Democrats’ Struggles Could Be Partly Because They’re Just Too Old, Says Obama

Former President Barack Obama is urging the Democratic Party to invest in younger candidates if it wants to come out victorious in the 2026 midterm elections and, eventually, the 2028 presidential election.

In an interview with YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen that was published Saturday, the 64-year-old said part of the reason his own elections were so successful was because he was young at the time.

“I’m a pretty healthy 64, feel great, but the truth is, half of the references that my daughters make about social media, TikTok and such, I don’t know who they’re talking about,” he said. “There is an element of, at some point, you age out. You’re not connected directly to the immediate struggles that folks are going through.”

Former President Joe Biden, who was Obama's vice president, was the oldest man to assume the presidency at the age of 78 in 2021. His decision to seek reelection in 2024 repeatedly drew concerns from voters who wondered how the octogenarian would be able to handle a second term in the White House. The fears were only amplified after a disastrous debate performance full of gaffes and losing his trains of thought. Obama, who had originally supported Biden in the election, went on to campaign for Biden's younger replacement atop the ticket, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, after Biden ended his campaign.

Congressional leaders have long faced criticism for the advanced age of members. A 2023 Pew Research poll found that nearly 80 percent of adults favor maximum age limits for elected officials. The idea extends to public attitudes toward Supreme Court justices, with 74 percent of adults favoring a maximum age limit for the nation’s highest court.

“I’m not making a hard and fast rule here, but I do think that Democrats do well when we have candidates who are plugged into the moment, to the zeitgeist, to the times and the particular struggles that folks are thinking about as they look towards the future, rather than look backward toward the past,” Obama told Cohen.

Obama also said he hopes to "reinvigorate" the "civic muscles" of Americans through his presidential center, particularly of young Americans.

"That spirit, that energy, it’s out there, and you can feel it, but it’s bottled up," he said. "We haven’t given enough outlets for young people to figure out, 'How do I become a part of that?' That’s this enormous, untapped power that we have to get back to."

Still, Obama appeared hopeful about Democrats' chances in November and in 2028, in part because of what he called the “clown show” of the Trump administration.

“There's this sort of clown show that's happening in social media and on television,” he said, adding that most Americans find the administration’s behavior “troubling.”

“The current White House, this administration and their enablers, they're behaving so badly, they are doing such crazy stuff that it shouldn't be hard for our side to coalesce around the areas where we agree on and focus on that and I think that that is going to happen,” Obama said.

But, he continued, Democrats have a “harder job” than their Republican colleagues because Democrats are in the minority in Congress — and he called on Democrats to take a tougher stance toward accomplishing their policy goals.

“We've got to cobble together a majority and we've got to persuade and we've got to convince. And so I do think that there's been some unwillingness on the part of Democrats in the past to break down some additional barriers for us getting stuff done,” he said.