President Barack Obama is changing up his retirement plans
President Barack Obama is changing up his retirement plans. With less than two weeks until he hands the keys to the White House to Donald Trump, the president is already making preparations to take on his successor. Politico reports that Obama’s former allies are already revamping his post-campaign infrastructure, Organizing for Action, into a new sort of tech-forward, grassroots activist group to help Democrats learn from Hillary Clinton’s loss and counter the incoming administration.
Though OFA has been mostly quiet over the last two months and made no formal announcements, its Chicago headquarters has been filling up with new hires, including several old campaign aides, who are planning to focus on the mechanics of campaigns, from running Obama-style persuasion programs, integrating data and running paid canvassing operations. Though the first goal is designing the program for what they’ll aim to make hundreds of workshops nationwide, there’s already talk moving toward endorsing candidates.
Whatever Obama had previously planned for his post-presidency, he is now rapidly changing gears to make use of his high approval rating as leverage against Trump. “The way he views his role is not that he himself, Barack Obama, is going to be out there giving fiery speeches and leading marches, but he wants to play a role in empower and lifting up the next generation of leaders,” Jen Psaki, Obama’s White House communications director, told Politico.
Obama’s post-presidential role, in other words, won’t be like that of either of his recent predecessors. While Bill Clinton moved his family to Chappaqua, New York, started a foundation, wrote a few books, gave some speeches, and campaigned for his wife, and George W. Bush founded the Bush Institution and took up painting portraits of dogs, Obama seemingly wants to help provide resources for the next generation of people on the left who want to fight Trump. What he also wants to avoid doing is coming out swinging directly at Trump himself, unless Trump repeals one of several executive actions made by Obama during his tenure as president, including the protection of “Dreamers,” the children of undocumented immigrants who grew up in the United States. “People close to him want to make sure his legacy is not necessarily defined by how he responds to Trump,” a source told Politico. “He wants the next person to stand up, or the next group of people to stand up, and if he’s continually sucking up all the oxygen for the left, there’s no opportunity for that to happen.” The Chicago-based Organizing for Action headquarters has also been quietly making hires—including several former Obama campaign aides—since the election, Politico reports.
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The liberal Establishment’s resistance to Trump will not stop with the president, however. Former Obama administration alumni Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor are ditching their popular podcast “Keepin’ It 1600” to create their own media company, Crooked Media, focused on progressive activism. Fareau and Lovett are leaving the consulting gigs for the new venture, which T.H.R. reports will include a brand-new podcast, “Pod Save America.” Starting from scratch won’t be easy: plans to add additional editorial content, live video, and other podcasts will have to wait until Favreau, Lovett, and Vietor can build their subscriber base back up. The Obama alums will also have to learn hard lessons from the mistakes they admit they made during the campaign, and on “Keepin’ It 1600,” when they were overly confident of Clinton’s victory. That means less punditry and more focus on political participation and activism. "If Hillary [Clinton] had won, I think we would have kept doing the podcast as a part time job," Favreau told The Hollywood Reporter. “When Trump won, we felt the other jobs we had were no longer sufficient. We needed to get back in the game. There's a lot at stake right now and, certainly with Trump in office, there's a lot in danger
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