Barack Obama once delivered the line Republicans never let him forget: “You didn’t build that.”

Today, the Democratic Party could say something similar to him. Barack Obama didn’t build Barack Obama alone.

The transformation Obama promised in 2008 is still under way, and he is content to let others finish it.

The talent, intelligence, and ambition were his. But the stage belonged to the Democratic Party. Its donors supplied the money, its convention supplied the audience, and its voters supplied the office that transformed a little-known Illinois politician into a global figure.

Now the institution that helped build Obama is struggling to decide what it believes.

Obama turned 65 this month. He is four years younger than Donald Trump was when Trump descended the escalator and began remaking the Republican Party.

Whatever one thinks of Trump, the Republican Party did not build him. He arrived with his own fortune, celebrity, audience, and brand, then captured the party despite the resistance of much of its establishment.

Obama’s path was nearly the reverse. In 2000, he couldn’t even obtain a floor credential at the Democratic National Convention. Four years later, Democrats put him behind the convention lectern. Four years after that, he was their nominee for president.

The Democratic Party didn’t merely nominate Barack Obama. It introduced him to America.

For more than a decade, opposition to Trump supplied Democrats with something resembling a governing philosophy. Rage generated money, turnout, and unity.

But rage is fuel, not a destination. And Democrats are discovering that when Trump is removed from the sentence, they have difficulty completing it.

The party’s ascendant left has now captured Michigan’s Democratic Senate nomination through Abdul El-Sayed, backed by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Hasan Piker. After El-Sayed’s victory, Obama called him for what the candidate described as a “really warm” conversation.

Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

That call raises a question Obama has so far avoided: Does the party’s left represent an unruly faction, or is it becoming the party’s center of gravity?

Democrats talk endlessly about the virtues of a big tent. But a big tent without a center pole is just a tarp.

Obama remains the one Democrat with enough stature to supply that center.

He has not disappeared. He endorses candidates, gives speeches, and meets privately with lawmakers. Those appearances may help individual candidates. They do not provide direction for a party that increasingly seems unsure where it wants to go.

Obama once possessed the power to name a destination. “Hope and change” invited millions of Americans to imagine a country beyond the politics they knew.

Where is he asking his party to go now?

He could tell Democrats what liberalism must preserve, what progressivism must not replace, and what conduct the party will not tolerate.

Unless, of course, the ascendant left is the destination.

What are Democrats for when they are not against Donald Trump?

Endorsing candidates spends celebrity. Leadership spends political capital.

Democrats describe Trump as an existential threat who may destroy American democracy. Yet Obama confines himself largely to endorsements, private conversations, and measured speeches.

Either the danger is as grave as Democrats insist, in which case Obama’s restraint is difficult to defend, or the rhetoric is exaggerated, in which case his restraint helps expose it.

And if the party’s left threatens traditional liberalism, why won’t he confront it? If it represents the party’s future, why won’t he say so?

His warm reception of El-Sayed suggests a third possibility: The transformation Obama promised in 2008 is still under way, and he is content to let others finish it.

Sarah Rice/Getty Images

Perhaps Obama believes his duty is done. Perhaps the party has moved somewhere he does not wish to follow. Perhaps he wants influence without ownership of the consequences.

Or perhaps the Democratic Party was always more useful to Barack Obama than Barack Obama intended to remain useful to the Democratic Party.

He once reminded successful Americans that they had benefited from institutions they did not create.

He was right about at least one American.

The Democratic Party helped build Barack Obama. Now the Democratic Party needs rebuilding.

Kennedy pointed to the moon. Reagan pointed to a certain wall he wanted torn down. Trump descended an escalator pointing toward a wall he wanted built.

Where is Barack Obama pointing the Democratic Party?

Who gets the GOP when Trump is gone?

When I first entered the public arena, the focus of my work was almost entirely on why the right needed to take power seriously. Conservatives had suffered a devastating string of political and cultural losses because they focused on argument and ideology while paying little attention to the way power actually worked. That criticism drew plenty of hostility from defenders of the status quo who did not appreciate some rookie pointing out why decades of conservative leadership had produced so little.

It turns out I was not alone. Popular voices including Matt Walsh and John Doyle now openly support conservatives taking and wielding power effectively. That disagreement has launched another round of public debate over the pursuit of power, but the argument is only a proxy for a larger battle over JD Vance, foreign policy, and the future of MAGA.

The arguments breaking out across the conservative commentariat are not separate fights. They are proxy battles over the same question.

