Maybe former President Obama got the message when he spoke to African Americans in Philadelphia. The thrill is gone. The racialist policies just don't work anymore. People are tired of hearing sermons from former presidents with mansions and First Ladies who sent their kids to expensive private schools. 

We saw on Election Day the end of Obama as a candidate. His "emerging majority" did not emerge, as David Weigel pointed out:

Republicans ended election night confident that they would win the presidency, flip the Senate, and perhaps narrowly hold the House of Representatives. In Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s most famous supporters were talking about winning the popular vote, a mandate that MAGA couldn’t grab in two prior presidential campaigns.

The apparent result means the defeat of a strategy that nearly all Democrats embraced after the 2016 election: Delivering populist labor, tax, and healthcare policies that they thought could win back Obama-Trump voters and stop any more losses with non-white voters.

That was not enough for swing voters, who never stopped crediting Trump with pre-COVID economic growth while absolving him for his handling of the pandemic. And that angst cut across racial lines -- along with anger at progressive crime and immigration policies that Vice President Kamala Harris abandoned before running.

To be fair, maybe no one could have saved the Democrats from the failure of the Biden presidency. Maybe it was too much to expect that a former president would save a candidate trying to defend a candidate who couldn't answer a complex situation.

Nevertheless, the Democrats need to look for new faces and different speakers at their next convention. The Obama coalition based on identity politics, green energy and taxing the rich is history. I have a feeling that Governor Josh Shapiro is not going to ask the Obamas or Clintons to speak on his behalf the next time around.

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Image: AT via Magic Studio