After Kamala Harris entered the presidential race last year, she contacted Barack Obama’s campaign Jim Missina to help lead the White House attempt.
But when Mesina participated in news of the vice president’s offer with a friend, he received a strict warning.
“I said,” Jim, if you were involved in this, will be a political suicide, “Democratic Megadonor recalled John Morgan, a long -time critic of Harris, from his conversation with Mesina, who served in the White House in Obama and managed his successful campaign for the year 2012.” It will be a loser. And your full brilliance is that you are not defeated. ”
Messina rejected the job. After Harris lost to Donald Trump, it may not have been a bad step.
David Blove, has long been praised as The wonderful architect of Obama’s 2008 victory, who served in a major role in the Harris campaign and is now among those who have been marked with a devastating defeat.
Morgan said: “SHINE’s Off Ploufe is now. He was the golden boy,” Morgan said. “Now it is just an old boy, lost. Big.
Messina did not comment on the stock exchange. Bluffy did not respond to the comment.
While many Democrats still admire the successes of Bluffy, harsh words permeate increasing feelings through a party looking for a path forward: the flowers of the Obama team may have fallen from the rose.
More Democrats publicly criticize strategists and Obama consultants, who have long been treated as an adult in their party’s policy. In a news event last month, officials of the National Democratic Committee have blamed Obama’s lack of investment in the state parties for the two periods of his periods to restore the local organization, as the party still feels antiquities. The so-called Obama alliance of voters-the least political involvement, the younger voters and the colored voters-are not considered. In 2024, Each of these groups has turned towards Trump In high numbers.
To move forward, it can represent a clean list of a concert that has been assembled for nearly two decades of Obama’s decisions. It was Obama who chose Biden as his vice -president, where he presented him with the high Ottoman that established his elections for 2020 and his usual re -election in 2024. Obama chose Hillary Clinton as Minister of Foreign Affairs, then he wiped her for democratic nomination in the 2016 race against Trump. Obama and his highest assistant assistants have played leadership roles in making decisions at the Democratic Party summit since then.
But after 2024, more Democrats want to see this change.
Obama is still a party’s power, fills the stadiums and asks the attention of the main donors. In fact, DNC is holding talks with the governor of New Jersey Murphy Murphy to host Obama to collect donations at his home, according to two people aware of planning, which is still in its early stages.
But even the sparkle of the former president was Display From the fading in the past fall, a phenomenon that threatens to continue as the next crop of young voters suffering from adulthood. When the 2028 presidential elections have arrived, it will be 20 years since Obama’s first victory. At that point, there will be more voters in the era of Donald Trump more than the Obama era.
“One of the challenges faced by the Democratic Party is that there is a longing for the age of Obama, whether Barack Obama is in the White House and what this country means and the driving style that we have, but like our policy style,” said Mike Nils, a democratic strategy. “There has been an evolution in our policy over the past ten years, and it is just a completely different era.”
Criticism fly within the party
Democrats refer to countless factors that led to the defeat of Harris in 2024 – where many focus on a compressed timetable because Biden refused to step down as a party candidate up to 107 days before the elections. Bluffy clearly blames Biden, saying “It is completely and — Ed us” In a newly released book.
It was opened by verbal inflammation in Bluffy and his colleague Obama in their own criticism. Chris Corg, head of the DNC Finance Department in Blof, criticized in an interview with NBC News last week, saying that he and Obama blamed the other blame, and they went to “the so -called teachers.”
“It is time to reassess the use of consultants and bring new people,” Corg said in the interview. “Obama’s old playing book is no longer working.”
Jin Kolaib – the head of the Nebraska Democratic Party, deputy head of DNC and head of a national group of state chairs – said that Democrats need to return to the basics of investment and listen to the stakeholders and local organizers. She said that this awareness was crystallized during the last Omaha Mayor’s elections, when the Republicans attacked the democratic candidate on sexually transgender issues. She said that the party was “tired” in 2024 not to push these attacks on the candidates up and down the ticket.
This time, she said, she knew who would enter a room to address this issue.
“I didn’t call POD Save America Guys or a journalist in New York to say,” How can I deal with this? “Our team literally entered the conference hall in our State Party’s office and said:” Let’s make ideas on how to return this, because we will not allow them to drop John Iwing on these bulls — again. ”
They went essential, and they turned the text program in a new advertisement: Mayor Jean Statter was “focusing on utensils”; Democratic candidate, Iwing, was “focusing on drilling repair.” Ewing is over Get rid of job jobs for a long time About 13 points, after she escaped, her former opponents were scattered.