Donald Trump represented a serious threat to the established political order. Initially dismissed as a brash reality television host, he quickly demonstrated that he was tapping into something deeper than celebrity and catchy insults. Trump was not a career politician. He did not enter politics with deep ideological commitments, and he did not know or care about the established rules.

He fused law and order, economic protectionism, foreign policy restraint, immigration enforcement, and culture-war issues in a way no Republican candidate had since Pat Buchanan. Trump saw an untapped political market and, like any good businessman, gave the customers what they wanted.

Many prominent establishment figures declared themselves “NeverTrump” and vowed to resist MAGA’s takeover of the conservative movement. That strategy failed. Trump became a political steamroller. Some NeverTrumpers migrated into the Democratic coalition or created opposition “conservative” outlets such as the Bulwark. Others decided to wait.

MAGA had the populist momentum, but the establishment still controlled institutions, personnel, and much of the donor class. The bet was that it could outlast MAGA and co-opt it, just as the Republican establishment had absorbed the Tea Party.

The next opportunity came with Ron DeSantis. Establishment conservatives hoped Trump’s legal troubles would make him vulnerable to a popular governor with a record of victories. DeSantis was supposed to offer Trumpism without Trump: populist energy packaged in a form more compatible with the old ideological agenda.

It did not work. Trump’s primary and general-election victories removed any illusion that a direct assault on him from inside the party could succeed.

If the establishment could not oust Trump, the remaining option was to derail his movement and prevent anyone from carrying MAGA into future elections. Despite Republican control of the House, Senate, presidency, and Supreme Court, congressional Republicans have repeatedly clashed with the administration. The Senate has stalled key personnel and has not passed the SAVE Act. Republican politicians know they must praise Trump rhetorically, but many continue to resist important parts of his agenda.

Blaze Media Illustration

Add a deeply unpopular war with no obvious end, and the result is an effective containment mechanism: MAGA divided, distracted, and exhausted.

That is why the fight over JD Vance matters so much. When Trump sent the vice president to negotiate a peace deal, critics who had spent years presenting themselves as Trump’s loyal allies suddenly questioned Vance’s ideology, associations, and viability as a successor. Like Trump, Vance is not wedded to neoconservative foreign policy. His role in the negotiations made clear that he is being prepared as a possible heir to the movement.

At the same time, some critics began presenting Marco Rubio as an alternative while attacking any attempt to withdraw from the conflict.

The fights over power, foreign policy, affordability, and the dangers of the New Right are therefore part of the same proxy war for control of the GOP. It is no accident that many establishment figures who favor expansive military commitments abroad also recoil from using political power aggressively at home.

We can always find money for war, but when the cost of living becomes unbearable, suddenly government action is communism. The overlap is not accidental. It reflects the old conservative settlement: Republicans may fight wars abroad and protect big business at home. They may talk endlessly about social issues, but they are not supposed to spend serious political capital addressing them.

That is why it may seem strange to watch figures such as James Lindsay, Joel Berry, and Ben Shapiro portray Matt Walsh as a socialist or JD Vance as a crypto-Nazi. The rhetoric makes more sense when viewed through coalitional politics. Whatever they think personally of Walsh or Vance, they recognize that both threaten an order that has existed for decades.

The conservative movement became comfortable as beautiful losers: controlled opposition rewarded with money, status, and institutional access while the country moved steadily left. Trump disrupted that arrangement. Vance threatens to continue disrupting it.

Blaze Media Illustration

If conservatism is ever to become a real political movement, it must escape the ideological shackles that keep it from acting. As Russell Kirk argued in “The Conservative Mind,” conservatism should not be about preserving an abstract ideology but a particular people and their way of life.

MAGA represented that shift. It was willing to pursue policies that improved the lives of Americans even when those policies fell outside neoconservative economic or foreign-policy orthodoxy. Achieving those goals requires the right to think seriously about power and how to wield it. Even reducing the size of government requires acquiring and applying state power.

The NeverTrump project now is to poison the well around Vance, prevent him from inheriting the movement, and return the GOP to establishment politics as usual.

That is the argument underneath the latest round of conservative infighting. The personalities change, the immediate controversy changes, and the slogans change, but the stakes remain constant. Someone will define what MAGA becomes after Trump, and the establishment has no intention of surrendering that decision.

The arguments breaking out across the conservative commentariat are not separate fights. They are proxy battles over the same question: Who gets to rule the Republican Party after Trump?

Drain the swamp? Meet the refill.

Darline Nordone’s rise in South Carolina threatens to turn one of MAGA's founding promises into a punch line. The movement that vowed to "drain the swamp" is now watching establishment money, inherited political machinery, and a presidential endorsement converge behind the sister of one of the Senate's most durable establishment figures.

