White House to deploy Obama for 2016

The White House will aggressively utilize President Obama to rally support behind the Democratic Party to win the White House in 2016.

An unnamed Democratic strategist familiar with the administration’s plans told Bloomberg Politics on Friday that the president will hit the campaign trail to turn out young and minority voters in the race.

{mosads}Obama’s team also anticipates he will campaign for Senate and House candidates in 2016. Democrats need a net gain of five seats to take control of the Senate.

“President Obama has both the unique ability and unique credibility to frame the stakes in the race that will be motivating to Democrats,” Geoffrey Garin, a pollster who works for the pro-Clinton Priorities USA super-PAC, told Bloomberg.

The president’s plan marks a change from recent presidents, who, mired by scandal and unpopularity, have been unable or unwanted to campaign on behalf of a successor.

But other strategists have called into question the wisdom of leaning heavily on the president’s record in 2016.

President Bill Clinton’s former pollster Stanley Greenberg said on Thursday it would be a mistake for Democrats to run for Obama’s third term.

“That’s not what the country wants. It’s not what the base of the Democratic Party wants,” Greenberg told the Huffington Post. “The Democratic Party is waiting for a president who will articulate the scale of the problems we face and challenge them to address it.”

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has repeatedly said she was not running for Obama’s third term and has notably broken with the president on several major issues, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal she helped broker while serving in the Obama administration.

The former secretary of State has also opposed the president on matters of foreign policy, saying she would favor a no-fly zone in Syria, while the White House has been hesitant to increase U.S. involvement in the conflict.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is challenging Clinton for the party’s nomination, has also distanced himself from Obama’s record, running to the left of the president on issues such as income inequality.

“I think we have got to go further,” Sanders said earlier this month. “I think we need to stand up to Wall Street in a way that the president and the vice president have not.”

But Obama remains popular in his party. A RealClearPolitics average of polls finds that nearly 87 percent of Democrats approve of his job performance in office.

The president has refused to back a candidate in the Democratic primary to this point.