“This is an echo with the voters,” Kulayb said, adding: “The reality of the state parties on the ground is that we do not give — about the camp in which a political advisor cut their teeth.”
Regarding anxiety, she welcomes any Democrats – those who worked for any democratic president and outside – in the room.
“Our party looks at these philosophical questions and misses the point we need to trust in the United States who are on the ground, who are constantly in contact with the voters, and bid farewell to this internal fighting and whose camp is better – let them go.” “I want them all on the table.”
The other Democrats chanted feelings. One of Biden’s ally, Steve Shalie, who also worked on Obama’s presidential campaigns, specifically defended Blopy’s contributions to the party.
“David is one of the most sharp players.” David was also clear about what we needed to do to go forward …
Chuck Rocha, who worked in Bernie Sanders’s presidential attempt for 2020 and consulting in the campaigns of the House of Representatives and the elderly, said a small group of companies dominates the political activists market.
“Most of these consultants themselves closed these candidates before they were announced at all, and therefore there is no opportunity for any new blood to be part of these campaigns,” said Rocha, who helped Senator Robin Galigo, De Areez, on his seat in 2024.
He said that companies are rising and fall, but the players who run them are identical – a kind of renewal cycle that keeps the same people in place. He said: “They are all connected.”
In 2024, Jin Umali Delon, head of the Biden Harris campaign campaign, presented Obama’s graduate colleague for major roles. For example, Stephanie Kitter, the administrative partner of the old O’Malley Dillon company, Precision Strategies, was chosen to help manage the Democratic Conferences program and Prep Harris for media interviews. 270 Mitch Stewart’s founder, who managed the battle states for Obama, was brought to supervise a similar program for Biden. Rovos Jefford, the great donor of Wrangler for Obama, managed to collect donations at the Biden campaign. The list goes on.
Chris Kovinis, a democratic strategic expert with experience in previous presidential campaigns, said that it is time for the party to take a closer look at the same group of activists, including the youth of the Obama campaign, who run the democracy of the democracy.
“I am sorry – I don’t want a surgeon who continues to kill patients,” he said.
He pointed out that some victories are a reflection of the candidate’s skills, instead of the participants around them.
“It is very easy to win with a man like Obama,” Kovenis said, adding that the Democrats tend to focus a lot on the experience when they employ customers, instead of “whether they are good” in their jobs.
Activist and deputy president of DNC David Hug said that just as some Democrats elected to power clinging to power for a long time, as well as the logic of the party.
He sees hostile enthusiasm for the institution with Obama and continues to this day, as the candidates who think they are incompatible with the regime will be more successful than those who pledge to support or defend him.
“It is difficult to imagine this now, because Obama is such the main head, it is clear that he is seen as part of the system, but when he runs, he was running, as he argues, as an anti -institution candidate,” said Hug, who faced a retreat from DNC’s position with the call to preliminary challenges against some party. Regardless of the unique elections that Kovid fed in 2020, he continued: “The challenge is that we are still in a moment when the anti -regime candidates are preferred.”
What is the next for Democrats
But with the presence of political agents who cut their teeth in Obama’s years still exercising power in the party, there is a separation between the leadership and the younger voters that the party needs to move forward. Part of the issue is that these young voters hardly have any memory of the country’s first black president.
“I don’t think they have one to be honest with you. This is part of the challenge,” Hogi said, adding: “For many of these young people under the age of 20, at the present time … they don’t remember much of what Obama talked about. They grew up in the political context of Donald Trump, and they remember him, because that was what he dominated them growing.”
Ammar Moussa, a campaign assistant to Biden and Harris, indicated that the natural change of the guard is likely to be already ongoing. For beginners, many conservatives who fill the short list of senior competitors for the party’s candidacy for 2028 have long -standing political hands, and some have been incubated away from the headquarters of the Democratic Party in Washington.
Musa said: “We must always think about how to raise the level of activists and promote their employees who understand the scene and what is necessary to win the campaigns in 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028, because each session is different.” “Candidates, senior employees, and the higher consulting category must know what they do not know.”
