Former President Obama is privately "expressing exasperation" over the Democratic Party's movement to the left, according to a CNN reporter who cites her network colleagues.
CNN's Rebecca Buck noted Obama is "trying to stay out of this primary as much as possible," reported the Washington Free Beacon
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"But privately Obama, our CNN colleagues are reporting, is expressing exasperation at how far left the party is moving on some policy issues and of course breaking with some of the things he did when he was president," she said.
Buck had been asked by CNN's Newsroom co-host Jim Sciutto what she was hearing behind the scenes after Sciutto mentioned Obama wasn't pleased by criticism from Democratic presidential candidates during the debates Wednesday and Thursday nights.
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Buck commented that primaries "are all about the legacy of the last president where the party is moving, and it's no secret that the Democratic Party right now has been moving far to the left policy-wise relative to the Obama administration."
"And it is for many of these candidates a balancing act, because Joe Biden, of course, is essentially a third term of President Obama," she said.
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Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who served as Obama's first chief of staff, chastised the candidates for criticizing Obama on health care and immigration.
"We have seen this movie before. Democrats need to wake up," Emanuel told CNN. "I would not treat the Obama years as something to be airbrushed out of history. Every one of these things needs to be built upon."
Meanwhile, a poll by College Pulse found American college students think Obama is the greatest president in American history.
