"What Obama Is Saying in Private About the Democratic Primary" [View all]

[Laelth]

What Obama Is Saying in Private About the Democratic Primary

NewYork Magazine - By Gabriel Debenedetti - 02-17-2020

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?’”

But Obama is hardly the only Democrat sweating that particular possibility, especially with Michael Bloomberg — who some in Obama’s orbit favor but many regard warily — poised to swoop in on the process in March. Sorting out that confusion might be the most complicated scenario for Obama, the person added. The reality might be more simple: “It’s not gonna happen before the convention, [but] he’s gonna be all-in for Bernie if he’s the nominee.”

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

-Laelth