The End of the Obama Coalition

In my post-election essay, I said that the 2024 election marked the end of the Obama coalition. But what does that mean?

Well, in part it means that some of the political strategies the Democrats thought would turn Obama’s 2008 and 2012 coalitions into an enduring generational majority — they’ve failed. Democrats worked damn hard over the past few years to deliver what they thought, what they were told, Black and Hispanic and working-class and union voters wanted.

And instead of solidifying support from those voters, they’re seeing them flee to Donald Trump. But I’m also saying something about the structure of the Democratic Party itself.

The Obama era wasn’t just built around one person. It was a collection of institutions and power bases and elite networks. Michael Lind, a columnist at Tablet, the author of the book “The New Class War” and a co-founder of New America has argued that it was kind of a political machine, one built around urban political support, foundations, nonprofits, mass media.

There are parts of Lind’s analysis I don’t agree with. In particular, I think the machine has worked very differently after Obama left the White House than it did before. I think it’s been a machine without a boss, in a way that has not worked out well for the Democratic Party.

But I think seeing the Democratic Party through the lens of its component institutions — the places where the people who run it and staff it work when they’re out of power, where they’re educated, where they go to find deputies and hire staff and get funding and to see the people they used to work with and still listen to and learn from — I think that’s really important. That’s what a political party is. And because of it, I don’t think what’s next for the Democratic Party is just new ideas or campaign tactics.