It could have been embarrassing. Barack Obama, campaigning for Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, acknowledged that his Democratic colleague had criticized certain aspects of the Obama presidency.
“Yes, Abdul disagreed with some of the things that we wanted to do – that our administration was doing – when I was president,” he said at a rally in Detroit. “You know who else doesn’t agree with everything I do? Michelle Obama.” The crowd burst into laughter. “I would say about five times a day, she said, ‘You idiot. Why are you doing this?'”
It was an elegant attempt to bridge the gap between the old Democratic Party and the new. The midterm elections in the United States have brought anti-incumbent sentiment to the forefront. Some candidates actively rejected their party’s label, eager to present themselves as outsiders running against the Washington establishment.
In this context, who would want a 65-year-old former president who left office almost a decade ago with his promise of hope and change still partially realized? This seems to be the case with Democrats.
“Yes we can!” the crowd chanted this week at an arena in suburban Atlanta, Georgia, reviving the cadence of a 2008 Obama campaign that now seems like an artifact of a bygone era.
Days before the midterm elections that will decide the balance of power in Congress for the remainder of Donald Trump’s second term, Democrats turned to their most formidable speaker for a series of scathing speeches in the final days of the campaign.
America’s first black president mercilessly mocked Trump’s autocratic pretensions and foreign policy misadventures in the Middle East.
“This election is our last, best chance to rein it in, to rein in some of the nonsense that this administration is doing,” he said in Georgia. “It’s the circuit breaker in the system and we need to reverse it.”
FFor party strategists, the decision to deploy Obama in the final stretch of the campaign was a calculated gamble. Unlike Trump, who spent weeks holding protest rallies in traditional Republican strongholds, Obama maintained a selective public profile until the final weeks, allowing a new generation of Democratic candidates to establish their own identities before delivering a late burst of star power.
David Litt, Obama’s former White House speechwriter, said: “What you’re seeing is him supporting a new generation of Democratic leaders who have emerged organically, rather than trying to get involved from day one. He still has both credibility and an ability to drive turnout that, if you’re running in a close race, you can absolutely benefit from – particularly among young voters and black voters.”
The former president possesses a rare asset in modern American politics, according to Litt: the ability to attract attention and disrupt his successor.
“Obama is good at getting attention, and attention is hard to come by these days,” he continued. “The other thing is that he continues to live rent-free in Trump’s head. Donald Trump is in the hot seat and, in theory, he should be talking about his accomplishments. Instead, he’s backtracking on his decisions about renovating the ballroom because he can’t help but be triggered by a single phrase from a former president.”
The phrase was uttered at a rally in Cleveland, Ohio, when Obama observed that Trump’s gold-encrusted renovations made the White House look like “Saddam Hussein had opened a cheesecake factory.”
The comment sparked a mini culture war in right-wing media — not because Obama invoked a murderous Iraqi dictator, but because he dared to suggest that a popular restaurant chain was a symbol of vulgar excess.
Trump waved his arms to imitate a lettuce leaf, accused Obama of snobbery and said, “Every piece of lettuce he eats has to be perfect, and I’m not that picky.” » He defended his gold decor at the White House and claimed Obama had left the executive mansion “deteriorated.”
Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a wealthy former hedge fund manager, even staged a photo op outside a Cheesecake Factory in Washington, ordering a French-style cheeseburger in an apparent attempt to refute accusations of elitism and urging “the Martha’s Vineyard bunch” to sample the chain’s multi-page menu.
For Obama, the outcry only proved his point. In Atlanta, he said, “They’ve mobilized the entire government to respond to a joke, not inflation, but a joke. They don’t have solutions to real problems, so they’d rather you and the media talk about the Cheesecake Factory.”
For Litt, Republican outrage betrayed a blatant double standard. “This is a party that has spent years complaining, ‘Oh, you’re not allowed to say anything offensive anymore,'” he said. “Turns out all those people who would die on the hill allowing someone to use offensive language suddenly think (the) Cheesecake Factory is a line you just can’t cross.”
