The Shadow-President Emerges—Obama Takes The Stage To Set Up His Fourth Term

Former President Barack Hussein Obama took the stage at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago in a different tone than he struck in 2008 when he arrived to accept his own nomination from the DNC. In 2008 he approached as a political neophyte making a

play to alter the course of the Democratic Party. On Tuesday that energy was vastly changed, and we saw the man behind the curtain, the power behind the Oval Office, proverbially wink at the camera.

Since Joe Biden’s rise to power in January 2021, clever observers have taken note of the Obama’s close proximity to the Biden administration in a far more involved fashion than we’ve seen in other past presidents when their own party is in power. Indeed the Obamas moved house to be close to D.C.’s levers of power, even though Barack’s career was ostensibly over and Michelle held no ambitions for one of her own.

When the topic of a hypothetical third term came up during his presidency in 2015 Obama infamously told Stephen Colbert,

“I used to say if I can make an arrangement where I had a stand-in or front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in, and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff, and I could sort of deliver the lines while someone was doing all the talking and ceremony. I’d be fine with that because I found the work fascinating.”

The remarks delivered by the 44th President on Tuesday night, to a far more enthusiastic crowd than we’ve ever seen for President Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, at several points demonstrated that indeed, we could finally see the man who has been in charge for the past four years, and clearly intends to continue that arrangement.

After providing his blessing and ostensibly touting the achievements of his former VP, with no absence of pride in his voice, Obama, who coasted to victory less on policy and more on charisma criticized Republicans saying, “the other party had turned into a cult of personality,” while basking in the adulation of his own.

Amidst reports that Obama was “deeply involved” in Biden’s decision to step down, potentially even threatening the 25th Amendment according to journalist Seymour Hersh, Obama told the DNC “The torch has been passed.”

Casting aside the ad hominem attacks against President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, the gross mischaracterizations of Republican policy and the astonishingly ahistorical accounts of the Biden-Harris Administration. Obama’s remarks centered around one thing: an emotional appeal.

“The other side knows it is easier to play on people's fears. It always has been,” as he unironically played up Democrats fears. “They will tell your government is inherently corrupt, that sacrifice and generosity are for suckers. And since the game is rigged, it's ok to take what you want and just look after your own. That's the easy path. We have a different task. Our job is to convince people that democracy could actually deliver. And in doing that, we can't just point to what we've already accomplished, we can't just rely on the idea of the past, we need to chart a new way forward to meet the challenges of today. And Kamala understands this.”

He then extolled the changes that Harris is promising to bring, while blithely avoiding the fact that as one of the most active Vice Presidents in a legislative sense in history, she already had ample opportunity to bring such changes about. For the next five to seven minutes he would go on about “outdated laws and regulations,” a major Trump-era talking point which Harris via Biden could’ve advocated for and fixed with a stroke of a pen, on healthcare, obtusely suggesting that Obamacare somehow became popular since he left office, and the value of college educations which the Biden-Harris regime have found it needs to subsidize with taxpayer funds because jobs are scarce.

Most gallingly, he said with a straight face that Harris and Walz “understand that we can secure our borders without tearing kids away from their parents,” as reports released the same day revealed that over the past five years, over 32,000 unaccompanied illegal immigrant children have been lost by the Department of Homeland Security,  and 291,000  are unaccounted for by ICE and can’t be scheduled for immigration court hearings.

During his speech, Obama alluded to Republicans and conservative Americans as akin to “a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe,” while he seemed to backhandedly call for a condescending kind of unification adding arrogantly, “we recognize that the world is moving fast, that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up. Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace.”

All of the hallmarks of Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns were present and correct. All he had to do was flip from “Obama and Biden” to “Harris and Walz” and the speech would’ve been largely indistinguishable from his own stump speeches twelve and sixteen years before. And while unwilling to fulsomely throw himself behind the campaign of his ‘brother,’ of shared Irish blood Joe Biden, we are seeing a far different display today from Obama than we did in 2020. Today we’re seeing what many will interpret in future texts as Former President Barack Obama setting up for his proverbial Fourth term: his second term as Shadow-President.

Matthew Holloway is a contributor for Conservative HQ. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@theconservativefreelancer.com.

*Hat tip to trilben-mlady and Red Bubble for underlying image we parodied for this article.

• 2024 Election

• Barack Obama

• intersectionality

• Democrat contributions

• price gouging

• price controls

• first-time home buyers

• 25th Amendment

• public housing

• ActBlue donations

• Donald Trump campaign

• Kamala Harris campaign

• Kamala Harris senate record

• vice president vetting

• Minnesota Governor Tim Walz

• Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro