Obama’s orbit loses altitude: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

Happy Tuesday and welcome back from the long weekend. In today’s edition, we explore how Barack Obama’s political orbit is losing some of its clout. Plus, Steve Kornacki breaks down where New Jersey’s traditionally powerful Democratic county parties stand in the state’s crowded gubernatorial primary.

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Obama world loses its shine in a changing — and struggling — Democratic Party

By Natasha Korecki, Jonathan Allen and Allan Smith

There’s a growing sentiment across a Democratic Party searching for a path forward: Team Obama’s bloom may be falling off the rose.

More Democrats are openly criticizing former President Barack Obama’s strategists and consultants — including David Plouffe, who played a key role in Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign — who were long treated as the high priests of their party’s politics.

Democratic National Committee officials at a news event last month blamed Obama’s lack of investment in state parties over his two terms for setting back local organizing, with the party still feeling the effects.

The so-called Obama coalition of voters — less politically engaged voters, younger voters and voters of color — is no more. In 2024, each of those groups shifted toward Donald Trump in high numbers.

Going forward, it could mark a clean slate for a party whose course for nearly two decades cascaded from decisions Obama had made.

It was Obama who chose Joe Biden as his vice president, offering him the elevated perch that set up his 2020 election and his aborted 2024 re-election campaign. Obama selected Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state, then anointed her for the Democratic nomination in the 2016 race against Trump. The operatives Obama and his top aides empowered have carved out leading, decision-making roles at the top of the Democratic Party since then.

Obama himself remains a force in the party, filling stadiums and commanding the attention of major donors. Indeed, the DNC is in talks with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy to host Obama for a fundraiser at his home, according to two people with knowledge of the planning, which is still in its early stages.

But even the former president’s luster was showing signs of fading last fall, a phenomenon that threatens to persist as the next crop of young voters ages into adulthood. When the 2028 presidential election arrives, it will be 20 years since Obama’s first victory. At that point, more voters will have come of age in the era of Trump than in the era of Obama.

Read more from the team →

Democrats in disarray, cont.: 1-vote victory for Trump’s big bill inflames Democratic clash over aging leaders, by Sahil Kapur

New Jersey governor’s race tests the staying power of Democrats’ county machines

By Steve Kornacki

One metric has traditionally been all but definitive when it comes to New Jersey Democratic contests: the county line. And by that metric, one candidate is running circles around the others ahead of the June 10 gubernatorial primary: Rep. Mikie Sherrill.

Sherrill has won endorsements from 10 of the state’s 21 county Democratic organizations, including three of the four largest. Only two of the other five candidates in the race, Rep. Josh Gottheimer and former state Senate President Steve Sweeney, have notched any county endorsements.