If he loses to Donald Trump in November, President Joe Biden will see much of his legacy—on green energy, social justice, international leadership—vanquished by an administration determined to move the country sharply rightward. But his onetime boss, Barack Obama, will also see his own right years in office cast in a different light: democracy’s last gasp, as opposed to democracy’s renewal.
That may explain why Obama is reportedly working with Democrats who think the longer Biden stays in the race, the harder it will be to defeat Trump. Obama reportedly has been “in touch” with George Clooney, whose incendiary New York Times op-ed called on Biden to leave the presidential race. “While Obama did not encourage or advise Clooney to say what he said, he also didn’t object to it,” Politico reported on Thursday.
If accurate, that development stands in sharp contrast to what Obama said after Biden’s disastrous performance in last month’s presidential debate. “Bad debate nights happen,” Obama wrote on X about the man who served as his vice president for eight years. The rest of the message made clear that Obama believed Biden deserved eight years in the Oval Office of his own.
