Barack Obama: Energizer in chief

How race and identity are shaping politics, policy and power.

Nov 01, 2022 View in browser   By Brakkton Booker With help from Jesús Rodríguez, Joseph Gedeon, Jesse Naranjo, Ella Creamer, Rishika Dugyala and Teresa Wiltz Former President Barack Obama speaks at a campaign stop for Wisconsin Democrats Gov. Tony Evers and U.S. Senate candidate Mandela Barnes, Saturday, Oct. 29, 2022, in Milwaukee. | POLITICO illustration/Morry Gash/AP Photo What up, Recast family! The Supreme Court signals a willingness to ban race as a factor in college admissions, harrowing new details emerge in the violent attack against Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband and new Twitter owner Elon Musk suggests users should pay for those coveted blue checkmarks. First, though, we focus on the home stretch of the midterm campaign. Former President Barack Obama is set to reprise that role of energizer in chief, hyping up vulnerable incumbent Democrats Gov. Steve Sisolak and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada on Tuesday. His political showmanship over the weekend reinforced his status as the most bankable draw in the party. What's not clear: whether his star power in the party is transferable to those he stumps for. Let us not forget his appropriate use of "shellacking" to describe the pummeling in the 2010 midterms, back when he was in office. With the sitting president's poll numbers hovering in the low 40s, Biden has largely been relegated to the sidelines, Obama's services are in high demand in contests critical to Democrats maintaining power in Washington. But candidates appearing with the former president frequently find themselves overshadowed. Former President Barack Obama is greeted by Sen. Raphael Warnock as he steps on stage to speak at a campaign rally, Friday, Oct. 28, 2022, in College Park, Ga. | John Bazemore/AP Photo In Georgia, while he was stumping for Democrats Stacey Abrams, the gubernatorial nominee, and incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, it was Obama's characterization of GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker that got all the buzz. Obama said the former football star "carries around a phony badge and says he is in law enforcement like a kid playing cops and robbers." During a Michigan rally for embattled Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Obama was praised for his handling of a heckler . Then he hopped over to Wisconsin to stump for Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is seeking to become Wisconsin's first Black senator . There, his scathing remarks about Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and Social Security went viral . Twitter His remarks, while focused on policy differences between the parties, comes at a time when some Democrats and Republicans are trying to tamp down the toxic rhetoric that's become customary in American politics. The vitriol between the parties is being blamed as the catalyst for the brutal attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul, late last week. Her husband's skull was fractured in the home invasion. The suspect, David DePape, 42, is expected to be arraigned Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court. He told police he hatched plans to hold the Democratic leader hostage and was going to break "her kneecaps," according to federal charging documents released Monday. The attack was met with skepticism from some members of the GOP — and in the case of Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, mockery . RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said it was "unfair" for Democrats to link the attack to the GOP's ongoing vilification of Pelosi. Police stand at the top of the closed street outside the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul Pelosi in San Francisco, Friday, Oct. 28, 2022. | Eric Risberg/AP Photo Obama is scheduled to headline a rally in Arizona on Wednesday. And over the weekend, Obama, Biden and former President Donald Trump are all scheduled to stump in Pennsylvania in the state's closely watched Senate race. As always, we'll be keeping tabs. All the best, The Recast Team   Power dynamics are changing. With The Recast, you'll get a twice-weekly breakdown of how race and identity are the DNA of American politics and policy. Was this forwarded to you by a friend? Subscribe to the newsletter here .   