The New York Times published a piece yesterday entitled “Some Democrats Panicked Over Mamdani. Obama Called Him.” Obama hasn’t given his official endorsement — yet. This was just a friendly little phone call, evidently. Here’s part of what the article said:
The interest from the closely guarded world of Mr. Obama and those around him is the clearest sign yet that Mr. Mamdani is likely to be embraced by the Democratic mainstream, whether the party’s leaders and donors like it or not [emphasis added].
“Whether the party’s leaders and donors like it or not” sounds pretty “authoritarian,” and par for the course for The One. And really, par for the course for the party which “nominated” Kamala Harris without a single vote.
But back to The Lightbringer: Obama always did whatever was good for Obama, party be damned. Not entirely sure what Obama thinks Mamdani can do for him, other than break his horrendous record for endorsements, but Mamdani may want to think twice. Mamdani appears to be on a glide path to securing NYC’s mayor’s office (which no doubt factors into Obama’s decision to call him — that and him being an out-of-the-closet socialist) but an Obama endorsement? Mamdani may want to check the rearview mirror.
Via NPR, right after Obama left Office:
Every president sees his party lose hundreds of positions… but no president has come close to Obama. During Obama’s eight years in office, the Democrats have lost more House, Senate, state legislative and governors seats than under any other president.
[snip]
Democrats currently hold fewer elected offices nationwide than at any time since the 1920s [emphasis added].
Obama left the Democrat party an absolutely smoldering ruin. Just gutted. And why? To line his own pockets. Via an April 4, 2025 New York Post piece:
Barack Obama ‘destroyed’ the Democratic Party by competing for ‘power and money’ with his own organization: new book
The book, ‘Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,’ … claims that Obama was never a Democratic Party loyalist.
…Obama’s creation of Organizing for Action — a nonprofit that launched in 2012 following Obama’s re-election to advance his legislative priorities — fractured the Democratic Party, according to the book, authored by political journalists Jonathan Allen of NBC News and Amie Parnes of The Hill.
‘Though Organizing for Action never realized his vision, it competed with the party for power and money,’ the book said. ‘He left the Democratic Party far weaker than he found it. Or, as one party operative put it, “Obama destroyed that s—.”’ [Emphasis added]
If OfA did any good, or his other organization, My Brother’s Keeper, has done any good for anyone other than Obama, I haven’t seen it.
Newsweek had a piece a few weeks ago entitled “Intersectional Communist Zohran Mamdani Shows Democrats Can’t Quit Obamaism.” Now, I don’t know what “intersectional communism” is but it sounds bad. Like something you’d need amoxycillin for. In any case, the Democrat party is still in shambles. Seems four years of Obama’s VP in the White House then his Kamala endorsement didn’t do a thing to help reassemble his once much vaunted, now long gasping coalition.
It has been painfully obvious, ever since the presidential election last November [2024], that the Democratic Party’s brand is in tatters.
[snip]
[I]t is clear that Barack Obama’s winning 2008 political coalition—comprising racial and ethnic minorities, young people, and highly educated whites—has completely withered. ‘Obamaism’ is dead—and Democrats have to reconcile themselves to that demise. At minimum, they should stop taking advice from Obama himself; the 44th president was Kamala Harris’ top 2024 campaign trail surrogate, and we saw how that worked out.
Obama was the penultimate D.E.I. hire and as such, he cannot be thrown overboard, at least overtly. If the Democrats want to distance themselves from him, they’ll have to do it from the shadows. Like “the light that touches” everything Mufasa sees in the Lion King’s kingdom, the Democrats’ kingdom, such as it is, is The Lightbringer’s, so they’ll have to reconcile that in the darkest corners of whatever comes next for this shambolic party.
Image generated by AI.