The Bernie Bros (and Bro-ettes) only had one conspiracy theory which I believed: that after the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, Barack Obama made a few calls to a handful of Democratic Party people and suddenly the message was out, that Joe Biden was the safe choice for loyal Democratic voters. Obama very consciously and very carefully did not want to be seen “interfering” with the Democratic primaries or the will of the voters. But he also must have been getting TONS of calls from pankicked Democratic Party old-guard people who were like “wtf, Bernie Sanders is a terrible candidate and he cannot be our nominee.” So yes, I believe calls were made and Obama didn’t want his fingerprints on any of it. I would be very interested in learning if Obama had spoken to Jim Clyburn in the days leading up to Clyburn’s game-changer endorsement of Biden before the South Carolina primary. Politico doesn’t say whether Clyburn and Obama spoke, but Politico does have a good story about how Obama “won” the primary by walking on that knife’s edge of not doing or saying anything publicly but working behind the scenes.

In the end, the most influential politician of 2020 might be the one who has been the most silent. With Bernie Sanders exiting the race and Joe Biden taking on the mantle of presumptive nominee, the man who hovered quietly over the race for more than a year, Barack Obama, will soon return to the political fray. Obama wanted Sanders to have the day to himself, so he refrained from speaking (or tweeting) publicly on Wednesday. But Obama had always said his role in the primaries would be to unite the party when it’s over, and he’s been in close contact with both campaigns as the pandemic both froze the race without a clear victor and also made it more obvious that Biden would eventually prevail.

“Over the last few weeks, he’s had multiple conversations with candidates, including Sen. Sanders, about how to best position the Democratic Party to win in November,” said a source familiar with those calls. “While the content of those conversations remain private, there was always agreement that winning in the fall was paramount.”

Obama mostly stuck to his pledge not to interfere in the race, but in 2019 there was one enormously important exception. In mid-November at a Democratic donor event he weighed in forcefully on the left vs. centrist argument that was then dominating the race. He warned Democratic candidates not to confuse actual voters with “left-leaning Twitter feeds.” He said that voters “don’t want to see crazy stuff,” that America is “less revolutionary than it is interested in improvement,” and that politicians pushing immigration policies that deny the existence of a border “may be in for a rude shock.” Obama was publicly silent for the remainder of the campaign. But one of his closest advisers issued a warning: “If Bernie were running away with it, I think maybe we would all have to say something.”

As the race narrowed to Biden and Sanders, interest among pro-Biden Democrats for Obama to speak up spiked and the political press was on the hunt for any indications of Obama choosing sides. Obama had a delicate task. Everyone knew whom he preferred, and yet he could not be seen as helping organize the massive party-wide show of force in favor of Biden that emerged from South Carolina through Super Tuesday. Obama’s aides forcefully reiterated that he was scrupulously not intervening. But some of his aides now concede that behind the scenes Obama played a role in nudging things in Biden’s direction at the crucial moment when the Biden team was organizing former candidates to coalesce around Biden.

“I know he did a few things,” said one longtime close adviser to Obama. “He was talking to Biden regularly in that period. I don’t know exactly what he said, but you can speculate! It’s noteworthy that he called Klobuchar and the others right when they got out.”

A person with knowledge of Obama’s conversation with Buttigieg after the former Indiana mayor exited the race explained it this way: “Obama talked to Pete the night that Pete dropped out. When Pete told Obama that he was 99.9 percent of the way there in terms of endorsing Biden, I would say that Obama was encouraging. But I would also say that Obama was very careful not to be seen as putting a thumb on the scale. He and the people close to him are very careful about the optics — the 2016-style optics. Sanders and his supporters had reason to believe the party put the thumb on the scale for Hillary in 2016 and he wanted to avoid that. Obama wasn’t the driving force, but he was encouraging of people who had those instincts to rally around Biden. But he was very cautious and discreet in how he operated.”

[From Politico]

I think it’s interesting that Obama was speaking to Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg as they were making the choice to drop out. That’s why everything coalesced around Biden so quickly in that South Carolina/Super Tuesday period in late February and early March. Basically, Biden all but wrapped up the nomination over the course of about two weeks, and I have to think that Obama did more than simply convince Klobuchar and Buttigieg to endorse Biden as they dropped out. Politico’s sources also say that Obama will soon begin to make the case to voters that Biden is the guy and that Biden is HIS guy.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.