Former U.S. President Barack Obama walks off stage after speaking at the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago, Ill., on Aug. 20.CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP/Getty Images
Debra Thompson is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.
With less than a month to go until the United States election, Democrats have launched their not-so-secret weapon: the Obamas. Former president Barack Obama will begin stumping for Vice-President Kamala Harris this week beginning with an appearance on Thursday in Pennsylvania.
The Obamas are practically Democratic royalty. Mr. Obama is currently the second most popular Democrat (understandably coming in behind 100-year-old Jimmy Carter) and, according to a recent YouGov poll, 53 per cent of respondents said they would likely vote for Mr. Obama if he were running in 2024. Former first lady Michelle Obama is just plain popular, period. Another poll conducted before President Joe Biden decided not to run for a second term revealed that Ms. Obama was the only Democrat who could decisively beat former president Donald Trump in a head-to-head race.
The Democratic Party has often used the Obamas to counter (or irk) Mr. Trump – see, for example, the Democratic National Convention, when Mr. Obama’s witty commentary (and hand gestures) about Mr. Trump’s obsession with his crowd size, and Ms. Obama’s quip that the presidency might just be one of those “Black jobs” Mr. Trump had referred to, became viral moments. Mr. Obama has also been deployed in the dying days of the election season in both 2020, when he successfully helped mobilize the Democratic base in Pennsylvania for Mr. Biden, and in 2016, when a similar last-minute campaign appearance failed to do so for Hillary Clinton.
What Ms. Harris really needs, though, isn’t just the Obamas – it’s the resurrection of the Obama coalition.
The presidential election of 2008 was also quite close, right up until the Dow Jones plummeted 3,600 points between Sept. 19 and Oct. 10, 2008, erasing the small lead that Senator John McCain held over Mr. Obama. Several other factors helped propel Mr. Obama to the White House, including fatigue from eight years of president George W. Bush’s administration, seven years of the War on Terror with no end in sight and, because hindsight is sometimes hilariously 20-20, Mr. McCain’s age during the election campaign, when he stood to become the oldest president inaugurated at what now seems like the sprite age of 72. Mr. Obama’s on-the-ground game of grassroots mobilization, and his campaign’s demonstration that small donations from millions of people could be powerful, reshaped prevailing wisdom about presidential campaigns.
But the most important factor that won Mr. Obama the presidency – twice – was what political scientists and journalists have called “the Obama coalition”: a new multiracial, cross-class coalition comprised of African Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, university-educated professionals, young voters, single women, and working-class white people who coalesced around socially progressive values.
Voter turnout among these groups was critical to Mr. Obama’s victories. In 2008, the electorate was the most diverse in American history, with a surge in voter turnout of members of racial minority groups. It was a similar story in 2012. While white voter turnout decreased from 67.2 per cent of eligible voters in 2004 to 66.1 per cent in 2008 and 64.1 per cent in 2012, Mr. Obama won because of high Democratic vote margins among minority voters. This shift offset what had then been the largest white margin in favour of Republicans since the 1984 Reagan-Mondale election.
Young voters were also a key Democratic voting bloc, not just in the Obama coalition but perhaps most critically in helping Mr. Biden defeat Mr. Trump in 2020. Four years ago, approximately 55 per cent of eligible young voters cast ballots, with Generation Z (ages 18 to 23 in 2020) and Millennials (ages 24 to 39 in 2020) favouring Mr. Biden by a margin of 20 percentage points.
Democrats once believed the future of the party was the Obama coalition. It’s a dream they’ve been chasing for the past three presidential elections, with Mr. Obama urging people to vote blue from the sidelines rather than the top of the ticket.
But solidarity is forged, not manufactured, and Mr. Obama was a political unicorn in more ways than one. Ms. Clinton found this out in 2016, when voter turnout among young voters dropped to 44 per cent and white women, who were predicted to be critical of Mr. Trump’s derogatory comments toward women and find resonance with the campaign message, “I’m with her,” were not, in the end, with her as much as they needed to be.
The predicted defections from the traditional Democratic loyalists have eroded the hope that Mr. Obama’s coalition will be revitalized by Ms. Harris. She still, however, has a commanding 31-point lead with young voters (especially young women), who could be a powerful force that might just remake the electoral map this November.
If they decide to vote, that is.