ICYMI – Washington Post: Obama Marvels At Democrats’ Senate Chances
“There Are States Right Now In Play That I Would Not Have Imagined Being In Play,” The Former President Said.
By Liz Goodwin
Former president Barack Obama expressed surprise at Democrats’ expanding midterm map at a private fundraiser Wednesday night, but warned donors not to get complacent about the party’s chances, according to excerpts provided to The Washington Post.
“There are states right now in play that I would not have imagined being in play,” Obama told donors in a fireside chat in Great Falls, Virginia, with Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Delaware), a vice chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “If you had told me, and — I know I’m the hope guy — but if you had told me that the polling currently shows James Talarico ahead of Ken Paxton ... I would have said, eh, I don’t think so.”
Talarico, a Democratic state legislator in Texas, is leading Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general, in most public polls.
Obama also mentioned competitive Senate contests in Kansas and Nebraska, as well as Sen. Jon Ossoff’s large polling lead in Georgia, as other data points he wouldn’t have previously believed.
But Obama cautioned the crowd that winning those races is far from a sure bet.
“All these races that are showing we’ve got a 2- or 3-point lead or it’s a toss-up, we could end up losing all of them by 2 points,” he said. “It’s within the margin of error.”
The former president has been ramping up his involvement in the midterms in recent weeks, announcing an upcoming campaign stop in Michigan for Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and cutting ads supporting candidates in crucial battlegrounds. Previously, he appeared in an ad for Iowa Senate candidate Josh Turek and at a rally for Talarico.
The fundraiser for the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm raised $3.6 million. Republican groups hold a pronounced cash advantage over Democratic ones, driven by Trump-aligned super PAC MAGA Inc.
Obama painted a bleak picture of the state of the country and emphasized the urgency of the political moment to the donors, saying he sees a threat to democracy if the Trump administration continues on its path unchecked.
He criticized the Supreme Court’s failure to “hold the line” against the Trump administration and stressed the importance of a Democratic Senate to the judiciary, given federal judicial nominees require Senate approval.
“If you get two more years of Trump acting with impunity, along with additional judicial appointments, so that at some point the scales may tip in the direction where he’s got carte blanche, you now have a very serious danger to democracy in addition to just bad policy,” Obama said.
If Democrats control the Senate, it could make “an enormous difference” on who is appointed, Obama said.
“I would say that the judiciary, during this moment of challenge to our democracy, has bent but not broken,” Obama said. “We have seen it hold the line in some important areas. To the extent it has not, it’s been the Supreme Court.”
Obama described a “breakdown in trust, the coarsening of the public discourse, the constant violation of norms, the way that our basic institutions, the executive branch, Congress, the courts seem to have been corrupted,” as signs the country is on the wrong track.
“If we found out our kids were doing some of this stuff, they would be on some serious punishment, right?” Obama said of public officials’ behavior. “And so, we all get a sense of a lowering of standards of behavior that extend beyond any particular policy.”
Obama praised Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) for recruiting candidates whom he described as representative of their states and cultures, mentioning Turek’s focus on tariffs and Alaska Democratic candidate Mary Peltola being “all about fish.”
“Being the head of the Democratic Party is a pain in the butt, because you’ve got people from every walk of life,” Obama said.
He said it can be challenging to fashion a cohesive Democratic message with such disparate candidates, but that Democrats are united by core values shared by them all.
“What I can say is that I expect Democrats to stand for treating everybody with dignity and respect,” he said. Obama also listed fairness for people of different sexual orientations, equal rights between men and women, ensuring an economy that is not “rigged,” and believing the government should provide every child a good education among other core values.
“It’s not that we don’t have a North Star, but we have to be able to give our candidates the ability to tailor those core values into ways that speak and relate to the particularities of the state they’re in,” Obama said. “I think we’re doing an excellent job.”
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