Barack is back

Reunions with old friends can be nourishing, joyful occasions. But they can also be awkward: uncomfortable reminders of past differences, full of signs of how far you have drifted from one another. Barack Obama’s return to the White House for the first time since leaving office to pal it up with his one-time right-hand man felt more like the latter — though it was President Biden who appeared more uncomfortable than his old boss.

At an event to lavish praise on the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s biggest legislative achievement, the 44th president jokingly referred to Biden as the “vice president” before adding: “That was a joke.” Politico’s Alex Thompson reported that “some in Biden World found the line a bit dismissive rather than funny, especially given the at times fraught and competitive dynamic between the two men.” Obama, let’s not forget, tried to warn us: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up,” he reportedly said during the 2020 primary.

It’s a rare thing to see the president of the United States to be upstaged. But that’s exactly what happened yesterday. Obama demonstrated the star-power he has — and Biden lacks. Brutal footage from the event shows Obama being mobbed by Washington A-list well-wishers while Biden wanders around the stage like an awkward cocktail party guest whose one friend left half an hour ago.

The awkward dynamics underscore a more serious point about the Democrats’ lamentable leadership: an aging, gaffe-prone president and a vice-president whose few advantages include the fact that her word-salad public utterances at least make her boss seem comparatively with it.

Most popular

Stephen Pollard

Sacking Jenrick has made Badenoch stronger

Asked about the midterms at Tuesday’s event, Obama said: “We’ve got a story to tell, just got to tell it.” In truth, however, the Democrats’ problems are worse than that. The storytellers might not be up to the job, but the material they’re working with isn’t so great either.

*** Sign up to receive the DC Diary in your inbox on weekdays ***

No end in sight to Dems’ immigration woes

The White House’s Title 42 troubles continue to worsen. Now that a May date has been set for the end to the pandemic-era rule that allowed agents to turn back migrants at the border without hearing their asylum claim, unease among Democrats in tight re-election battles has turned to open revolt.

Georgia senator Raphael Warnock has said he thinks it is “the wrong time” to lift the measure. Arizona senator Mark Kelly said in a statement: “This is the wrong decision. It’s unacceptable to end Title 42 without a plan and coordination in place to ensure a secure, orderly, and humane process at the border.” These are just two high-profile examples.

Glance at new Morning Consult polling and it’s not hard to understand the unease. The pollsters find that 56 percent of registered voters oppose lifting Title 42, which, they say, “backlash against a Biden administration policy among dozens tracked by Morning Consult since January 2021.”

On the Hill, Senate Republicans have worsened the bind the Democrats’ find themselves in by insisting on a vote on Title 42 in exchange for the accelerated advancement of the Covid preparation bill that Democrats have been struggling to get done for weeks. This may prove to be just a taste of the difficult politics to come for Democrats. After all, an already fraught issue will only get worse for them if, as officials expect, the number of arrivals at the southern border increases once Title 42 is lifted.

Should Psaki resign?

The news that Jen Psaki will be leaving the White House to take up a lucrative position as an MSNBC host underscores the unhealthy revolving-door culture in which the lines between those making the news and those reporting it are hard to discern. But Psaki’s future departure also raises more immediate ethical quandaries.

Psaki’s job involves around-the-clock interactions with America’s broadcasters. Can she continue to do that job effectively, without any conflicts of interest, when one of those broadcasters is about to write her a big check? Psaki claims to be whiter than white and says she has “taken the ethics legal requirements… very seriously.”

I take greater issue, though, with MSNBC. Perhaps hiring a former government spokesperson as a broadcaster is business as usual in Washington today. But it shouldn’t be.