'Preternatural calm': Democrats think Obama helps Biden draw a contrast with raging Trump
by W. James Antle III
| May 19, 2020 07:00 AM
Barack Obama has entered the fray of the 2020 presidential campaign with a series of thinly veiled criticisms of his successor as he prepares to help his former vice president, Joe Biden, win back the White House for the Democrats in November.
President Trump has responded by stepping up his own criticism of Obama, which has been plentiful over the past four years. Biden has, by contrast, hugged Obama tightly since entering the race, making his service under the 44th president a key part of his argument to Democratic primary voters — a strategy that paid dividends as the 77-year-old revived his once-moribund campaign and became his party’s presumptive nominee.
All this combines to set up the 2020 race as a Trump-Obama proxy war, a fight Democrats are confident they can win. “Obama is nothing but an asset to Biden,†said Democratic strategist Tracy Sefl. “His preternatural calm is a welcome sight in a time of turmoil and uncertainty.â€
“This pandemic has fully, finally, torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,†Obama said in a virtual commencement address to historically black colleges and universities on Saturday. The remarks were widely interpreted as a rebuke of the Trump team. Previously, in a call with 3,000 alumni of his own administration, Obama left no room for interpretation as he called the Trump White House coronavirus response politically self-interested and “an absolute chaotic disaster.â€
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