After a weekend of glitzy West Coast celebrity fundraisers starring Kanye West, Jamie Foxx and Star Wars director J.J. Abrams, President Barack Obama has no intention of staying on the political sidelines during the 2016 campaign.
In fact, White House officials are vowing the President will stay active both at private fundraisers and at campaign events to help Democratic candidates “up and down the ticket in 2016.”
“As head of the party, he’ll be making sure candidates have the resources they need to wage effective campaigns and he’ll be a forceful messenger for the values and priorities championed by Democrats,” said top White House political strategist David Simas in a statement to CNN.
White House officials caution the level of political activity won’t vary too much from previous election cycles.
Despite Obama’s up and down poll numbers and Hillary Clinton’s recent moves to distance herself from her one-time 2008 rival, the President remains very popular among Democrats.
The President has also signaled he will take increasingly risky political positions on hot-button issues like gun control. After a mass shooting at an Oregon community college earlier this month, Obama promised to “politicize” the issue, a comment that outraged gun control opponents.
Obama has a vested interest in handing the keys to the White House to Democrats. White House officials have said privately Obama is following the 2016 campaign closely, as he hopes to see key pillars of his political legacy, from Obamacare to the Iran Nuclear Deal, preserved by a Democratic president.