WHITHER AFFIRMATIVE ACTION? Members of the NAACP Youth and College division rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court as justices heard oral arguments on two affirmative action cases, Oct. 31, 2022. | Francis Chung/E&E News/POLITICO For almost 45 years, affirmative action programs that allow colleges to consider race in admissions have been on a lifeline at the Supreme Court. As The Recast's Jesús Rodríguez reports, the conservative majority indicated during oral arguments Monday that it is inclined to seriously limit, if not end, such policies. The challenge comes from the group Students for Fair Action, an organization led by longtime conservative activist Edward Blum. The group contends that the affirmative action practices of Harvard College and the University of North Carolina violate the Constitution and federal antidiscrimination statutes by operating to the disadvantage of Asian Americans. Specifically, SFFA asked the court to overrule Grutter v. Bollinger, the landmark 2003 case that said colleges could consider race to achieve "the educational benefits" of diversity, "including cross-racial understanding and the breaking down of racial stereotypes." In recent decades, conservative justices such as Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy attempted to reach compromises with liberals to keep affirmative action afloat with some strict limitations. (For instance, colleges couldn't institute quotas, and admitting students of color could not be used as a remedy for past discrimination, the court said.) During oral argument, the question seemed to be how, not whether, the court would undo that precedent. "Why do you have these boxes?" Justice Samuel Alito asked. "Why do you give a student the opportunity to say this one thing about me, 'I'm Hispanic, I'm African American, I'm Asian'?" Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, who have both opposed affirmative action, questioned its benefits, arguing that applicants' identifying characteristics could not be reduced to boxes on a form. Thomas, who once chaired the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said he didn't really have a clue what "diversity" means and likened its educational benefits to the arguments in favor of "segregation." POLITICO's Josh Gerstein reports that Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh may yet look for compromise . Patrick Strawbridge, one of the lawyers for SFFA, suggested that one alternative available to students was to write essays about their family history, cultural traditions, or experiences with discrimination, but that an admissions committee still wouldn't be allowed to just use that as a proxy for race. Twitter Two of the court's liberals, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, said it would be virtually impossible to separate race from culture in such an essay. For Thang Diep, a Harvard graduate who released his admissions file as part of testimony to the District Court in the lawsuit against his alma mater, the essays were just one piece of his application. He had been rallying outside the court with other students in support of affirmative action, and he tells The Recast that without these policies, students of color wouldn't be able to tell a full and accurate story of their identities. He also objected to SFFA's framing of Asian students as the subjects of discrimination. "Asian Americans have been used as a racial wedge to undermine the experiences of Black and brown people in this country," says Diep, who immigrated from Vietnam. "It's not supposed to be a zero-sum game." The end of affirmative action could present a new challenge for ethnic minorities' access to higher education, civil rights groups say . Between 1976 and 2008, the share of Asian Americans and Hispanics enrolled in undergraduate institutions increased almost sixfold , according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But at elite colleges like Harvard, a 2017 New York Times analysis found, ethnic minorities are still underrepresented ; Black students were just 6 percent of first-year students, though they accounted for 15 percent of college-aged adults. According to numbers released because of the lawsuit , Harvard has a strong preference for athletes, legacy students, students placed on the college dean's interest list (often because of donations) and children of faculty. Their acceptance rate is 45 percent, as compared with 4.5 to 5 percent for the rest of the applicant pool.   NOTES FROM THE ARIZONA BATTLEFIELD Democratic Tucson Mayor Regina Romero is seen at the State of the State address at the Arizona Capitol, Monday, Jan. 13, 2020, in Phoenix. | Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo Next week, control of the Senate may fall to the political battleground of Arizona, which swung to Biden in 2020 but remains a polling toss-up. On Monday, POLITICO's Joseph Gedeon sat down to discuss Arizona and the midterms with Tucson Mayor Regina Romero , who in 2019 became the first woman and first person of Mexican descent since the 1870s to hold the city's highest elected office. Romero, a Democratic surrogate, is the only Latina mayor in the country's 50 most populous cities. In October, she met with White House officials for the administration's "Community in Action" program, which brings state, local and federal leaders together