Obama world loses its shine in a changing, hurting Democratic Party

But after 2024, more Democrats want to see that change.

Obama himself remains a force in the party, filling stadiums and commanding the attention of major donors. Indeed, the DNC is in talks with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy to host Obama for a fundraiser at his home, according to two people with knowledge of the planning, which is still in its early stages. 

But even the former president’s luster was showing signs of fading last fall, a phenomenon that threatens to persist as the next crop of young voters ages into adulthood. When the 2028 presidential election arrives, it will be 20 years since Obama’s first victory. At that point, more voters will have come of age in the era of Donald Trump than in the era of Obama. 

“One of the challenges the Democratic Party does have is that there is nostalgia for the Obama era, both in terms of Barack Obama being in the White House and what that meant for the country and the style of leadership that we have, but also like the style of our politics,” Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist, said. “There’s been a de-evolution of our politics over the last 10 years, and it’s just a very different era.”

Criticism flying within the party

Democrats point to myriad factors leading to Harris’ defeat in 2024 — with many focusing on a compressed timeline because Biden refused to step aside as the party’s candidate until 107 days before the election. Plouffe pointedly blamed Biden, saying “He totally f—ed us” in a newly released book. 

Plouffe’s verbal affront opened him and fellow Obama alums to their own criticisms. DNC Finance Chair Chris Korge lashed out at Plouffe in an interview with NBC News last week, saying he and other Obama alums shared the blame, chiding them as the “so-called gurus.” 

“It’s time to re-evaluate the use of consultants and bring in new forward-looking people,” Korge also said in the interview. “The old Obama playbook no longer works.”  

Jane Kleeb — the Nebraska Democratic Party chair, a DNC vice chair and the president of a national group of state party chairs — said Democrats need to get back to the basics of investing in and listening to local stakeholders and organizers. She said this realization crystalized during the recent Omaha mayoral election, when Republicans attacked the Democratic candidate on transgender issues. She said the party “screwed up” in 2024 by not pushing back on those attacks on candidates up and down the ticket. 

This time, she said, she knew whom to get into a room to tackle the issue.

“I didn’t contact the Pod Save America guys or a New York press firm to say, ‘How do I handle this?’” Kleeb said. “Our team literally got into the conference room at our state party office and said, ‘Let’s throw out ideas on how we can push back on this, because we’re not going to let them take down John Ewing on this bulls— again.’” 

They went basic, flipping the script in a new ad: Mayor Jean Stothert was “focused on potties;” Democratic candidate Ewing was “focused on fixing potholes.” Ewing ended up ousting the longtime incumbent by nearly 13 points, after Stothert had trounced her past opponents.  

“And that resonated with voters,” Kleeb said, adding: “The reality for state parties on the ground is we don’t give a s— about what camp a political consultant cut their teeth in.”

As far as she’s concerned, she said, she welcomes any and all Democrats — those who worked for any Democratic president and beyond — to be in the room.

“Our party is looking at these philosophical questions and missing the point that we need to trust the people in the states who are on the ground, who are constantly in touch with voters, and just let this intraparty fighting and whose camp is better — let it go,” Kleeb said. “I want them all at the table.”

Other Democrats echoed the sentiment. One longtime Biden ally, Steve Schale, who also worked on Obama’s presidential campaigns, specifically defended Plouffe’s contributions to the party. 

“David is one of the sharpest guys around. I was grateful he stepped up and joined the campaign, and anyone who thinks his voice isn’t needed, quite frankly, is an idiot,” Schale said. “David has also been clear-eyed about what we need to do going forward … He’s done enough in his life that he has earned the right to take his ball and go home, but for one, I am glad he remains engaged.”

Chuck Rocha, who worked on Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential bid and consults on House and Senate campaigns, said that a small cluster of firms dominate the market for political operatives.

“Most of these same consultants have locked in these candidates before they ever announce, and so there’s never any opportunity for any new blood to be a part of these campaigns,” said Rocha, who helped freshman Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., win his seat in 2024.

He said the firms rise and fall, but the players who run them are the same — a sort of regeneration cycle that keeps the same people in place. “They’re all connected,” he said.

In 2024, Biden-Harris campaign chief Jen O’Malley Dillon tapped fellow Obama alumni for major roles. For example, Stephanie Cutter, managing partner of O’Malley Dillon’s old firm, Precision Strategies, was picked to help run the Democratic convention program and prep Harris for media interviews. 270 Strategies founding partner Mitch Stewart, who managed battleground states for Obama, was brought on to oversee a similar program for Biden. Rufus Gifford, the big-donor wrangler for Obama, acted as director of fundraising for the Biden campaign. The list goes on.

Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist with experience on past presidential campaigns, said it’s time for the party to take a hard look at the same set of operatives, including Obama campaign alums, who have been running national Democratic campaigns. 

“I’m sorry — I don’t want a surgeon who keeps killing patients,” he said.

Some victories, he noted, are a reflection of the skills of the candidate, rather than the operatives around them.

“It’s pretty easy to win with a guy like Obama,” Kofinis said, adding that Democrats tend to put too much emphasis on experience when they hire operatives, rather than “whether they’re any good” at their jobs.

Activist and DNC vice chair David Hogg said that just as some elected Democrats cling to power for too long, so too does the party’s operative class.

He sees an anti-establishment fervor that began with Obama and continues to this day, where candidates who are perceived to be going against the system will be more successful than those who pledge to uphold or defend it.

“It’s hard to imagine this now, because Obama is such a major figurehead, obviously he’s seen as part of the system, but when he ran, he ran, I would argue, as an anti-establishment candidate,” said Hogg, who has faced pushback for holding a DNC position while also advocating for prim challenges against some party incumbents. Aside from a unique, Covid-fueled election in 2020, he continued, “the challenge is, we are still in a moment where anti system candidates are going to be favored.”

What’s next for Democrats

But with political operatives who cut their teeth in the Obama years still wielding power in the party, there’s a disconnect between the leadership and younger electorates the party needs to win moving forward, Hogg added. Part of the issue is that those young voters barely have any memory of the nation’s first Black president.

“I don’t think they have one to be honest with you. That’s part of the challenge,” Hogg, 25, said, adding, “For many of these younger people who are under the age of 20, right now … they don’t remember much of what Obama talked about. They grew up in the political context of Donald Trump and him being normalized, because that was what politics was to them growing up.”

Ammar Moussa, a campaign aide to both Biden and Harris, noted that a natural changing of the guard is likely already underway. For starters, many of the governors filling up the short-list of leading contenders for the party’s 2028 nomination have their own longtime political hands, some of them incubated far from Democratic Party headquarters in Washington.

“We should always think about how we are elevating operatives and promoting their staff who understand the landscape and what it takes to win campaigns in 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028, because every cycle is different,” Moussa said. “It’s incumbent upon candidates and senior staffers and the senior consulting class to know what they don’t know.”