It also risks making Republicans look ridiculous as they denounce the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Democrats will use this cartoonish spectacle to argue that the Republican Party has been captured by corporate interests and turned its back on ordinary Americans.

Nordone (recently rebranded as Darline Graham) remains something of a political blank slate. Beyond the relationship with her late brother Lindsey, her support for a pro-abortion political ally, her years in state bureaucracies, and her association with diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, voters have relatively little record from which to judge what she would actually do in the Senate.

Her refusal to state clearly what she is for and against only deepens the uncertainty.

What voters can reasonably expect, however, is continuity with the Graham political brand: Lindsey Graham's fanatical interventionist foreign policy, establishment instincts at home, and comfort with bipartisan deals that many MAGA voters spent the past decade rejecting.

That is precisely what the MAGA movement was supposed to oppose. We do not need to consult America’s founders to remember why. We need only go back to 2015, when candidate Donald Trump declared war on the political establishment and won by promising to change it.

Obviously, the call to “drain the swamp” reigns supreme in setting the frame, but there is an embarrassment of riches in terms of quotes to choose from to make the point even more specifically. How about at the first Republican debate in 2015:

I will tell you that our system is broken. ... I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. ... And that’s a broken system.

How about candidate Trump on Hillary Clinton:

These interests have rigged our political and economic system for their exclusive benefit. Big business, elite media, and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place. They are throwing money at her because they have total control over everything she does. She is their puppet, and they pull the strings.

And what about the special interest support of failed military interventions supported by his then-opponent Senator Lindsey Graham:

Judging by the incompetent way he ran his campaign, it is easy to see why his military strategies have failed so badly — we can’t even beat ISIS!

That is the political movement I signed up for, volunteered for, worked for, and still fight for.

Finn Gomez/Getty Images

How can that movement be squared with an extension of establishment politics rather than its replacement? It can't. Everything Trump once condemned is now reappearing in almost cartoonish form.

So who is spending so heavily to support Darline Graham Nordone — and what do those interests expect in return?

A group called the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition is flooding money to support Darline Graham Nordone against her conservative opponent Ralph Norman. The group has announced $1 million in the race, as part of a $15 million larger pledge across the country, having already spent millions to defeat conservatives Chip Roy and Andy Ogles in their primary races.

The group is a super PAC, made possible by the 2010 Citizens United decision and its progeny, and funded by "clean energy" interests that favor government support for their industry. Conservatives have spent years attacking that kind of arrangement as corporate welfare — or, less politely, socialism. The point is not that every donor buys a politician outright. It is that political money is rarely charitable. Donors spend because policy matters to them.

Darline Graham Nordone has also received support from the establishment Senate campaign arm, the National Republican Senatorial Committee. While she can’t take over her late brother's campaign account directly, it can be transferred to the NRSC, which is funding her already. Notably, her opponent, Ralph Norman, is an original co-sponsor of the Save America Act from six years ago. For an establishment Senate already twisted into knots over its obstruction of that critical legislation, it makes sense that they wouldn’t want another fierce advocate for it.

There are others in this one-sided spending race as well. The Security is our Strength PAC, formerly associated with Lindsey Graham, is of course supporting her to the tune of $900,000. This group makes it clear that it views her as the one who will be “carrying the legacy forward.”

I take it from their perspective that they want the same out of this Graham that they got out of the last one, which is a different political tune than others suggesting that Darline may be more focused domestically. There is also a group called Palmetto Action that is coming in north of $1 million to oppose Ralph Norman, on similar lines.

Alex WROBLEWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Put simply, a great deal of money is flooding into South Carolina, and most of it is either supporting Darline Graham Nordone or opposing Ralph Norman. For a movement built around draining the swamp, the optics could hardly be worse.

South Carolinians should brace for a deluge of ads from every screen and speaker they own. Special-interest money can move votes; that is why people spend it. But the underlying question will remain: Why is Darline Graham Nordone a serious contender for this Senate seat? Her birthright senatorship via a famous last name, President Trump's endorsement, and a flood of outside money are doing much of the work.

South Carolinians should see this for what it is: a rejection of one of MAGA's core promises. This is not draining the swamp. It is restocking it.

Democrats will happily use this cartoonish spectacle to argue that the Republican Party has been captured by corporate interests and turned its back on ordinary Americans. They will also have an easy answer when Republicans denounce democratic socialism: Why should voters take that charge seriously if a Republican senator reaches office with the help of interests seeking to socialize the costs of private investment?

That will be a tough charge to rebut.

