A strange sentence in the New York Times about Democrats apologizing

"2020 Democrats Agree: They’re Very, Very Sorry," reports the New York Times:

The most recent high-profile mea culpa came Thursday when Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts apologized for her controversial decision to take a DNA test to prove her decades-old claim of Native American ancestry.

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. recently lamented his role in crafting the tough-on-crime drug legislation of the 1980s and 1990s.

Senator Kamala Harris of California said she regretted some of the positions her office took while she was a state prosecutor.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said her past hard-line stances on immigration “certainly weren’t empathetic and they were not kind.”

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont apologized after reports of gender discrimination and sexual harassment in his 2016 presidential campaign.

And the Times doesn't mention Tulsi Gabbard apologizing for her vile statements about "homosexual extremists."

But I don't understand what the New York Times reporters (Astead W. Herndon and Sydney Ember) are talking about in this sentence:

As recently as 2006, national Democrats including former President Barack Obama expressed wariness about immigrants’ ability to assimilate into American culture and did not openly embrace gay marriage — two talking points that would probably be deeply damaging for any 2020 candidate."

Why "[a]s recently as 2006"? That wasn't a presidential election year. And did Democrats stop doing those things before 2008? President Obama and Vice President Biden didn't "openly embrace gay marriage" until 2012.

Maybe the writers were thinking of what Obama wrote in his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope (pp. 263-64, 266, 268):

[T]here's no denying that many blacks share the same anxieties as many whites about the wave of illegal immigration flooding our Southern border — a sense that what's happening now is fundamentally different from what has gone on before. Not all these fears are irrational. . . . If this huge influx of mostly low-skill workers provides some benefits to the economy as a whole . . . it also threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans and puts strains on an already overburdened safety net. . . .

For most Americans, though, concerns over illegal immigration go deeper than worries about economic displacement and are more subtle than simple racism. In the past, immigration occurred on America's terms; the welcome mat could be extended selectively, on the basis of the immigrant's skills. . . . The laborer, whether Chinese or Russian or Greek, found himself a stranger in a strange land, severed from his home country, subject to often harsh constrains, forced to adapt to rules not of his own making.

Today, it seems those terms no longer apply. Immigrants are entering as a result of a porous border rather than any systematic government policy. . . . Native-born Americans suspect that it is they, and not the immigrant, who are being forced to adapt. . . .

I'm not entirely immune to such nativist sentiments. When I see Mexican flags waved at proimmigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration. . . .

We have a right and duty to protect our borders. We can insist to those already here that with citizenship come obligations — to a common language, common loyalties, a common purpose, a common destiny.