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There was a lot of breathless commentary in recent months about why Barack Obama hadn’t yet endorsed Joe Biden. Most of it was silly.
Obama’s non-endorsement should have been a non-story, because former presidents — or sitting presidents in their second term — rarely get involved in competitive primaries. In 2016, Obama did not endorse Hillary Clinton until June 9, after she had already clinched the nomination over Bernie Sanders. In 2008, George W. Bush didn’t endorse John McCain until all of the other leading candidates had dropped out. And Ronald Reagan didn’t endorse his own vice president, George H.W. Bush, until May 1988, when the nomination was effectively over.
Obama stayed true to this pattern by waiting to endorse Biden until his last rival — Sanders — had quit the race and Sanders himself endorsed Biden. Is there any takeaway from the endorsement, then? Yes: Obama went out of his way to signal that he agrees with the party’s shift toward a more progressive agenda. “I could not be prouder of the incredible progress that we made together during my presidency,” he said. “But if I were running today, I wouldn’t run the same race or have the same platform as I did in 2008. The world is different.”
As the author Anand Giridharadas wrote on Twitter: “What is striking about this endorsement is the way @BarackObama implicitly embraces the ideas of the progressive wing of the party and suggests he would be running differently if he ran today — even as he endorses @JoeBiden.”
And Graham Vyse of The Washington Post put it this way:
Pete Buttigieg had a nice summary of this same idea, when I interviewed him last May: “Being left of Obama doesn’t make you extremely progressive.”
Obama was a progressive president, but he was also a candidate and a president at a different time. At the beginning of his presidency, Democrats could still hope that Republicans were open to compromise policies on health care and the environment — rather than opposing virtually any effort to ensure universal coverage or slow climate change. Obama’s political career also came before President Trump made Democrats realize that many voters were hungry for ideas that had long been considered outside the bounds of normal policy debates.
There’s another factor, too: Obama’s No. 1 stated goal as president was reducing inequality. In some ways, he made real progress. But it has also become clear that his solutions were inadequate.
For more …
Maggie Astor and Katie Glueck, The Times: “Obama seemed to be doing more than endorsing his former vice president, more even than trying to unite his party. From his first words — ‘these aren’t normal times’ — it was something like an Oval Office address to a battered nation, designed for maximum contrast with the office’s current occupant.”
Clara Jeffery, Mother Jones: “Obama’s speech is an endorsement of Biden, and an appreciation of Bernie, but more than that, it is a clarion call for a return to rule of law, to fact-based leadership, and to basic goodness.”
Paul Waldman, Washington Post: “Interesting that in his endorsement video Obama stresses that Biden isn’t just offering a restoration to 2016. Biden said this too in his video with Sanders. They seem to have heard the criticism.”
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
