president, we are living in much different political times. So we can’t learn much from his successes or failures.
You can believe that the rise of far-right politics in America and the Democratic Party losing ground among voters without college degrees and in rural areas are largely the failures of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and “woke” activists. Many of my fellow political journalists do. They are wrong though. Conservative parties in Europe are also winning over less-educated people and those in rural areas. The far-right is surging across the globe. In 2012, Barack Obama won Michigan by nine percentage points, Iowa by six, and Ohio by three. I doubt Obama himself thinks he would do that well in those states today, even if he used the exact same rhetoric and tactics as he did 14 years ago.
So much about American politics has dramatically changed since 2012: the widespread adoption of social media and decline of traditional news sources; the growing strength of both the MAGA right and the progressive left; an oligarchy that has more money than ever and increasingly uses it to shape politics. One clue that Obama’s approach would be less successful today is that a man with a very similar ideology to Obama (Biden) just left office as one of the most unpopular presidents in recent memory.
There is one issue where the Obama model is particularly useless now: race. In 2008, it was easy to argue that America’s racial divides were diminishing and that a unifying Black leader might further accelerate that process. No one would claim that now. Raphael Warnock, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Wes Moore are optimistic Black politicians with cross-racial appeal. But on the campaign trail, they can’t position themselves as post-racial figures as Obama did. They must respond both to the racism of Trump, which is more overt than past Republicans, and the more fervent anti-racism of today’s Democratic Party.
Second, there is the man himself, and his limitations. We don’t have to ask “What Would Barack Do?” since the former president remains deeply involved in the machinations of the party. But while Obama made two brilliant decisions in the 2000s (opposing the Iraq War and running for president sooner than most anticipated), his record since then is more mixed. While in office, he suggested that the Republican Party would normalize, seemingly not realizing that Tea Party version of the GOP was the real thing.
Obama discouraged Biden from running for president during the 2016 cycle, effectively backing Hillary Clinton instead. On the eve of the 2024 election, he implied Black men who hadn’t yet backed Kamala Harris were motivated by sexism. His political advice these days, such as suggesting that Democrats should avoid speaking in super-wonky terms, isn’t particularly novel.
I am not singling out Obama—-American politics is very complicated and unpredictable. Many people, myself included, never thought Trump would be elected president. The problem is that the Democratic Party has a few oracles (Obama, Plouffe, Nancy Pelosi, James Carville) who are treated as political geniuses based on their wins long ago. I’m glad that Obama, Pelosi, and other party leaders eventually convinced Biden to drop out in 2024. But a more effective party would not be looking to its 2008-era elders to make obvious decisions like sidelining a deeply unpopular 81-year-old candidate.
Third, the cult of Obama and 2008 leaves the party in a state of nostalgia, always trying to repeat a kind of fantasy version of the past. I covered the 2008 campaign closely, and there were moments when Hillary Clinton’s team was outsmarting Obama’s. But what’s taken hold in the Democratic Party is the view that Obama and his aides ran near-perfect campaigns in 2008 and 2012 and Democrats have gone wrong by not repeating them.
So you end up with Pluoffe, who hadn’t held any senior political jobs since his work with Obama, chosen as a top adviser for Harris in 2024. Democratic presidential candidates should actually be listening to the political operatives who have advised Warnock, Andy Beshear, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, and others who have won in tough states in the 2020s, not people whose heyday was working for Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. I suspect there is more for Democrats to glean from the successful campaigns of Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum, Canada’s Mark Carney, and Hungary’s Péter Magyar than the 2008 Obama campaign, which happened before the authoritarian/oligarch/social era of today.
What’s the alternative to an obsession with Obama and 2008? I worry that many Democrats are desperate to find another eloquent wunderkind (perhaps Pete Buttigieg or Jon Ossoff would fit the bill), charismatic leader (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), team of consultants (those who advised Zohran Mamdani) or ideal campaign operation (Mamdani 2025) to put on an Obama-like pedestal.
Please no. Instead, Democrats need a strong party, with electoral strategies and policies not dependent on a single person or time. That won’t be easy to create. There are no shortcuts. It will require painful internal debates. Autopsies will need to be fully completed and then actually released. Democratic heroes (Pelosi, Obama) might deserve some criticism; the political tactics of the party’s enemies (Trump) perhaps praised and copied.
I’m sure I will eventually make it to the Obama library. The best president of my lifetime (and probably yours) is worth commending. Ten or 15 years ago, I would have also said Obama should also be emulated. But Democrats have tried that, over and over again, leaving America in the hands of Donald Trump. Democrats should celebrate 2008 this week—and then adapt to the reality of 2026.
