Physician, Heal Thyself

Barack Obama has had enough of Democrats failed leadership and wants more. That’s great, but dude, where have you been?

Former President Barack Obama has a stern critique for members of his party: Too many have been cowed into silence.

In private remarks to party donors on Friday night, Mr. Obama scolded Democrats for failing to speak out against President Trump and his policies, suggesting they were shrinking from the challenge out of fear of retribution.

“It’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it’s going to require Democrats to just toughen up,” Mr. Obama said at a fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee at the home of Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey.

“What I have been surprised by is the degree to which I’ve seen people who, when I was president, or progressives, liberals, stood for all kinds of stuff, who seem like they’re kind of cowed and intimidated and shrinking away from just asserting what they believe, or at least what they said they believe,” he added.

Locked out of power in Washington, Democrats have been largely arguing among themselves about how to confront a hostile Trump administration. Mr. Obama’s remarks were circulated by his office on Monday.

He expressed particular disdain for law firms that he said had been willing to “set aside the law” in response to Mr. Trump’s actions “not because, by the way, that they’re going to be thrown in jail, but because they might lose a few clients and might not be able to finish that kitchen rehab at their Hampton house. I’m not impressed.”

Mr. Obama did not mention Columbia University, his alma mater, which is on the verge of paying hundreds of millions of dollars to settle with the Trump administration over accusations it permitted antisemitism on campus, or name any of the prominent Democratic law firms that have made deals with Mr. Trump’s White House.

But the former president’s comments were interpreted by people in the room as a critique of the party’s elites for having gone quiet when they were sorely needed to step up, according to a person who attended.

The excerpts provided by Mr. Obama’s office contained no evidence of physician-heal-thyself reflectiveness. Mr. Obama, after all, has scarcely been at the tip of the Democratic spear in resisting Mr. Trump. He has issued few public statements opposing Trump administration actions and has yet to appear this year at a rally, town hall or other public event staged by opponents of Mr. Trump.

Funny, I didn’t even read the reference to the title of this post until after I titled it. But really, Barry, where the fuck you been?

I don’t know what the tenor of commenters around here on this issue has been of late, but back in the first term of Trump, there was a lot of “President Obama has done everything he needs to do for us and stop criticizing him.” That’s just stupid. We are facing the end of American democracy. But Mr. Norms wouldn’t step up to lead against him. And he did almost nothing in 2024 either. And then we finally get to the summer of 25 and finally he intimates that maybe Democrats should be doing something. I agree. And it starts with the only Democrat who can actually tie all the parts of the party together and lead a future fight. That’s Barack Obama. No, he can’t run for president again. Yes, he is still the only man who can provide the key leadership here.

So Obama, yes, more of this. Start actually leading. John Quincy Adams did it after his presidency. Jimmy Carter did it in his own way too. You don’t have just to spend time with the world’s richest people and working on your library and building a fancy Hawaii compound. Of course you can do all those things too. But this is the future of America here. It’s all hands on deck. Only in America would a former leader just disappear while the nation’s political system collapsed.