We Can’t Save The American Dream By Pretending Everything Is Just Fine

Our country lives or dies based on how we address the very real problems that have put the American Dream far out of reach for most people.

Republican primary candidate suspended campaign weeks ago — and then defeated Trump-backed candidate

Amir Hassan posted a gracious video on Wednesday accepting defeat in the Republican primary for Michigan's 8th Congressional District.

The candidate got an enthusiastic endorsement from President Donald Trump but lost to fellow Republican Tom Smith, who had dropped out of the race and backed a third candidate.

Hassan is the first congressional candidate with a Trump endorsement to lose in this cycle.

Smith, a retired engineer, told Politico he will return to the campaign and work to defeat first-term incumbent Democrat Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet.

"I look forward to working with Speaker [Mike] Johnson and the entire Republican team to expand our House majority and advance President Trump's America First agenda to lower costs for working families and make America affordable again," Smith said in a statement.

The political unknown raised very little money for the campaign, and in July he was forced to report his meager $1,850 donations in a handwritten note to the Federal Election Commission, claiming to have had issues signing into the online portal.

A Republican strategist who commented anonymously to Politico said that Trump's pick had "clear flaws as a candidate" and opined that the GOP base rejected him because they were "reluctant to support a dude named Amir Hassan."

Hassan is a Navy veteran and former law enforcement officer from Flint.

Rivet was mocked last year by the National Republican Congressional Committee when she sauntered into oncoming traffic in order to escape a tough question.

"I fell short last night. I make no excuse. It was a tough race," Hassan said in his video. "I always think of conservative values, and the biggest conservative value is we don't make excuses."

He went on to endorse the winner and called on the voters to flip the 8th District.

Politico reported that Hassan is the first congressional candidate with a Trump endorsement to lose in this cycle.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Why the "He's Old" Defense for Mitch McConnell Fails

Michigan may help GOP keep control of Senate, no matter who prevails on Democratic side

The presumptive Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan is sitting pretty just hours away from the primary.

According to two polls conducted in late July, Republican primary front-runner Mike Rogers has a lead over the two main candidates vying for the Democratic nomination, Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed.

El-Sayed campaigned with US-hating Islamist Hasan Piker, who once said, 'America deserved 9/11.'

An EPIC-MRA poll conducted July 28 and 29 shows Rogers with a three-point lead over Stevens and in a tie with El-Sayed. A separate EPIC-MRA/MIRS poll from July 24 to 31 shows Rogers with a three-point lead over El-Sayed but two points below Stevens.

The Michigan primary election is Tuesday, and El-Sayed is the current favorite to win the Democratic nomination. The RealClearPolling average shows El-Sayed with a double-digit lead over Stevens, even though Stevens has been endorsed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Once again, that polling average may spell good news for Rogers since El-Sayed's campaign has been shrouded in controversy ever since he announced his Senate candidacy.

Voters in Michigan, which went for President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2024, may not like the fact that El-Sayed:

has been endorsed by far-left radicals like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
campaigned with U.S.-hater Hasan Piker, who once said, "America deserved 9/11, dude. F**k it, I'm sayin' it."
bills himself as a medical "doctor" even though he reportedly has never treated a patient, isn't licensed in Michigan, and has never passed any board exams.
employed a campaign staffer earlier this year who is currently under federal indictment in connection with anti-Semitic attacks.

Rogers believes the showdown in November will all come down to "crazy vs. common sense."

"And it’s exactly why I’ll beat whichever of my radical opponents prevails on Tuesday," Rogers tweeted Sunday.

Sarah Rice/Getty Images

In January 2025, Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) announced unexpectedly that he would not seek a third term. Should Rogers prevail in the election, Republicans would gain another seat, helping fortify their majority. Democrats already need to flip four seats to regain control.

Still, Rogers should not plan to coast his way into November. Rogers narrowly lost the 2024 Senate race to Elissa Slotkin, and Michigan has not elected a Republican U.S. senator since 1994.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here

Democrats have a MAJOR problem going into the midterms: Men

Kamala Harris and her fellow Democrats failed in 2024 to heed political strategist James Carville's warning about repelling potential male voters with "too many preachy females." Their resultant unpopularity among red-blooded American men helped lose them both the White House and the U.S. Senate.

Last year, cash-strapped Democrats blew tens of millions of dollars in hopes of figuring out how to attract male voters, especially young men who shifted to the right by 15 points between 2020 and 2024, providing Republicans with a 56-42 edge.

'55% of men said the party had gone too far to the left.'

Democrats' efforts appear to have been in vain.

