"The Pilgrimage" A JOURNEY by the DEMOCRATIC candidates to meet OBAMA and listen to his TACTICS on how to BEAT President Trump. What an EGO he has, and a HUGE MIRROR behind his desk. "Today, almost every Democratic presidential campaign STARTS with what one close adviser to Barack Obama calls “THE PILGRIMAGE”: the journey to the West End to meet the former president. The West End of Washington, D.C., sandwiched between the better-known districts of Georgetown and Dupont Circle, is known as a neighborhood that people travel through, not to. For elite Democrats, that changed four years ago when Obama set up HIS PERSONAL OFFICE here. You wouldn’t know from outside that one of its bland concrete and glass building houses the man whom polls rank as the most popular Democrat in America, and who, according to one global survey, is the SECOND-MOST ADMIRED MAN IN THW WORLD.  The first presidential pilgrims started in early 2018, and they continued to trickle through this summer. Not every declared candidate has met with Obama—Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard were notable no-shows—but he let it be known he was available to anyone seeking advice. As a rule of thumb, the closer one is to Obama personally, the less important the West End summit is. Joe Biden, one of only two candidates who Obama knows at a familial, rather than strictly professional level, was an “exception,” said an Obama adviser, who had a rolling series of conversations about 2020, the most recent of which was backstage at the funeral for Elijah Cummings in Baltimore on October 25. Deval Patrick, a close Obama pal and board member at the Obama Foundation who parachuted into the race last week, checked in with a phone call before announcing. For the others—Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, Steve Bullock, and more—the meeting was as important as planning their kickoff rally or first campaign ad. Obama’s lair is more Restoration Hardware than Oval Office: lots of dark wood (his desk and an ENORMOUS MIRROR behind it), bronze accents (the bookcases), and neutral upholstery in a seating area. Obama is discreet with his guests. He knows how a stray comment could leak and change the course of the race. For many Democrats, former President Obama can be as maddeningly cerebral and detached as President Obama was. In early 2017, there were desperate cries for him to become more engaged in response to Trump. Obama mostly resisted those calls. But then gradually he started to speak up, and then he started to make endorsements and speeches and give advice, and by the fall of 2018 he was so involved in campaigning for the midterms that he could credibly take some responsibility for WINNING BACK THE HOUSE, the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT CHECK on Trump’s presidency. As the presidential race unfolded this year, the cycle looks familiar. Obama disappeared from public view, dispensed his advice privately during his West End sessions, and infuriated close political friends, and not just Biden, who wanted a nudge. But recently he has started to speak out publicly, offering Democrats, in two appearances, a unified Obama theory of how they can win—and how they can stave off the same kind of forces that took over the GOP.  The original plan of a relaxed post-presidency of writing and thinking and mentoring, one that was relatively unencumbered by partisan politics, was blown up by the twin surprises of Trump’s victory and Biden’s decision to challenge him in 2020. Instead of remaining above the fray, Obama was FORCED BACK into the center of politics by Trump and Biden, who, for opposite reasons, talk about him and his legacy at every opportunity. “In a perfect world, he would have retreated to a greater degree from public life than he has, much in the same way that I think George W. Bush did in his post-presidency,” Holder told me. “He would have liked to have been, though he’s too young, an elder statesman.”  https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2019/11/26/barack-obama-2020-democrats-candidates-biden-073025?utm_source=pocket-newtab