Obama acts like he’s the secret weapon for political campaigns. He hides out during primaries, operating from behind the scenes, then waits until the final weeks and shows up with promises to save the day.

But former presidents, no matter how popular, have a limited public lifespan. It’s why they’re only brought out so often. Their political instincts are out of sync, they’re old and the public no longer cares about them.

Since Kamala’s campaign is full of Obama vets, they decided to bring out Barry. But so far Barry has done more harm than good.

The idea was to use Obama to take all sorts of shots at Trump, and he was doing that, and solidify Kamala’s black male vote.

That last part went badly when Obama accused black men of sexism for not fully backing Kamala.

The backlash did not take long to arrive.

A former Bernie Sanders campaign adviser slammed former President Barack Obama Thursday for calling out black men who do not support Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Why are Black men being lectured to?” former Democratic Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner said on CNN. “Why are black men being belittled?”

The former national co-chair of the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign said that Obama was “wrong.”

“Now, a lot of love for former President Obama, but for him to single out black men is wrong, and some of the black men that I have talked to have their reasons why they want to vote a different way, and even if some of us may not like that, we have to respect it,” she said.

Actor Wendell Pierce said Obama’s words sent an “Awful message.”

“The party has to stop scapegoating Black men. Black men aren’t the problem. White men and white women are,” Pierce said in a post on social platform X.

New York Mag ran an even more scathing response.

Obama’s broadside, which quickly went viral, was further proof of his status as the party’s resident scold. The glaring exception to his 2012 declaration that he was “not the president of Black America” has always been black men, over whom he is assumed to have special providence. This perception has allowed Obama to exploit stereotypes, blaming underwhelming Democratic performances at the ballot box on “Cousin Pookie,” a mythical layabout who would rather watch football than perform his civic duties. He has also chided Morehouse College graduates — during their 2013 commencement ceremony, of all occasions — for a supposed black tendency to make “excuses.” What all his lecturing has not occasioned is an honest reckoning among Democratic elites with why some black men might be souring on them to begin with.

There are a whole lot of people in the party who resent Obama. And Obama’s effort to shame black men isn’t likely to win either black men or the party over.

Obama was a cult of personality, but that cult faded a while back. What’s left is a second-tier politician whose instincts have faded and who isn’t being propped up nearly as much as he used to be.

Bringing him out is hurting Kamala as much as it’s helping her.