President Barack Obama heads into the 2016 campaign season in a position few in the White House or anywhere else expected a year ago: in demand.

The president and his aides are expecting to capitalize on that popularity, according to people familiar with the planning, taking a more active role this election cycle than during last year’s midterms. Those plans include Obama hitting the campaign trail as early as the spring to help unite the party after the primaries and to sound off on Republicans he portrays as not serious enough for prime time.


He’s been watching the race come together so far and has been eager to dip in, already taking swings at Donald Trump, Mike Huckabee and Jeb Bush, among others.

Obama’s expected to be active in House and Senate races, too, mostly in fundraising, but in other ways as well, given a Senate map that’s the flip side of 2014, with most competitive races in blue and Obama-friendly states.

Underlying all of this is a question that will start to come into focus in Tuesday night’s debate: how much the candidates running for president and every other office embrace Obama and his legacy, and how much they try to distance themselves.

Among many voters, they need him — no one is more popular with Democrats at the moment and he could move enough to help secure battlegrounds like Florida and Wisconsin. But they also need him to stay away from other contests; polling shows him almost certain to be an anchor in North Carolina and Iowa.

There’s a lot at stake: Whoever the nominee is will need to activate the Obama coalition — mostly African-Americans, Latinos, young people and others who were first-time voters in 2008 — in the general election, and to win the primaries as well. That’s going to be hard to do without embracing Obama for the people running for president and, to a lesser extent, for other Democratic candidates as well.

Democrats say they're eager to have him.

“He is a powerful voice reminding voters of exactly how bad things were when the last Republican administration left office,” said Democratic National Committee communications director Luis Miranda. “The record of job growth, reducing the number of uninsured and investments that are expanding opportunities for all Americans are all part of an incredible record to build on.”

"Republicans are going to make sure that every Democrat owns Barack Obama," said Mo Elleithee, the executive director of the Georgetown University Institute of Politics and Public Service and a former Democratic National Committee communications director. "The choice every Democrat has is: Try to resist that and hide under a desk or just embrace the good. And there’s a lot more good today than there was in the midterms."

As for presidential candidates, Elleithee added, "He has won two straight presidential elections, he has a strong following among the progressive base. Don’t be an idiot, campaign with him."

For Obama, the aims are to preserve his legacy as president and reverse the trend that there are fewer Democrats left in office after every election cycle since he was first elected.

“A lot of the progress is fragile. If there’s a Republican president and Congress, a lot of what he’s done could be overturned by a stacked court or by Congress," said Tommy Vietor, a former Obama aide on the campaign and in the White House.

"I definitely need a Democratic successor because the alternatives we’ve got are not what I had in mind," Obama told donors at a fundraiser in California this weekend.

With the primary field still not quite set and candidates still being recruited for down-ballot races, the White House hasn’t gotten into much depth about plans or schedules with the Democratic Governors Association, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee or the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

But they’ve got big plans, said David Simas, Obama’s political director.

"As he has in years past, the president will do all he can to support Democrats up and down the ticket in 2016 to build on the progress of the last eight years,” Simas said. “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.”

Hillary Clinton, who as a former member of the administration and a candidate looking to succeed him has the deepest connections unless and until Joe Biden gets into the race, has accelerated her answer to the Obama question in recent weeks. She has distanced herself from the administration on immigration, the Keystone pipeline, gun control, Syria, the Cadillac tax within Obamacare and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

Bernie Sanders’ campaign, meanwhile, is powered in large part by the frustration with what’s seen as a rich-get-richer economy that’s grown on Obama’s watch, and he emphasizes his positions to the left of Obama — as does Martin O'Malley, who's annoyed some in the West Wing with some of his moves to outflank the president.

This won’t be like 2008, when John McCain essentially had to sneak into the White House for an uncomfortable Rose Garden endorsement from George W. Bush, who was deeply unpopular as a result of the Iraq War and imploding economy, that McCain was distancing himself from within hours.

Barring a dramatic change, this president looks likely to be a help for the Democratic nominee. Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling pointed to approval ratings hovering around 45 percent versus disapproval at 50 percent.

"He's certainly not popular. But he's not very unpopular either," Jensen said.

That might be enough.

"With the way that people feel about politicians these days, if Obama was to break even, Democrats will win the presidential race this year, because break even is the new good,” Jensen said.

The major question looming over Obama’s activity for the moment is whether his vice president will enter the race. The prospect of having two members of his administration running against each other is difficult enough, but these are two people with whom the president has deep personal relationships.

Before the Biden flirtation got serious, Obama had been notably sprinkling nice things about Clinton into his public remarks. In recent weeks, he has even-handedly been paying even-handed compliments to both.

According to Jensen, that won’t be enough for Biden if he’s hoping to win people over by convincing them he'd be heir to the Obama legacy — particularly to get primary support among African-Americans and other groups where the president’s most popular and where Clinton’s locked down a lot of support.

“Obama’s still far and away the most credible figure with Democrats across the country. Biden would actually need the endorsement. Subtle hints won't get the job done,” Jensen said.

Whoever the nominee is will also have to deal with a president who’s shown no signs of wanting to fade into the background — on the contrary, he’s been pushing forward on a number of issues that are highly charged politically.

In the White House, they expect that at some point Obama will have to step back. But they believe that point has gotten pushed deeper into the campaign season.

“He’s got a long list of things he wants to get done,” Vietor said. “I can’t imagine him giving that agenda a back seat to any candidate that’s running.”