to talk all things policy. This interview has been edited for length and clarity THE RECAST: The midterms are coming up and Arizona is playing an integral role in the national conversation. What do you think are the most important issues for Arizona voters? ROMERO: Arizona is becoming more important in the national scene, and I believe that plays an important role in statewide elections. What we see time and time again is that Arizona wants candidates and elected officials that believe in funding public education. Yet Republicans in the state keep undoing, or trying to undo, the will of the voters. Housing affordability has become even more important in the last three years. Both Phoenix and Tucson are the fastest warming cities in the country. People want candidates and elected officials that want to do something and will act on climate change. THE RECAST: You mentioned the will of the voters, yet there are candidates who reject the results of the presidential election on the ballot in Arizona. What does that mean for people in Arizona? ROMERO: It's a disgrace and a threat to our democracy for former President Trump and candidates here in Arizona to continue repeating the lie that the election was stolen. We have statewide candidates like Kari Lake [spreading that falsehood] and [Mark] Finchem was at the Jan. 6 insurrection. It's just disappointing for MAGA Republicans to put our democracy in danger. THE RECAST: Also on the ballot is Prop 308 [which would make undocumented students eligible for in-state tuition]. What impact will that have for Arizonans? ROMERO: It's a little bit of a bipartisan ray of light in this whole story. The legislation wouldn't give anything to anyone or spend federal funds from the state. It would only allow Dreamers to have in-state tuition, period. And they would pay for their education just like every other student. It's heartwarming that many on the Republican side see this as an economic development issue because there's research that shows that Dreamers add to the economy. THE RECAST: On Friday, a federal judge chose not to ban an armed activist group with ties to QAnon and election conspiracies from patrolling ballot boxes in Arizona. The group, Clean Elections USA, say it's to prevent voter fraud but the plaintiffs argue it's more like voter intimidation. So if these groups begin to monitor ballot boxes in Tucson, what will be the city's response? Signs direct voters to drop off their ballots at a secure ballot drop box at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix, Monday, Oct. 31, 2022. | Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo ROMERO: We have been monitoring what's happening in Maricopa County very carefully and I've had some preliminary conversations with our chief of police. It is crossing the line into voter intimidation when people are that close to the ballot, carrying guns, taking pictures, recording and harassing voters dropping off their ballots. That is not the First Amendment; it's harassing and intimidating voters. And they are doing it with the sole purpose of creating a chilling effect for people not to take their ballots.   ICYMI @ POLITICO Can the GOP Wave Reach Michigan? — POLITICO's Ally Mutnick highlights a tight congressional race . Candidate Joe Gibbs, who is Black, is a Trump conservative and a rising star in the GOP. But, as Mutnick reports, his past remarks — including suggesting women shouldn't have the right to vote — may imperil his candidacy. The Last Georgia Gov. Debate — In their final faceoff, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams sparred over crime, guns and public safety , reports POLITICO's Brittany Gibson. WATCH: In our latest installment of POLITICO 15, Gayle Smith and Linda Thomas-Greenfield talk about the future of women in politics .   THE RECAST RECOMMENDS Literary heavyweight Haruki Murakami gives us the lowdown on character building and narration . Chanté Joseph is the voice of the Guardian's new pop culture podcast , coming Thursday. We can't wait to tune in. SZA teams up with LaKeith Stanfield in her new single/mini-movie, "Shirt." Jordan Peele teams up with Henry Selick to bring you " Wendell & Wild ," a spooky stop-motion animation and coming-of-age story. It's out on Netflix now. Ahead of the "Wakanda Forever" release later this month, Marvel author Nic Stone and Washington Post culture reporter David Betancourt talk through what the "Black Panther" franchise looks like without its late former star, Chadwick Boseman. Still in a Halloween mood? Extend your spooky season by putting Rina Sawayama's " Frankenstein " on repeat. TikTok of the Day: How Not to Dougie   Follow us on Twitter Brakkton Booker @brakktonbooker Rishika Dugyala @rishikadugyala Teresa Wiltz @teresawiltz Jesús Rodríguez @jesusrodriguezb Jesse Naranjo @jesselnaranjo   Follow us

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