The Democrats’ Michelle Obama problem

This story was originally published in The Highlight, Vox’s member-exclusive magazine. To get early access to member-exclusive stories every month, join the Vox Membership program today. When Michelle Obama announced in March that she and her brother were starting a podcast, it dug up a familiar feeling for Democrats: yearning. If only the uber-popular former first lady would just return to politics. She could just run for president, if she wanted. It’s a recurring wish, for an Obama to save the Democratic Party. And like every time that chatter comes up, the dreamers were quickly let down. The podcast has avoided the political, and Obama herself has remained mostly out of the public eye, skipping high-profile public events and not commenting on news. She’s not alone. The party’s leaders of the past have also mostly remained silent as Donald Trump and Elon Musk challenge the law, remake the federal government, and implement the Trump 2.0 agenda. This pining for Obama’s return isn’t new, but particularly during the second Trump term, it reflects something special about this moment: The Democratic Party still doesn’t have a clear leader, doesn’t have a clear direction of where to go, and keeps looking to the past for leadership. Some of that identity crisis is being fought out in public. Various governors are vying for the attention of voters pissed off at Trump and Republicans. They’re on podcasts and TV shows, at town halls and listening sessions. In Congress, they’re slowly figuring out how their constituents want them to resist Trump. And most notably, Sen. Bernie Sanders is wrapping up a multistate run of rallies against “oligarchy,” essentially anointing US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York his movement’s successor in front of huge crowds. Still, none of these individuals seem to be uniting the party in the way the most loyal Democrats might wish for. But that might be okay. If history can show us anything about what Democrats do now, it’s that opposition parties need this time without a clear leader to debate their identities, rebuild grassroots energy, and prepare for midterm elections. The Democrats’ savior isn’t coming any time soon. But that may be a feature, not a bug, of losing elections. Democrats keep looking to the past for saviors The hope for a great savior — either a veteran voice who can right the ship or an outsider who can rock it — might actually be an impediment as the Democrats figure themselves out. While a new guard of politicians and voices are still getting their footing or pushing for more influence, the “hero” they’re looking for won’t come around for a while — meaning the party should be using this time to rebuild and have these debates. “The very fact that Democrats are looking for a savior, seeking the man or woman on the white or black horse, is a sign that they’re not really doing what good political parties do, which is work at the grassroots, recruit people to run and make the case about why what Trump and Musk are doing is horrible,” Michael Kazin, the Georgetown University political historian who’s written an extensive history of the Democratic Party, told me. There are some trying to make this case. Some of the loudest remaining voices on the Democratic side remain members of the old guard — Sanders, for example, or Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who led many protests against Trump and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s attempts to downsize the federal government in the first few weeks of the Trump presidency. Neither are positioning themselves as the next leaders of the party, but Sanders, at least, seems to be setting the stage for a younger voice. He remains the most popular national figure, but the younger voices who could succeed him or chart out a new chapter for the party are not nearly as popular. Those younger voices — like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, or Ocasio-Cortez — are polarizing or still relatively unknown. They all represent different paths forward for the party. And they’re all trying out different approaches to tap into the anger that the average Democratic voter is feeling. And these divisions may actually end up being helpful: They’re setting the ground for a lively Democratic presidential primary contest in two to three years, they’re offering voters an idea of what the party could still become, and all represent a new vision for the party — even if the noise right now is about the party’s disunity. They also serve a midterm purpose as well: There not being a unified Democratic leader or agenda allows individual candidates to run their own, localized races without being pegged to one figure, as they tend to be during presidential election years, like when Biden was running. So embracing that chaos and disunity might actually be a good thing. “It’s a mistake to think you just have your preexisting set of people who’ve done it before, that one of them must be a savior. And frankly, right now, as opposed to in four years, the savior isn’t going to come from one single person. I’m not convinced that’s really how it works,” Julian Zelizer, a political history professor at Princeton University, told me. “The savior might be the congressional caucuses in the House and Senate acting effectively. The saviors might be independent groups, ACLU-type groups challenging [Trump] in court. But I think it’s more an organizational moment, and in a few years, you turn to the single individual. But I don’t think there’s a superhero who’s gonna fly in right now and just totally stop this. And thinking that way is probably not constructive for Democrats.” Of course, Democrats will still be pining for a hero, a new JFK or Obama to take on the mantle of the new Democratic Party. But there’s no easy way out of the current moment of crisis. The Obamas certainly won’t be the ones to resolve it. And wanting the figures of the past to return might actually be counterproductive. This clamor has apparently made its way to the Bidens, who reportedly have offered to fundraise, campaign, and boost Democratic candidates this year and next. Kamala Harris, meanwhile, has remained quiet, while her more popular former running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has instead embarked on an “I told you so” tour as he tests the waters for a third term as governor. But asking for a Biden or Harris return is probably not the answer. “What good is it going to do? Is it going to convince anybody [for a former president or vice president to speak up]?” Kazin said. “It’s pretty common after the party who loses the election and obviously has no clear leader, for there to be a period where it’s not clear who the leaders are going to be. That happened in some ways, after 2004 as well. Going back in history, it happened in the 1920s a lot with Democrats not winning elections, it happened after losses in 1980 and 1984 and 1988 as well. So it takes a while for that to shake out. That’s not surprising.”

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The Democrats’ Michelle Obama problem