IIn rural East Tennessee, Corbin Trent, a media strategist and former communications director for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, scoffed at Republican attempts to portray Obama’s remarks as elite condescension toward workers.
He said: “They thought they were going to do this liberal elite stuff. I live in rural America. You have this guy, Donald Trump, who presents himself as a mobster, running our country like a mob – how can he get rich? There’s no accountability. You remember that every time you go to the grocery store, fill up the gas tank, turn on the TV and see we’re bombing more places.”
Democrats also tapped former Vice President Kamala Harris for their midterm efforts, while ex-President Bill Clinton campaigned alongside Florida gubernatorial candidate David Jolly. But Obama has been particularly active in presidential, congressional and gubernatorial elections since leaving the White House.
In 2024, he supported Harris in the final stretch of the presidential race, which Trump ultimately won. When Obama opened his presidential center in Chicago in June, every living former president was there — but not Trump.
Yet within the broader Democratic coalition, Obama’s legacy remains complex. For a younger generation of activists who came of age during the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders and the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the former president is remembered as much for his institutional constraints and moderate compromises as for his inspiring rhetoric.
Norman Solomon, co-founder of the progressive group RootsAction, said: “It’s like a big oil painting. If you walk up and look very closely, it won’t look so good. If you look too closely at Obama’s record – the failure to bring peace to Palestine, the tripling of troops in Afghanistan, presiding over the greatest upward wealth transfer of a lifetime – it doesn’t look so good.”
“Then he leaves the White House and flies to an island owned by a billionaire (the Obamas vacationed after the presidency on private islands owned by British billionaire Sir Richard Branson in 2017). That’s not solidarity.”
Solomon acknowledged, however, that in the immediate crisis of 2026, Obama’s tactical value is undeniable. “Almost everyone will look good compared to Trump. In Michigan, where there is resentment between the African-American and Arab-American communities, it helps that Obama presents a wiser view of the issues.”
Other progressives are welcoming Obama back to the campaign trail, seeing his involvement not as a concession to the old order but as evidence that the former president recognizes how far the party has moved to the left.
Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a group that grew out of Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, said, “Obama hitting the campaign trail is a net positive because it’s strategic. It helps attract key demographics, including African-American voters.”
“But more broadly, I interpret the fact that Obama is on the campaign trail as a validation of the momentum of the progressive movement. He is the epitome of the establishment, and he is pounding the pavement for progressives, asserting that our agenda is not radical but rather mainstream. It is an affirmation of the power of our movement.”
Geevarghese also highlighted Obama’s ability to protect minority candidates from xenophobic attacks. “Obama represents a candidate who overcame the otherness of the opposition, who called him un-American and used his middle name, Hussein. In the case of Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, who is under some of these same attacks, having Obama on the trail validates his candidacy and strengthens him within the American mainstream.”
Since 2016, the DSA has grown from 6,000 members to more than 130,000 nationwide, scoring high-profile mayoral victories with Zohran Mamdani in New York while seeking to expand its congressional caucus.
Ashik Siddique, co-chair of the DSA, said: “Today, Obama’s appearance alongside progressive candidates shows where the decisive shift is happening. Voters want real results toward an alternative to the factors that produced Donald Trump. Barack Obama coming out and campaigning with candidates like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan shows a recognition of where voters are.”
Yesand Obama, like Trump, remains a political unicorn: a character who defies easy categorization. This remains a strength. Nina Turner, former Ohio state senator and leading progressive voice, said, “President Obama, because of his uniqueness, transcends the anti-establishment movement. »
“He remains an extraordinarily positive figure within the Democratic base,” she added. “Even on the progressive side, for those of us who were disappointed by the ultimate analysis of his presidency – the drone wars, based on hope and change but not delivering much change – he still has ‘that thing.’ It’s a strength.
“The criticism of President Obama is that he was very establishment: He ran on hope and change, but didn’t deliver much change,” Turner said. “But people were hopeful, and it’s the hopeful part of his candidacy that remains important — even as people criticize his presidency, especially on the progressive side of the ledger. Overall, his presence will be good for Democrats of all generations.”
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