Barack Obama slashed US unemployment, protected child migrants and delivered health care to millions. But several 2020 candidates scorched the popular ex-president at their Democratic debate, a strategy that risks alienating voters as the party seeks to regain the White House.
With party divisions over ideology laid bare, progressive rivals to centrist frontrunner Joe Biden challenged the former vice president’s record – and by extension several Obama-era policies on deportation, coal, Afghanistan and health care.
Calling into question the legacy of perhaps the most revered living Democratic leader made for startling viewing at this week’s presidential debates, when 20 Democrats took the stage over two nights.
Despite the strategy being a clear play by rivals to undercut Biden, who has made his eight-year partnership with America’s first black president a centerpiece of his candidacy, it alarmed Obama loyalists concerned about repelling the very voters who Democrats need to motivate to the ballot box next year.
“To my fellow Democrats: Be wary of attacking the Obama record,” Eric Holder, Obama’s first attorney general, tweeted Thursday.
“Build on it. Expand it. But there is little to be gained – for you or the party – by attacking a very successful and still popular Democratic President.”
As the nation’s first black leader, Obama was and remains hugely popular among African Americans.
But he was also deeply concerned about unnerving white middle-class voters, and so faced resentment for not pursuing policies bold enough to close the racial wealth gap.
David Axelrod, a chief Obama campaign strategist, nevertheless argued Thursday that it was a “perilous path” for Democrats to slam Biden’s Obama-era policies because that would require attacking Obama, who would win the nomination “in a walk” if he ran today.
Neera Tanden, who directed domestic policy for the Obama campaign and now heads the Center for American Progress think tank, was blunter, likening the approach to “political suicide.”
“The GOP didn’t attack (president Ronald) Reagan, they built him up for decades,” tweeted Tanden, referring to the devotion with which Republicans treat their political hero.
“Dem Candidates who attack Obama are wrong and terrible,” she added.
· ‘Lessons of the past’ –
The Obama ambush signaled what has become increasingly clear in the era of
Trump: the party that seeks to oust him from power has shifted decidedly
leftward.
While Obama remains a favorite among Democratic progressives, many are keen not to merely expand the Affordable Care Act – popularly known as Obamacare – as Biden is, but replace it with a universal, government-run health care system.
Candidates like liberal senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and even Obama’s own housing secretary Julian Castro, suggested Biden was stuck in the past for embracing some Obama policies rather than seeking bold new initiatives.
