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MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart on Tuesday called on former President Barack Obama’s camp to help the Democratic Party carve a path forward by turning their attention to the “next generation” of voters.
Capehart, in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” reflected on the earlier era of the Clinton family “running” everything and calls for “new blood” in the party — only for the same cycle of criticism to repeat with Obama.
“Now people are starting to complain, ‘Oh my God, the Obama people, they’re running everything.’ Some of the criticism, I think, is valid,” he said.
“Sometimes you get a sense that they think they know everything, they run the world and, in some cases, you can understand it because, well, they did win two presidential elections.”
He continued, “But at a certain point, that class of folks has to start listening to the next generation coming up because they have ideas, they have ways of reaching out to the voters, to men, to the Obama coalition that they just don’t have — they don’t have the feel for it because they’re not from that generation.”
Moments earlier, MSNBC’s Jonathan Lemire turned to an NBC News report detailing how the so-called Obama “coalition” shifted toward President Donald Trump last year.
While Obama continues to be a “force” in the party, NBC News reported, his “luster was showing signs of fading” in the fall as his 2008 victory is set to turn 20 years old with the arrival of the 2028 presidential election.
Capehart noted that the “Obama luster” wasn’t enough for the party in the 2010 and 2014 midterms, failing to get enough people to the polls to give him the majority he needed to govern during his presidency.
He added that by the time the former president and then-first lady Michelle Obama left the White House, they were “very clear” with their supporters that they had done “everything” they could during their eight years in Washington.
″[They advised Americans] it is now on you, the number one job is citizen,’” Capehart said.
He speculated that one of the primary reasons the former president has been “scarce” in the public sphere lately is that everyone was “looking for him to save the day.”
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“And what they keep saying is, ‘No, no, no, it’s not about us. It’s about you.’ And it seems like the party can’t seem to come to grips with that and deal with that,” he said.
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