Former President Barack Obama will headline a fundraiser for Senate Democrats in the Washington, D.C., area on Oct. 7, 2026, his first appearance at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) fundraiser this midterm cycle.
Party operatives designed the event to deliver a financial boost during the closing stretch before the elections on Nov. 3. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, a DSCC vice chair, will sit down with Obama for a conversation centered on “the importance of flipping the Senate and the stakes of the election,” a DSCC spokesperson said.
Obama remains a popular and influential figure among Democratic voters. Registered voters told an NBC News poll conducted in September that they would be more likely to support a candidate he endorsed — 43 percent of them overall, and 77 percent among Democrats. Voters are growing more engaged in the midterms, and Democrats are likely to treat his involvement as a lift at such a moment.
Four Senate Seats Draw Democrats’ Eye
Control of the upper chamber in November requires Democrats to flip four seats. The Cook Political Report currently rates seven Senate seats as tossups — Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas — with North Carolina leaning Democrat and Kansas leaning Republican. Republicans hold 53 of 100 seats to Democrats’ 47, and 35 seats are on the Nov. 3 ballot. Democrats need to win at least four seats held by Republicans.
Democrats are increasingly optimistic, with several red states moving into play. Multiple polls in Texas show Democrat James Talarico ahead of Trump’s endorsed candidate, Republican Ken Paxton. A Talarico victory would make him the first Democrat to win a statewide election in Texas since 1994, and the first to capture a U.S. Senate seat there since 1988.
A CNN analysis published Oct. 2 said stumbling Republican candidates in several pivotal contests, alongside a slate of strong Democratic hopefuls, are putting Senate races long assumed to be Republican into play. The analysis cites Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff campaigning in Athens on Sept. 13.
Even if Democrats gain a Senate majority, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman could deny them their 51st vote, according to a column published Oct. 2. The column said a Democratic Senate is unlikely to confirm any Trump appointee to the Supreme Court or federal courts.
Republicans Keep Their Distance
President Donald Trump’s job approval has slipped below 40 percent, lower than his numbers at the end of September 2018 and similar to George W. Bush’s in September 2006, the same column said. Republicans trail in the generic congressional ballot by about as much as they did in 2018.
CNN data analyst Harry Enten reported that Republican political ads airing in the first half of September mentioned Trump at all less than 1 percent of the time, compared with 20 percent of Democratic ads.
Forecasters widely predict the GOP will lose control of the House, and they cite backlash to Trump’s policies, his handling of the economy, his war with Iran and the party’s razor-thin majority in the lower chamber as factors. Should the Senate follow, Democrats would run Congress through Trump’s final two years in office — a near-mirror image of Nov. 10, 2016, when Republicans had won the White House and both chambers and Obama welcomed then-President-elect Trump to the Oval Office for the symbolic start of the transition.
Trump announced plans in the Oval Office on Monday, Sept. 28, for Mesabi Metallics to build a $15 billion steel plant in Iowa, as he and GOP leaders mount what CNN describes as an Iowa rescue mission in a state Trump won by 13 percentage points. Iowa races include Republican Senate candidate Rep. Ashley Hinson against Democrat Josh Turek, and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Rob Sand.
Not every sign points the Democrats’ way. The party faces a staggering spending disadvantage in Georgia’s tight race for governor. Obama headlined a Nov. 1, 2025, rally in the New Jersey governor’s race, and the dedication ceremony marking the opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on June 18 drew him as well.
Obama’s Quiet Push on AI
Obama’s role in his party extends well past the fundraiser, which is simply its most visible piece. Nearly 10 years out of the White House, he remains his party’s standard-setter and is regularly in touch with the rising generation of Democratic leaders.
Obama has been pressing likely 2028 presidential candidates on artificial intelligence, telling them their response to date falls far short of what an issue of that magnitude, and its politics, demands. Former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan and Gina Raimondo, the former Commerce Secretary, count among the Democratic figures demanding more from the emerging field.
Leaders of all the major AI companies have talked with him, including Sam Altman of OpenAI and executives at Google and Anthropic. So have outside experts and informal advisers such as Jason Goldman, the former Twitter executive who ran his Office of Digital Strategy. Obama is reading deeply on the subject and favors articles by Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson, Charlie Warzel and Casey Newton.
Trump hosted several AI leaders at the White House on Tuesday, Sept. 29, announcing a new industry commitment to police itself. He signed an executive order that day renaming artificial intelligence “super intelligence.”
Most Republicans in Washington have taken their cues from the president and pushed back against broad federal regulation of AI. On the Democratic side, no consensus plan has emerged — not even from Obama. Some 2028 hopefuls are wary of landing on the wrong side of the industry’s enormous campaign spending.
