The big Dem stars in 2028 and 2032 are strategically working this week's DNC

CHICAGO — Democrats have a Barack Obama hangover.

It wasn’t just that the former president gave a rousing speech the night before. As the convention turned to the up-and-comers who spoke in prime time Wednesday, they were still chasing his ability to broaden the party’s appeal.

In Obama, Democrats saw a candidate who had the unique appeal of reaching both progressive and moderate Democrats, and independent voters, who he carried by 8 percentage points in 2008 , before losing them four years later.

“You have to have the ability to reach across the aisle and communicate with people who we want to listen to us,” said Kip Tew, who was Obama’s senior adviser in Indiana, the red state he won in 2008. ”If you are trying to emulate somebody, that's a pretty good person to emulate.”

Whether Democrats can expand their reach is a major question hanging over Kamala Harris’ candidacy — and part of the reason she picked Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor who unseated a Republican from a conservative-leaning House seat in 2006, as her running mate. And it’s a question permeating the ranks of the party here in their own maneuvering ahead of future elections, as the Democrats seeking to approximate Obama’s breakout convention speech in 2004 worked delegate breakfasts, hotel ballrooms and, on Wednesday, the convention stage.

They were trying to broaden the Democratic Party’s appeal — and their own — on a bigger stage.

There was Walz, who said “we’re all in this together” and spoke of “running in a deep-red district.” And Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor who, like Obama did in his 2004 speech, struck a patriotic note, saying: "It sure as hell isn't freedom to say 'you can go vote, but he gets to pick the winner.' That's not freedom."

And then there was Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden’s transportation secretary, who said when he came on stage, “I’m Pete Buttigieg, and you might recognize me from Fox News.”

Their appearances capped a week of campaigning on the sidelines of the convention hall. Buttigieg, Shapiro, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock were all at the South Carolina Democratic Party’s breakfast on Tuesday morning, appearing with Democrats in the first-in-the-South primary state, but also a deeply red one.

“A lot of aspiring Democratic stars are grappling with how to balance the hopeful, unifying message that made Obama so successful and the intensity of the fear and anger the base understandably feels towards Trump and the GOP,” said one Democratic speechwriter granted anonymity to speak freely. “How do you build a broad, future-oriented coalition in a country where one side won't even acknowledge the results of an election they lose?”

Outside of the convention hall, many of the same Democrats who addressed the South Carolina Democrats cycled through the New Hampshire delegation’s breakfasts — paying their respects to activists from the home of the first-in-the-nation primary that Biden notably tried, and, because of state law, failed, to strip away. A small wooden egg, a staple of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics where presidential hopefuls and would-be candidates come to make their mark in the state, was emblazoned with the words “Presidential Primary NH 2028.”

Shapiro hosted a “Real Freedom Happy Hour” for his PAC on Monday night with about 500 delegates, elected officials and donors at the Epiphany Center a few blocks away from the United Center. That same day, Buttigieg’s political shop Win the Era held a donor event in Chicago that welcomed roughly 200 people at an Italian restaurant.

For Obama veterans, Harris’ campaign has represented a return to the more optimistic worldview that animated the party back in 2008 — one that, importantly, was not riven by never-ending fights over language and policy details.

Some of that cohort has blamed the left for driving the party away from more moderate voters, turning Democrats from a big-tent party associated with the working class to one that critics said appeared exclusionary and overly concerned with a small set of social issues.

“There’s been a rising group within the party that was given, I think, excessive voice relative to their actual political results, especially after the 2016 election,” said a veteran Democratic strategist granted anonymity to speak freely. “And they’re wrong: their approach doesn’t work politically, doesn’t work policy-wise and it doesn’t resonate.”

But in Harris and this next generation of Democrats, there are key parallels with 2008 that have allowed the party to largely sidestep many of those policy divisions — at least for now.

Just as Obama in 2008 offered a break from the Bush-Clinton fights of the past, Harris has sparked new enthusiasm among voters who had previously resigned themselves to a rematch of the 2020 race.

The enthusiasm that Obama generated in 2008 went beyond just the rhetorical benefits, netting him the big margins in Congress that he’d eventually need to push through the Affordable Care Act. The resulting legislative process was a lengthy and painful one, and contributed to Democrats’ wipeout in the 2010 midterms. But Obama’s expansive domestic policy vision has grown more popular with time, with the ACA now widely recognized as one of the party’s landmark achievements of the last several decades.

And if not able to match Obama in soaring rhetoric, the newer generation of Democratic leaders appearing here were at the very least pursuing many of the same goals of broadening the party’s appeal and recentering its focus on the working class and key economic issues.

“I think we’ve been on this doom loop … we escaped Covid, and now it looked like a repeat of the same election,” said Eric Waldo, who ran Michelle Obama’s Reach Higher initiative, aimed at inspiring students to pursue postsecondary degrees, in the Obama White House. “Then at this moment you have a chance to get something new, which is what Barack Obama symbolized in ’08.”

No one compares to the 44th president, said David Axelrod, the former senior Obama strategist. But he said some of the party’s rising stars have demonstrated that they can connect with red America in similar ways.

“The Obamas are singular communicators who really know how to translate their own experiences and experiences like people they know and they've met. They’re storytellers,” he said. “And those stories are very, very powerful, and not everybody can do that.”

Even so, he said, Buttigieg hails from Indiana and “he talks about faith, he talks about service, he talks about some of those very same values.” Shapiro, Axelrod said, likewise “did very well in red Pennsylvania” in his 2022 gubernatorial election.

Democratic pollster John Anzalone said many of the party’s convention speakers constituted part of what he called “an amazing bench,” including Democrats who can talk to a broader electorate.

“There's never been a time when Pete Buttigieg hasn't opened his mouth that he's not on fire, like he's the guy who can go on Fox and just obliterate them,” he said. “I love [Sen. Amy] Klobuchar, because she's kind of real and she says stuff in a language that is very Midwestern.”

And then there is Walz, the Midwestern governor, whose position on the bench will be much more prominent if he and Harris win in November.

Outside the New Hampshire delegation's breakfast Wednesday morning, Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-N.H.), told POLITICO that Democrats can still connect with rural Americans, "but I think it's a question of emphasis."

"And I'm super excited about the pick of Tim Walz," she said. "These are the people that Tim Walz has been speaking to his entire life."