Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank pressed send on a missive begging former President Barack Obama to come back to the struggling Democratic Party.
THE QUOTE
In the Tuesday op-ed, Milbank wrote, “President Obama: Your country needs you. Democracy is on the ropes. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for the ship of state, and no one is better able to help the cause than Obama.”
- “America desperately needs Obama in the arena — although not necessarily in the Biden White House,” Milbank argued, citing Obama’s appearance alongside President Biden at a Tuesday White House event commemorating the passage of “Obamacare.”
- “The 60-year-old former president’s hour in the East Room brought back the memories of his once-in-a-generation talent, and inevitably invited comparisons to his less charismatic and much older successor. Biden still seemed to be playing Obama’s understudy.”
- According to Milbank, Obama must urgently return to politics because Republicans are “now taking aim at democracy itself, rejecting the results of an election, condoning a violent insurrection in the Capitol (‘legitimate political discourse’) and rolling back voting rights.”
- “As a celebrated former president, and the first Black president, he’s in an unrivaled position to mobilize Americans in defense of democracy. This is no time to be outside the arena,” Milbank urged.