{"id":157927,"date":"2025-07-22T14:31:05","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T14:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/obama-world-loses-its-shine-in-a-changing-hurting-democratic-party-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T14:31:05","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T14:31:05","slug":"obama-world-loses-its-shine-in-a-changing-hurting-democratic-party-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/obama-world-loses-its-shine-in-a-changing-hurting-democratic-party-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama world loses its shine in a changing, hurting Democratic Party – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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After Kamala Harris entered the presidential race last year, she reached out to Barack Obama campaign alum Jim Messina to help lead her White House bid.
But when Messina shared news of the vice president\u2019s offer with a friend, he received a stern warning.\u00a0\u00a0
\u201cI said \u2018Jim, if you get involved in this, it\u2019ll be political suicide,\u2019\u201d Democratic megadonor John Morgan, a longtime Harris critic, recalled of his conversation with Messina, who had served in Obama\u2019s White House and managed his successful 2012 re-election campaign. \u201cYou\u2019re going to be a loser. And your whole shine is you\u2019re undefeated.\u201d\u00a0
Messina declined the job. And after Harris\u2019 loss to Donald Trump, it may not have been a bad move.\u00a0
David Plouffe, long hailed as <\/strong>the brilliant architect of Obama\u2019s 2008 victory, served in a key role in Harris\u2019 campaign and is now among those tagged with a devastating defeat.
\u201cThe shine\u2019s off Plouffe now. He was the golden boy,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cNow he\u2019s just an old broken-down boy, who lost. Big.\u201d\u00a0
Messina did not comment on the exchange. Plouffe did not respond to a request for comment.
While many Democrats still admire Plouffe\u2019s successes, the harsh words punctuated a growing sentiment across a party searching for a path forward: Team Obama\u2019s bloom may be falling off the rose.\u00a0
More Democrats are openly criticizing Obama strategists and consultants, who were long treated as the high priests of their party\u2019s politics. Democratic National Committee officials at a news event last month blamed Obama\u2019s lack of investment in state parties over his two terms for setting back local organizing, with the party still feeling the effects. The so-called Obama coalition of voters \u2014 less politically engaged voters, younger voters and voters of color \u2014 is no more. In 2024, each of those groups shifted toward Trump<\/a> in high numbers.
Going forward, it could mark a clean slate for a party whose course for nearly two decades cascaded from decisions Obama had made. It was Obama who chose Biden as his vice president, offering him the elevated perch that set up his 2020 election and his aborted 2024 re-election. Obama selected Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state, then anointed her for the Democratic nomination in the 2016 race against Trump. The operatives Obama and his top aides empowered have carved out leading, decision-making roles at the top of the Democratic Party since then.
But after 2024, more Democrats want to see that change.
Obama himself remains a force in the party, filling stadiums and commanding the attention of major donors. Indeed, the DNC is in talks with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy to host Obama for a fundraiser at his home, according to two people with knowledge of the planning, which is still in its early stages.\u00a0
But even the former president\u2019s luster was showing signs<\/a> of fading last fall, a phenomenon that threatens to persist as the next crop of young voters ages into adulthood. When the 2028 presidential election arrives, it will be 20 years since Obama\u2019s first victory. At that point, more voters will have come of age in the era of Donald Trump than in the era of Obama.\u00a0
\u201cOne of the challenges the Democratic Party does have is that there is nostalgia for the Obama era, both in terms of Barack Obama being in the White House and what that meant for the country and the style of leadership that we have, but also like the style of our politics,\u201d Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist, said. \u201cThere\u2019s been a de-evolution of our politics over the last 10 years, and it\u2019s just a very different era.\u201d
Democrats point to myriad factors leading to Harris\u2019 defeat in 2024 \u2014 with many focusing on a compressed timeline because Biden refused to step aside as the party\u2019s candidate until 107 days before the election. Plouffe pointedly blamed Biden, saying \u201cHe totally f—ed us\u201d<\/a> in a newly released book.\u00a0
Plouffe\u2019s verbal affront opened him and fellow Obama alums to their own criticisms. DNC Finance Chair Chris Korge lashed out at Plouffe in an interview with NBC News<\/a> last week, saying he and other Obama alums shared the blame, chiding them as the \u201cso-called gurus.\u201d\u00a0
\u201cIt\u2019s time to re-evaluate the use of consultants and bring in new forward-looking people,\u201d Korge also said in the interview. \u201cThe old Obama playbook no longer works.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0
Jane Kleeb \u2014 the Nebraska Democratic Party chair, a DNC vice chair and the president of a national group of state party chairs \u2014 said Democrats need to get back to the basics of investing in and listening to local stakeholders and organizers. She said this realization crystalized during the recent Omaha mayoral election, when Republicans attacked the Democratic candidate on transgender issues. She said the party \u201cscrewed up\u201d in 2024 by not pushing back on those attacks on candidates up and down the ticket.\u00a0
This time, she said, she knew whom to get into a room to tackle the issue.