According to a Quinnipiac University national poll of registered voters published on Wednesday, 67% of all respondents expressed disapproval for the job that Democrats are doing in Congress. Only 23% signaled approval.

By way of comparison, 63% of respondents expressed disapproval for the job done by congressional Republicans, and 29% signaled approval.

Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto/Getty Images

The responses broken down by sex reveal that while unpopular across the board — even with 38% of registered Democrats — congressional Democrats are hugely unpopular with men.

Seventy-one percent of male voters said that they disapproved of the Democratic Party, and only 20% signaled approval. Disapproval for the Democrats among women was still high at 62%.

When asked whether the Democratic Party has moved too far to the left, too far to the right, or hasn't moved too far in either direction, 55% of men said the party had gone too far to the left. Only 37% of women said the same.

"Looking good," responded conservative commentator Scott Jennings.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Charlie Kirk’s favorite wins Republican primary for Arizona governor

As the general election draws nearer by the day, Arizona Republican voters have given a resounding answer for their gubernatorial pick this week.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) emerged victorious in Tuesday’s Republican primary for Arizona governor, defeating fellow U.S. Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.).

'No matter what your political party is or your background, you deserve a better leader than Katie Hobbs.'

With 84% of the vote counted, Biggs secured a commanding 73.4% of the share, while Schweikert trailed with 14.7%.

In a statement posted to X, Biggs wrote that he was “deeply honored” by the nomination.

“This campaign has been driven by our grassroots supporters from the day we launched in January 2025 with a clear mission of Restoring the American Dream in our great state,” he said.

“Our goal has always been to unite the Republican Party and we’ve done that as much as any nominee in recent memory,” he continued.

Turning his attention to the general election, Biggs took aim at his opponent, incumbent Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.

“As we advance to the General Election, I want to make sure every Arizonan knows this: No matter what your political party is or your background, you deserve a better leader than Katie Hobbs,” he said.

The Republican Governors Association congratulated Biggs on his nomination, writing, “While Katie Hobbs has delivered higher costs and fewer opportunities, Andy Biggs is ready to cut taxes, grow the economy, secure the border, and get Arizona back on track.”

According to the candidates’ most recent campaign finance reports, Hobbs holds a cash-on-hand advantage, with nearly $2 million compared to Biggs’ roughly $1.3 million.

Hobbs ran uncontested in the Democratic primary. In the 2022 gubernatorial election, she narrowly defeated Republican Kari Lake by less than one percentage point.

President Donald Trump endorsed Biggs for governor in April 2025, a backing the congressman leaned heavily into throughout his primary campaign, focusing on border security and lowering taxes.

Biggs also positioned himself as someone who can work across the political aisle, telling USA Today, “I may be conservative, but I’ve also shown that even when you’re conservative, if you look to collaborate, you can find points and ways to collaborate with even people who fundamentally disagree with you on other things.”

More than a third of Arizona voters are not registered with either major party.

Before his passing, the late Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was a public supporter of Biggs, saying at the end of May 2025 during a Turning Point Action rally, “We need to lock down Arizona, and doing that starts with taking down Katie Hobbs and winning back the governor’s mansion. And nobody is better equipped to do that than Rep. Andy Biggs."

Trump carried Arizona by 5.5 percentage points in the 2024 presidential election, the largest margin among the seven swing states. Still, Democrats have continued to perform well statewide, holding both U.S. Senate seats as well as the offices of attorney general and secretary of state.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

You didn’t build that, Mr. Obama

FACT CHECK: James Fishback Is Historically 'Influential Loser'

Who gets the GOP when Trump is gone?

Drain the swamp? Meet the refill.

We Can’t Save The American Dream By Pretending Everything Is Just Fine

Republican primary candidate suspended campaign weeks ago — and then defeated Trump-backed candidate

Michigan may help GOP keep control of Senate, no matter who prevails on Democratic side

Democrats have a MAJOR problem going into the midterms: Men

Charlie Kirk’s favorite wins Republican primary for Arizona governor

‘Hijabs are beautiful’: Famous child content creator Ms. Rachel accused of soft pedaling Islam

Abdul El-Sayed’s Father-in-Law, a Top Donor to an El-Sayed Super PAC, Is Among Top Leaders of Muslim Brotherhood Organization Linked to Terror Funding

Waymo Renames Its New Driverless Cars To Scrub References to CCP-Linked Chinese Company That Makes Them

Trump made politics memorable. Vance is making it shareable.

Gavin Newsom’s Desperate Meme Act Will Definitely Save Democrats

Grief is a killer: New study details the toll a loved one's death can take

We’ll keep you informed with top stories for conservatives who want to become informed decision makers.