First lady Melania Trump, President Donald Trump, former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama walk together following the inauguration ceremony on Jan. 20. | Getty For mourning Democrats, Michelle Obama offers hope The former first lady’s superfans, still wishing she would run, hotly anticipate her next move.

Michelle Obama has said, over and over again, that she is not going to run for president.

That has not stopped some people from dreaming.


After Hillary Clinton’s loss in the November election left Democrats in disarray, the hashtag “#DraftMichelle” trended on Twitter. People started Facebook pages and petitions calling on her to run for office, whether for president or chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Jimmy Fallon, hosting the former first lady on “The Tonight Show” earlier this month, toasted Obama by thanking her for “being a strong, smart, independent woman — an activist, a style icon and a great dancer, and showing us all what it would look like if Beyoncé married a much nerdier Jay Z.” Then he begged her to run for president in 2020.

Even as the former first lady transitions back to private life, the buzz persists, with her admirers watching to see where she goes next, and some not willing to let go of the idea of a third Obama administration.

Erik Reich, a chiropractor in Connecticut who started a super PAC called “Ready For Michelle 2020” last fall, said he wasn’t deterred by Obama’s repeated insistence that she has no intention of running for office.

“Almost all of them say that. I would take that with a grain of salt,” he said.

Reich said he was inspired to start his own PAC in part because Stephen Colbert showed how easy it was on his old Comedy Central show. He plans to fundraise for the group as a hobby, with the hopes of putting the money toward assisting progressive candidates in 2018 — and, ideally, Obama herself in 2020.

Reich described the former first lady’s appeal this way: “She brought a lot of class to the office. She’s been very out front with certain issues, and she’s going to have four years to build upon that, and I think it’s going to be interesting to see where she goes in four years.”

“I think we’re ready for a woman president,” he added. “Everybody likes her. Well, not everybody, but close.”

Once a reluctant political spouse, Obama is now one of the most popular figures in and outside of Washington. Her approval ratings, pegged at 68 percent last week by Gallup, are higher than her husband’s, and many women adore her.

“Michelle Obama, at least in my observation, has come through this experience with the hopes and dreams, the devotion, of women around this country in a way that so far is really unmatched,” said Ruth Mandel, the director of Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics. “She has become iconic, awesome for people.”

“I don’t know if that weighs on her,” Mandel continued. “What must it feel like to know that all these adoring women — and certainly men, too, but certainly women and girls — are looking at her to sort of light a way and take a step that will be consistent with how they’ve come to see her, as someone who’s really a national icon?”

Obama’s following is partly out of respect for her advocacy on issues like supporting military families and widespread envy of her wardrobe. But her star power clearly grew last year, when she emerged as a powerful surrogate for Clinton’s campaign, offering eloquent takedowns of Donald Trump without naming him.

Obama, who is vacationing with her husband in Palm Springs, California, after last Friday’s inauguration ceremony, has stayed mostly quiet on her post-White House plans. She has hinted at continuing to advocate for girls’ education and children’s health, issues she championed as first lady. The Washington Post also reported that a small staff headed by Melissa Winter, Obama’s deputy chief of staff, will work for her in Washington, where the Obamas plan to stay as daughter Sasha finishes high school.

Other than that, circumstances suggest she could do a lot: At 53, she is relatively young, with ample time for another professional act, or two. As a former lawyer and hospital executive, she is educated and accomplished separate from the White House. And her children are close to grown, meaning she’ll soon be freed up from the constraints of parenting. All this, and the aforementioned icon status.

“She can really do anything she wants,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University.

The expectation is that Obama, like other first ladies, will write a memoir, a project that will almost certainly top best-seller lists and could break records. And she will likely play a role in the Obama Foundation and shaping her husband’s presidential library, to be based in her native Chicago’s South Side.

Given the work required to write a book worth a multimillion-dollar advance and build a presidential center, those projects alone could demand most of her attention for four or five years, according to Brinkley.

Next, he said, “she’ll hit a new phase in her life when she’ll decide if she wants to be the president of a university, lead a foundation or simply be a spokesperson on issues dealing with young people.”

Modern first ladies have gone on to start nonprofits, like Lady Bird Johnson, who co-founded a research center on wildflowers, and Betty Ford, whose center offers addiction treatment.

They’ve also hit the speaking circuit, as Obama may. “She and her husband will be two of the most in-demand speakers in North America and around the world,” given their celebrity and established skills as orators, said David Lavin, president of the Lavin Agency speakers bureau. “I think that’s just a given.”

Some first ladies, of course, have also pursued politics. Eleanor Roosevelt famously represented the country at the U.N. and supervised the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Clinton won election to the Senate before her husband left the White House, later became the nation’s top diplomat, and ran twice for the presidency.

First ladies are generally popular at the end of their tenures, more so than their husbands, but experts say the buzz around Obama is special. The yearning for her to jump back into the political fray, for example, is probably stronger because of Clinton’s loss there.

To despondent Democrats looking for a leader despite a weak bench, and women still desperate to elect the first Madame President, Obama provides hope.

They recall her speeches on the campaign trail last fall — her criticisms of Trump were restrained, but searing — and see a way forward. Her emotional address at the Democratic National Convention last summer, in which she boldly recalled raising black daughters in a house that was built by slaves, was an instant classic.

“Her whole persona is a positive, ‘We can do it’ persona. I think people are drawn to that,” said Jean Wahl Harris, a professor of political science at the University of Scranton who studies first ladies. “People don’t want her power, her force, to end. Because she is a political force.”

Added Mandel: “How we quote her, ‘When they go low, we go high’ — that’s a beacon.”

Were she to change her mind, she’d have options. Chicago politics would welcome her, said Jacob Kaplan, the executive director of Illinois’ Cook County Democratic Party.

“If she were to run for office here, the sky would be the limit, obviously,” he said. “Whether it’s mayor or governor, you name it, I think she’d be the front-runner.”

Democrats in her hometown recognize that it won’t happen. But her fans are going to continue to speculate, even if it’s to Obama’s chagrin.

“I expect that for the next couple years there will be Facebook groups and people mailing me bumper stickers,” said Robert Watson, a professor of American studies at Lynn University in Florida who wrote a book on first ladies. “There will still be a longing for her to run.”

