Breaking The Clinton/Obama/Biden Cartel

Over the last thirty years or so, on a pretty regular basis, someone will pop up in the political discourse with advice for the Democrats that is criminally stupid. Invariably, the person in question almost always ends up being someone who came from the presidencies or campaigns of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.

James Carville and David Axelrod are the highest profile versions of this, but it happens all the time. There are people who served as D-tier flunkies in the Clinton Commerce Department that somehow became cable news regulars offering up pablum on how Democrats shouldn’t embrace liberal ideas but instead should be phony-baloney Republican lite to win elections. This has to stop.

We can argue the relative merits of the Clinton and Obama presidencies (as well as Biden’s term, which in ways was Obama 3) but what is clear is that they are the past. The way politics operates now is significantly different from 2008, let alone 1992 – but Democrats keep listening to the people who coached during the leather helmet era of American politics.

And who are we really listening to here? Neither Bill Clinton nor Barack Obama were completely inept bumpkin politicians who couldn’t get elected without their Svengali political teams. In fact, both men are among the most naturally talented political minds in American history and two of this country’s best orators. Operating like Axelrod or Carville or their extended political orbit had some secret sauce and now has the winning playbook for future victories makes as much sense as turning to Tom Brady’s water boy for advice on winning the Super Bowl.

People look to the Clinton and Obama campaigns as examples of how to win, and while we should understand the timeless virtues of consistent messaging and appealing to a wide base of people, you need to adapt. Clinton didn’t have Fox News during his first run. Obama didn’t have Musk-led Twitter during his time in office. The news cycle of 2025 makes the news cycle of 1993 seem like the pace of a snail. There are overlapping issues that voters care about in both worlds – the economy always matters – but there are issues that were a huge deal in the 90s and mid-2000s that no longer matter and there are topics happening now that didn’t exist back then.

The way to navigate these waters isn’t by listening to what is more often than not an older white man saying politics should center around issues he, the older white man, cares about to the exclusion of everything else. The path is about navigating the future, letting new – and more diverse – voices into the inner circle and taking a critical eye to the past, keeping what worked and discarding what is irrelevant.

Liberal and Democratic Party politics are at a critical moment. Everything we stand for is under attack and must be defended and ultimately restored. We can’t effectively do this if we are constantly anchored to the past. The cartel did its thing, but its time to break it and move on to a new, better way.

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— Oliver

Follow me, Oliver Willis, on BlueSky @owillis.bsky.social

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