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The first time I remember hearing Barack Obama’s name was in late 2006 or early 2007. I was sitting in seventh grade social studies, where we were encouraged to discuss current events. “I think he’s going to run for president,” our teacher confided in a knowing yet slightly hushed tone, almost like she still couldn’t quite believe it.

Back then, much of the excitement was bound up in the prospect of America having its first Black president, but Obama ultimately proved himself to be worthy of it. Two decades on, the energy he created has morphed into something decidedly more desperate. Obama is the only Democratic president this century to win reelection and remains one of the country’s most popular political figures. Which might explain why Democrats, looking ahead to congressional elections this fall and a 2028 presidential race whose stakes feel existential, keep looking for the former president’s spiritual successor: someone who can inspire, speak, and above all win, just like the real thing. All summer, voters, consultants, and pundits have repeatedly attached Obama’s name like a Homeric epithet to a bumper crop of young, talented, and mostly male candidates running across the country.

It’s happened to Abdul El-Sayed, the party’s nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, whose self-confident swagger and immigrant-family story have invited the comparison. “It reminded me a lot of the Barack Obama bio,” Jon Favreau, Obama’s former speechwriter, recalled after seeing El-Sayed at a fundraiser.

Then there’s James Talarico, the Texas state representative running for U.S. Senate whose winning primary campaign former New York Times columnist Charles Blow likened to Obama’s 2008 faceoff against Hillary Clinton. After Talarico’s campaign posted footage of the former president stumping with him at a taco shop this spring, the equivalencies flowed in. “I think you have what it takes to be the next Obama and Lord knows we need it!” one Facebook commenter wrote.

The Obama parallel has similarly been lavished on two Democratic governors who look set to cruise to reelection this fall: Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Wes Moore of Maryland, who started fielding Obama analogies even before he became the state’s first Black governor. Pete Buttigieg, the former Biden transportation secretary who isn’t officially running for anything right now, has been getting the comparison for years.

Even Graham Platner, the scruffy Maine oyster farmer, was winning Obama-esque praise before his Senate candidacy imploded. Jim Messina, Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, dubbed Platner’s victory speech on primary night a “masterclass” that recalled the 44th president. (A few weeks later, after an ex-girlfriend accused Platner of rape, Messina suggested Platner should “go jump in a Maine lake.”) Further south, Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat who is up for reelection this fall, has been likened to the former president for viral speeches that are already earning him national attention and fueling 2028 chatter.

The search for an Obama inheritor isn’t totally new. Ahead of the 2020 election, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker tussled over the former president’s legacy in what the Los Angeles Times perceptively dubbed “the Obama primary.” The search has taken on new proportions and greater urgency as Democrats once again seek to claw their way back to power after yet another Trump presidency. The question is: Even if they find their guy, is an Obama 2.0 what the party needs, now, or in 2028?

To give Democrats their due, trying to re-create a popular two-term commander in chief in the aggregate doesn’t seem like the worst strategy in the world. After the Biden interregnum and Donald Trump’s return, nostalgia for better political times appears broadly felt: A January poll of a hypothetical 2028 third-term matchup against Trump found Obama ahead by double digits. (Neither man can legally be elected again.) Historical patterns are worth taking seriously, too. Every couple of decades, it seems, Democrats turn to a sunny, novel-seeming, relatively young........

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