President Obama’s honesty may have just proven politically damaging for his party.
Asked about the race to replace him in 2016, the president said Sunday that he’ll probably stay on the sidelines and not campaign much for whomever is the Democratic nominee, because the American people want, “you know, that new car smell.”
“They want to drive something off the lot that doesn’t have as much mileage as me,” Obama told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
Analytically speaking, Obama was almost certainly right. Voters hardly ever elect a president of the same party of a president who just served two terms. And the last time that happened, in 1988, voters threw out President George H.W. Bush after only one term.
But while accurate, Obama’s self-deprecating (if even passive-aggressive) joke about how Democrats are running away from him has the unfortunate consequence of highlighting perhaps the biggest weakness of his most likely Democratic successor, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Clinton has one of the longest resumes of any presidential contender in memory, which is both a strength, and a liability. As Obama himself knows from using this playbook to beat Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary, she’s vulnerable to charges that she’s been around Washington too long and should be sidelined by a fresher face. In other words, that she doesn’t have “the new car smell” that, say, a young upstart Illinois senator had.
Obama’s comments were almost certainly not intended as a swipe at Clinton, but Republicans pounced on them nonetheless, hoping to solidify the interpretation that the president was criticizing Clinton.
The Republican National Committee sent out not one but two emails to reporters highlighting the clip. If voters want a fresh candidate, RNC Raffi WIlliams spokesperson said, “I guess that disqualifies all the leading Democratic contenders.”
Party Chairman Reince Priebus tweeted, “Obama admits that Hillary’s bid to be his third term isn’t the freshest concept.”
America Rising, the opposition research super PAC that has been slinging dirt at Clinton for months, noted that Clinton was “criticized by Obama in 2008 as being part of the politics of the past,” the group wrote.
“It’s not just a matter of age,” Washington Examiner columnist Byron York wrote of Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden. “The two will also have been on the national political stage for an enormous length of time… New, they’re not.”
In context, it seems Obama meant no harm to Clinton — whom he called a friend and a potential “great president” — but was rather making a joke at his own expense. “I am very interested in making sure that I’ve got a Democratic successor,” he said.









