🥰 The Democratic Party is divided. But almost all Democratic voters still agree on one thing: They really like Barack Obama.

👑 The former president remains the most powerful and popular Democrat in America, with the ability to play kingmaker in the presidential election — if he chooses to.

Driving the news: Obama's de facto leadership of the party has been on full display the past month.

• Most of the top Democrats eyeing White House runs in 2028, along with several up-and-coming leaders in the party, made the pilgrimage to Chicago on June 19 to celebrate the new Obama Presidential Center, where they waxed nostalgic about his presidency.
• 😢 California Gov. Gavin Newsom told reporters that he "literally started tearing up" as he toured the center.

A June CNN poll found that 96% of Democrats have a favorable view of Obama. (Only 71% of Democrats said the same of Joe Biden.)

• Several Democrats in tough primary races — including those who at times have had fraught relationships with Obama, such as Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz — regularly feature him in their ads, videos and website messages.
• Some prominent Democrats such as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff even occasionally sound like Obama in their speaking cadence, with a building crescendo to an aspirational message.

🤫 Between the lines: Obama is actively working to navigate the Democratic Party out of the Trump era, but prefers to exert his influence behind the scenes.

• "What I've tried to do is to move from player to coach," he told ABC News last month. He frequently is a sounding board for potential 2028 candidates, as he was in the run-up to the 2020 election.
• "I strongly believe that my highest and best use now is to help find the next set of leaders who are going to move us forward," he told the New Yorker. He added that "the very best leaders can tap into the zeitgeist of the moment."
• As part of that effort, he recently appeared with young, rising stars, including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Texas Senate candidate James Talarico.

Obama also often subtly weighs in on tactics and policies when he thinks Democrats aren't moving in the right direction.

• 📞 He's been hitting the phones to help come up with an artificial intelligence policy that's not "simply a knee-jerk 'Screw the billionaires in tech,' because the genie's out of the bottle," he told the New Yorker.
• "If we do not have an agenda for that, then I think some of the populist impulses that have been there already can go in all kinds of stray directions," he said.

Obama has been a critical figure in determining each Democratic nominee since his presidency.

• In 2016, his clear preference for Hillary Clinton to be his successor made it difficult for him to unite the party after the divisive primary — which ultimately hurt Clinton in the general election.
• In 2020, Obama was less overt but still worked behind the scenes to push the party to consolidate behind Biden.
• And in 2024, Obama was part of the establishment's effort to get Biden to end his reelection campaign after his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.
• A spokesperson for Obama declined to comment.

Obama knows that what happens in 2028 affects not just the country and the Democratic Party, but also his own legacy.

• He's seemed unsure how to interpret his presidency being followed by Trump — a man his opposite in so many ways.

That dynamic is reflected in how Obama approached his presidential memoir.

• 📖 Instead of one memoir, as most recent presidents have done, Obama divided his book into two parts.
• The first part — published after the 2020 election, "A Promised Land" — doesn't end with Obama's first term, but rather the emergence of Trump on the political scene by peddling the racist birther conspiracy theory about Obama.
• The final chapter includes the weekend in 2011 when Obama oversaw the operation to kill Osama bin Laden after skewering Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner with the future president in attendance.
• Trump "was a spectacle, and in the United States of America in 2011, that was a form of power," Obama wrote. "Far from being ostracized for the conspiracies he'd peddled, he in fact had never been bigger."

Read more.

— Alex Thompson

A look at what potential 2028 Democratic presidential contenders are up to:

• 🗳️ New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed left-wing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, the New York Times scooped. It marks the first time AOC has waded into a contested Senate race this year — and comes as some progressives have pushed her to get involved in more primaries.
• 👀 Former Vice President Kamala Harris reached out to Mamdani and met with a co-founder of the pro-Palestinian "Uncommitted Movement" last month, we first reported. It was the latest sign she's laying the groundwork for a potential run for president.
• 📈 Buttigieg continues to lead the field of potential 2028 Democratic primary contenders in New Hampshire, according to the latest poll by Saint Anselm College. The survey found AOC running second in the state, which is expected to hold one of the first primaries.
• 🦀 Maryland Gov. Wes Moore campaigned in Michigan for gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson and leaned into his identity as a political outsider, calling on Democrats to "disrupt the status quo."
• 👍 Shapiro went on MS Now's "Morning Joe" and praised his "good friend," Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, for winning that state's gubernatorial primary last week against Sen. Michael Bennet. Weiser said he was seen as the "anti-establishment outsider" in the race — a potentially encouraging sign for governors eyeing 2028 runs for the White House as outside-the-Beltway voices.
• Shapiro also appeared on the "Press Box" podcast, where he said "we may need to amend the Constitution … to rein in the corruption of an executive." On the home front, his state's budget is late again.
• 😎 California Rep. Ro Khanna endorsed Colorado democratic socialist Melat Kiros, who ousted 15-term U.S. House incumbent Diana DeGette in last week's Democratic primary. He also appeared to throw shade at AOC for not backing primary challengers to her House colleagues: "Congress can be a club," Khanna wrote on X. "After I beat an incumbent, I promised myself I would never pull up the drawbridge in lifting up bold, new voices."
• 🕵️‍♀️ Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego scored a victory when the Senate's ethics panel dismissed a complaint against him — only to then become the latest potential 2028 Democratic candidate under investigation by the Trump administration.
• 🍽️ Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly is traveling to Ohio to headline a state Democratic Party dinner Aug. 1, Politico first reported.
• 🇺🇸 Several potential 2028 contenders gave speeches that served as counterprogramming to Trump's July Fourth address. Newsom argued that Trump "exhibits the very behaviors our founding fathers fought against." Moore said "the very premise of patriotism is under attack." And Shapiro called on Pennsylvanians to "protect our fundamental freedoms and stand up to the petty tyrants in our way."
• Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is speaking on the state of U.S.-Israel relations at Tel Aviv University on Wednesday.

A book on the beach is one of life's greatest pleasures.

The Ankler asked celebrities, politicos and other heavyweights for their summer reading recommendations — and a couple of the potential presidential contenders for 2028 gave especially revealing answers.

• Newsom said he named Jim Collins' "What to Make of a Life: Cliffs, Fog, Fire and the Self-Knowledge Imperative," because he's "the best there is at challenging the assumptions and limits we place on ourselves."
• Moore picked Colin Powell's "My American Journey," saying it "helped me reconcile two contrasting feelings — on one hand, a lucid understanding of America's uneven history, and on the other, a deeply felt desire to serve this country in uniform."
• We also asked Khanna, another possible 2028 contender: He chose Ben Rhodes' "All We Say: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches," adding, "Any leader who hopes to lead us out of this abyss must take inspiration from the greats of the past who faced greater adversity."

— Holly Otterbein