Howard Dean, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Friday that former President Barack Obama should avoid the spotlight or he might help his successor.
Dean was asked on MSNBC about a recent New York Times op-ed from writer Caroline Randall Williams titled "President Obama, Where Are You?"
She wrote that Obama "raised" her generation and that he needs to speak out against President Donald Trump's policies. Dean, when asked if this would be "helpful," answered:
"From a political point of view, no," he said. "You only have one president at a time, and to violate that would actually give Trump a target at which he could carry on — Trump loves to have a convenient whipping person, and that would be — that would be Obama. There is a way to do this, but you have to really thread the needle."
Dean added that members of the younger generation "have to make their own way now" without looking back.
"It's our job to coach. It's our job to lift up. I think the former president is trying to do that, as are a lot of us," Dean said. "I'm hoping the next presidential candidate is under 50, at least under 55 in our party. We have got to transfer this over to the next generation."
Dean then said that Trump's election is this generation's Edmund Pettus Bridge, referring to the location where civil rights demonstrators were attacked while trying to march to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965.
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