Years after he left office, Barack Obama's legacy is under serious threat from the unlikeliest of sources. This time it has nothing to do with Donald Trump, writes Sam Clench for news.com.au
For six hours this week, across two separate debates, the candidates fighting for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination slugged it out on stage.
Because I'm a nerd and apparently a bit of a masochist, I watched the whole tedious exercise. One thing stood out.
While the Democrats spent plenty of time bashing Donald Trump and his "dark psychic energy" — that's a real quote, I promise — he was not their only target.
Many of them also took aim at his predecessor Barack Obama.
It is hard to understate just how stunning that sentence is.
Think back to January of 2017 when Mr Obama left office as one of the most popular presidents in American history. The idea of any mainstream Democrat criticising his record was pretty much unthinkable.
As Democratic voters decide who will confront Mr Trump next year and, they hope, become Mr Obama's successor, they are wrestling with just how much of his legacy to preserve — and how much to reject.
Two major policy areas are at the heart of the argument. The first is healthcare.
Mr Trump won the presidency promising to repeal Mr Obama's signature achievement, Obamacare, which expanded health insurance coverage to millions more Americans.
The President ultimately failed to follow through. He couldn't find enough votes in Congress.
But having stubbornly defended the healthcare law from his efforts, some of the top tier Democratic candidates now want to scrap it and start again.
Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris all support replacing Obamacare with some form of "Medicare for all".
That could mean something along the lines of our own system, where everyone is covered by Medicare but private insurance is still available. Or it could be more radical. Ms Warren and Mr Sanders both want to ban private health insurance entirely.
Obamacare barely passed after an extremely ugly legislative fight a decade ago. It was seen, by his own party at least, as a historic achievement. Now many in that same party believe it did not go nearly far enough.
The only major candidate vociferously defending it is Joe Biden — and he has no real choice in the matter, having served as Mr Obama's vice president. He can hardly disown the policies he helped craft.
A number of candidates are also being fiercely critical of Mr Obama's record on immigration, particularly his administration's mass deportation of three million undocumented migrants.
Barack Obama is no longer above criticism in the Democratic Party. Photo / Getty Images
Many of them support decriminalising the act of crossing the border as a means to remove the legal justification for locking migrants — including children — in detention centres.
On stage this week, Mr Biden came under fire from Mr Obama's former housing secretary Julian Castro, a leading advocate of that approach.
Mr Biden was pressured to explain whether he had argued against the mass deportation policy from his position of influence in the White House. He refused.
"I found that the secretary, we sat together in many meetings, I never heard him talk about any of this when he was the secretary," Mr Biden said in frustration.
"It looks like one of us has learned from the lessons of the past and one of us hasn't," Mr Castro shot back, getting large cheers from the crowd.
"What we need are some politicians who actually have some guts on this issue."
The clear implication was that Mr Biden, and by extension Mr Obama as well, did not show the necessary fortitude when they were in power.
Mr Biden continued to defend his former boss, bristling at suggestions Mr Obama had been almost as harsh on undocumented migrants as Mr Trump.
"To compare him to Donald Trump, I think, is absolutely bizarre," he said.
Democrats are still reluctant to slam Mr Obama explicitly and directly by name. But there is no denying much of the current political debate is being framed around a rejection of his policies.
Best buddies. Photo / Getty Images
The party has moved conspicuously to the left since 2016, making positions that used to be untenable a core part of several candidates' platforms.
But going too far in that direction could prove disastrous if it costs the eventual nominee swing voters in the general election.
The fact is, Mr Obama was aggressively centrist compared with most members of the current Democratic field, and he is still wildly popular — particularly among Democratic voters, with whom he has an average approval rating of more than 85 per cent.
Rejecting his successful, election-winning political philosophy in favour of something markedly more progressive would be a tremendous gamble.
"It was weird for me to watch about 40 minutes of primarily attacks on the Obama administration's policies," said MSNBC's Joy Reid after the debate on Wednesday night.
"It was an odd strategy to me. It's almost as if the debate forgot who was president."
Former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough, who now hosts a morning news program, echoed her.
"These candidates are attacking Barack Obama's policy positions more than Donald Trump. That is politically stupid and crazy," he said.
"Hit Trump. Not Obama. It's not that hard, folks."
Mr Biden remains the odd one out.
His entire campaign is premised on the calculation that Americans are nostalgic for the Obama years. If anything, he risks clinging too tightly to the former president.
That problem was summed up pretty well earlier this year on National Best Friends Day when Mr Biden posted this cringe-worthy tweet.
Even after being roundly mocked for overegging it, Mr Biden has continued to invoke his relationship with Mr Obama, often using his former boss as a shield against criticism.
It's a strategy that doesn't work quite so well when his opponents are perfectly willing to criticise Mr Obama's record. On immigration, for instance, Mr Biden simply can't escape his share of the blame.
"You can't have it both ways. You invoke President Obama more than anyone else in this campaign. You can't do it when it's convenient and then duck it when it's not," one rival, Cory Booker, said on Wednesday night.
Joe Biden. Photo / Getty Images
But Mr Booker and the other Democrats are arguably trying to have it both ways as well.
On the one hand, they will inevitably want voters to associate them with Mr Obama. You can guarantee the former president will appear often on the campaign trail next year, regardless of who claims the nomination.
On the other, they are distancing themselves from huge parts of his record, including his one signature achievement.
One man who is probably enjoying the Democratic infighting. Photo / Getty Images
Ultimately, Mr Obama's own party might undermine his legacy more thoroughly than Donald Trump ever could.