\u201cI didn\u2019t contact the Pod Save America guys or a New York press firm to say, \u2018How do I handle this?\u2019\u201d Kleeb said. \u201cOur team literally got into the conference room at our state party office and said, \u2018Let\u2019s throw out ideas on how we can push back on this, because we\u2019re not going to let them take down John Ewing on this bulls— again.\u2019\u201d\u00a0
They went basic, flipping the script in a new ad: Mayor Jean Stothert was \u201cfocused on potties;\u201d Democratic candidate Ewing was \u201cfocused on fixing potholes.\u201d Ewing ended up ousting the longtime incumbent<\/a> by nearly 13 points, after Stothert had trounced her past opponents.\u00a0\u00a0
\u201cAnd that resonated with voters,\u201d Kleeb said, adding: \u201cThe reality for state parties on the ground is we don\u2019t give a s— about what camp a political consultant cut their teeth in.\u201d
As far as she\u2019s concerned, she said, she welcomes any and all Democrats \u2014 those who worked for any Democratic president and beyond \u2014\u00a0to be in the room.
\u201cOur party is looking at these philosophical questions and missing the point that we need to trust the people in the states who are on the ground, who are constantly in touch with voters, and just let this intraparty fighting and whose camp is better \u2014 let it go,\u201d Kleeb said. \u201cI want them all at the table.\u201d
Other Democrats echoed the sentiment. One longtime Biden ally, Steve Schale, who also worked on Obama\u2019s presidential campaigns, specifically defended Plouffe\u2019s contributions to the party.\u00a0
\u201cDavid is one of the sharpest guys around. I was grateful he stepped up and joined the campaign, and anyone who thinks his voice isn\u2019t needed, quite frankly, is an idiot,\u201d Schale said. \u201cDavid has also been clear-eyed about what we need to do going forward \u2026 He\u2019s done enough in his life that he has earned the right to take his ball and go home, but for one, I am glad he remains engaged.\u201d
Chuck Rocha, who worked on Bernie Sanders\u2019 2020 presidential bid and consults on House and Senate campaigns, said that a small cluster of firms dominate the market for political operatives.
\u201cMost of these same consultants have locked in these candidates before they ever announce, and so there\u2019s never any opportunity for any new blood to be a part of these campaigns,\u201d said Rocha, who helped freshman Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., win his seat in 2024.
He said the firms rise and fall, but the players who run them are the same \u2014 a sort of regeneration cycle that keeps the same people in place. \u201cThey\u2019re all connected,\u201d he said.
In 2024, Biden-Harris campaign chief Jen O\u2019Malley Dillon tapped fellow Obama alumni for major roles. For example, Stephanie Cutter, managing partner of O\u2019Malley Dillon\u2019s old firm, Precision Strategies, was picked to help run the Democratic convention program and prep Harris for media interviews. 270 Strategies founding partner Mitch Stewart, who managed battleground states for Obama, was brought on to oversee a similar program for Biden. Rufus Gifford, the big-donor wrangler for Obama, acted as director of fundraising for the Biden campaign. The list goes on.
Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist with experience on past presidential campaigns, said it\u2019s time for the party to take a hard look at the same set of operatives, including Obama campaign alums, who have been running national Democratic campaigns.\u00a0
\u201cI\u2019m sorry \u2014 I don\u2019t want a surgeon who keeps killing patients,\u201d he said.
Some victories, he noted, are a reflection of the skills of the candidate, rather than the operatives around them.
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty easy to win with a guy like Obama,\u201d Kofinis said, adding that Democrats tend to put too much emphasis on experience when they hire operatives, rather than \u201cwhether they\u2019re any good\u201d at their jobs.
Activist and DNC vice chair David Hogg<\/a> said that just as some elected Democrats cling to power for too long, so too does the party\u2019s operative class.
He sees an anti-establishment fervor that began with Obama and continues to this day, where candidates who are perceived to be going against the system will be more successful than those who pledge to uphold or defend it.
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to imagine this now, because Obama is such a major figurehead, obviously he\u2019s seen as part of the system, but when he ran, he ran, I would argue, as an anti-establishment candidate,\u201d said Hogg, who has faced pushback for holding a DNC position while also advocating for primary challenges against some party incumbents<\/a>. Aside from a unique, Covid-fueled election in 2020, he continued, \u201cthe challenge is, we are still in a moment where anti system candidates are going to be favored.\u201d
But with political operatives who cut their teeth in the Obama years still wielding power in the party, there\u2019s a disconnect between the leadership and younger electorates the party needs to win moving forward, Hogg added. Part of the issue is that those young voters barely have any memory of the nation\u2019s first Black president.
\u201cI don\u2019t think they have one to be honest with you. That\u2019s part of the challenge,\u201d Hogg, 25, said, adding, \u201cFor many of these younger people who are under the age of 20, right now \u2026 they don\u2019t remember much of what Obama talked about. They grew up in the political context of Donald Trump and him being normalized, because that was what politics was to them growing up.\u201d
Ammar Moussa, a campaign aide to both Biden and Harris, noted that a natural changing of the guard is likely already underway. For starters, many of the governors filling up the short-list of leading contenders for the party\u2019s 2028 nomination have their own longtime political hands, some of them incubated far from Democratic Party headquarters in Washington.
\u201cWe should always think about how we are elevating operatives and promoting their staff who understand the landscape and what it takes to win campaigns in 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028, because every cycle is different,\u201d Moussa said. \u201cIt\u2019s incumbent upon candidates and senior staffers and the senior consulting class to know what they don\u2019t know.\u201d
Natasha Korecki is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.
Jonathan Allen is a senior national politics reporter for NBC News.
Allan Smith is a political reporter for NBC News.
© 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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