Over the past few weeks, as the Iowa caucuses grow nigh, a debate has been brewing in Democratic party circles about who gets to claim the legacy of President Barack Obama. Is it Hillary Clinton or Senator Bernie Sanders? And what is that legacy anyway?

On Clinton’s campaign website, the candidate recently posted a letter to her supporters entitled What President Obama’s Legacy Means to Me, in which she presents her whole campaign in terms of advancing his record on financial regulation, healthcare and foreign policy. She trumpets her role in the administration of her onetime political opponent, reminding readers of her place as trusted colleague and confidante.

For his part, Sanders’ rhetoric of political transformation seems to echo Obama’s in 2008, and he’s clearly hoping to best Clinton in Iowa by mobilizing young people – the same way Obama beat her there eight years ago.



Both candidates understandably want the stamp of Obama’s approval. And it’s also true that Sanders is dreaming of pulling off what Obama accomplished in 2008 in terms of mobilizing voters who don’t usually come to the polls. But that’s where the similarity between Obama and Sanders ends.

Clinton really is the one carrying on Obama’s legacy – and it’s a legacy of which Sanders should want no part.

How can Sanders frame himself as Obama’s heir? And why would he want to? After all, his campaign is premised on responding to the crisis of the middle class in an era of skyrocketing inequality – a problem that has only deepened over the past eight years.



In terms of policy, his campaign proposals reflect a genuine departure. His promise to make health insurance truly universal and his commitment to a system of free public higher education represent attempts to remove these building blocks of economic security from the vagaries of the marketplace. True, Obama vetoed the Keystone pipeline, but Sanders envisions a major public investment in green infrastructure going well beyond anything seriously advanced by the president.



It might seem more understandable for Sanders to want to emulate Obama on the campaign trail, given the historic turnout of 2008, and as CNN reporters have observed, he’s borrowing both campaign logos (a rising sun) and slogans (“A Future We Can Believe In”) from Obama. But in politics, too, Obama’s legacy is problematic, and the lessons of 2008 more complex than they seemed at the time.

For the first-time voters who flocked to the polls that year, inspired by a candidate who spoke of lasting changes, the past eight years have been ones of political disappointment.



Instead of a challenge to the system that brought about the financial meltdown, they saw banks get bailouts while making few accommodations to people who lost their homes. Instead of taking steps toward economic equality, they got the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Instead of greater transparency, they got the NSA.



Even though Obama was elected in the midst of an economic crisis that prompted broad questioning of free markets and the power of business in America, today it seems that the Gilded Age is back and entrenched even more deeply than before. These defeats have only fueled a deeper sense of political estrangement.

Back in 2008, Clinton presented herself as the realist’s alternative to Obama the dreamer. She’s describing herself the same way today, only Obama has turned out to be a pragmatic politician as well. Now Clinton can argue that she, like Obama, is a politician for whom a tempered realism matters more than principle in the end. Obama has echoed this assessment, describing Clinton in his recent Politico interview as someone who knows that “translating values into governance” and “delivering the goods” is what politics is all about.

The problem is that this measured approach is exactly what’s led to the missed opportunities and myriad losses of the Obama presidency. Sanders should let Clinton claim Obama’s legacy: he should strike out for something new.

