What Obama Is Saying in Private About the Democratic Primary

[Shrek]

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/what-obama-is-saying-in-private-about-the-democratic-primary.html

Democratic leaders, whose two primary concerns these days are trying to keep Donald Trump in check and maintaining their own party’s unity, have had ample reason for concern in the first seven weeks of 2020. There was the end of Trump’s impeachment trial, the Iowa caucus fiasco, and the growing certainty that their intensifying presidential nominating contest will likely drag on for months. One Thursday afternoon in late January, they briefly had another worry to contend with: the entire party losing its mind after a Fox Business reporter tweeted a “SCOOP” that Barack Obama “is growing increasingly anxious about @BernieSanders rise in the national polls & where the avowed socialist would take the country; he is considering a public statement addressing it.” The report was quickly rubbished by those close to the former president — such an action would obviously be painfully out of character for the studiously quiet Obama, who has always been judicious about weighing in on Democratic primary fights, and whose defining post-presidential quality has been distance. But the tweet and ensuing hysteria did renew an unsettling round of questions among candidates, elected officials, campaign strategists, voters, and donors: Well, what does Obama think of all of this?

The truth of Obama’s silence on the 2020 primary is that it’s not just about his obvious wish to stay out of the spotlight, but it also reflects a choreographed strategy. With the race looking more and more likely to grow bitter and messy, and maybe even wind up in a contested convention, the former president and those around him are increasingly sure he will need to play a prominent role in bringing the party back together and calming its tensions later this summer, including perhaps in Milwaukee, where the party’s meeting is scheduled to be held in July. So he is committed to not allowing his personal thoughts to dribble out in the meantime, directly or via leaks, conscious of how any sense that he’s taking sides in intraparty disputes could rock the primary in the short run and potentially undermine his ability to play this larger role in the months ahead. “He says one sentence about being woke at some conference, and the Twitterverse freaks out,” recalled one of his friends, referring to the former president’s comments at an Obama Foundation meeting in Chicago that set off a firestorm. He and his advisors “are very aware [of the effect of] one word that Barack Obama says.” And he’s being careful to ensure he can be seen as an honest broker in June and July — a potentially necessary designation given both his status as the party’s most popular figure and the real possibility that Sanders, or another candidate, could enter the summer with a plurality of the delegates needed for the nomination but not an outright victory. “Obama is going to look at the [delegate math to determine] the outcome. If the math brings someone [to the nomination], he’ll back it in full,” one person who still speaks with the former president told me recently. “His biggest dilemma is if Bernie is at 35-40 [percent of the delegates], and no one else is [at] 20. Does he say, ‘You have to go with who won [a plurality of] the delegates, and who looks to be the true front-runner?’”

[Tom Rinaldo]

1. President Obama is a wise man

These are exactly the questions he needs to think about, and he is right to anticipate the role he may need to play as a healer of possible divisions inside the Democratic coalition. As a Sanders supporter I have no problem with Obama pondering the implications of that last possible scenario as stated. What to do if one candidate has a 35 or 40% plurality? That is, in my opinion, about the threshold where things get rather muddy. It presents a different set of questions than should be asked if the leading candidate enters the Convention with over a 40% plurality, for example, if no other candidate can come close to that.

[Iliyah]

2. "fake news" . . .

Just my opinion.

[abqtommy]

3. I'm sure that Barack learned long ago that he's damned if he do and damned if he don't. I'd keep

quiet too.