We may scoff at the rabble of Democrat challengers for the US election next year: fake squaw Elizabeth Warren, boring Joe Biden, woke contenders such as Kamala Harris and the ‘last saloon’ socialist Bernie Sanders. Take a step back, and see how they pale in comparison to Barack Obama.
Yes, I know, conservatives are not expected to appreciate Obama. His presidency was fiercely attacked by the Right, generating the Tea Party movement and laying the foundations for the great disruptor Donald Trump. Simultaneously revered by the Left as the face of the future and of the decline of America as a superpower, Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for not being George Bush. Yet despite being at opposite poles personally and politically, Obama shares some significant similarities with his White House successor: –
- He is not Hillary Clinton. Unexpectedly, Obama defeated the dynastic favourite for the Democrat candidacy in 2008. Trump likewise beat Clinton against the odds in 2016. Her sense of entitlement was clear in both contests, but she is a wooden campaigner with deficient insight and charisma (unlike her husband Bill). Her opponents were able to reach across to traditional voting patterns: Obama overcame Clinton’s complacency and went on to win several red states; Trump snatched the Democrat heartlands of Pennsylvania and the Great Lakes. Hillary throve in moneyed Manhattan but was uncomfortable on the road or off script.
- He cut the head off the Islamist snake. Obama extinguished Osama bin Laden, Trump al-Bakr Baghdadi and his use of drones against the Islamists tipped the balance of the war against Isis. These were not merely military bonuses but top priorities for both presidencies, in a way that the current crop of Democrat candidates (and some Republican challengers to Trump in 2016) wouldn’t understand.
- He regards woke ideology as divisive and counterproductive, just as Trump sees it as un-American.
Early in his presidency, Obama was mocked by Republican ‘hockey mum’ Sarah Palin for his optimistic sloganeering: ‘How’s that hopey-change thing working out for y’all?’ But Obama did not need to ride in on naïve youthful movements such as gender fluidity or climate alarmism that has now swept over Western society.
Last week, in an incisive speech at the Obama Foundation in Chicago, Obama criticised the attitudes of the woke generation. As Charlotte Gill wrote in The Sun, ‘despite being something of a messianic figure among the progressive young, Obama attacked the very culture they aspire to’. He observed that millennials on social media are obsessed with purity, believing that ‘the way of making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people’. There is no room for redemption from ideological puritans who, like children, cannot accept that the world is ‘messy’, and that ‘people who do really good stuff have flaws’.
Obama’s presidency was a post-racial success story. Inevitably promoted by progressives and left-wing media as the first black president, Obama rarely played the race card. Inspired by the Christian oratory of Martin Luther King, Obama had no truck with the idea of victimhood. Like Kanye West, Obama he spoke some inconvenient truths. He challenged the notion perpetuated by the intelligentsia that the disproportionate number of black men in jail is simply a result of racial discrimination. Citizens must take responsibility: the ghetto mentality is as much a choice as is striving for a better life.
After the massacre of nine congregants at the Emanuel Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston by a white supremacist, Obama showed admirable constraint. In his eulogy he spoke of the importance of the church to black communities, but he emphasised common humanity: ‘If we find grace, anything is possible’. He refused to exploit YouTube clips of police over-zealously apprehending a hoodlum in the violent urban enclaves of Watts or Fergusson as evidence of institutional racism. A ‘them against us’ outlook is a zero-sum game.
Obama was not merely produced as a black alternative to the first female presidential candidate. He fought his way in Chicago politics, a tough terrain that would have made 1980s Glaswegian Labour look like a picnic in the park. He was acutely aware of the nearby Rustbelt and its deprivations, while Hillary was at home with the metropolitan elite. After studying law at Harvard, Obama taught at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004, so he had direct experience of campus culture. He was conscious that the middle-class virtue-signallers among students and lecturers had no genuine interest in the seemingly interminable carnage on the nearby streets of south Chicago.
Obama was a positive role model for compromise and harmonious community relations, but sadly the progressive Left and Black Lives Matter agitators find it easier to hate. Typifying the reaction to Trump is the book The People are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore, in which liberal writer Jared Yates Sexton cannot see past his prejudices that anyone wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ cap is a racist bigot. Democrats seem likely to make the same mistake in choosing a challenger who will exacerbate a polarised and poisoned political atmosphere. Obama would have read the situation and reached out.
Forget the Twittersphere, CNN, MSNBC and the Washington Post, Democrats must connect with ordinary Americans again. Otherwise, their unwoke, populist nemesis is a shoe-in for four more years. Contrasting the perpetual cycle of Trump rallies in sold-out stadia with the bickering goons at the Democratic convention, Obama must sit back and sigh. Winning is easy when you know how.
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“Inspired by the Christian oratory of Martin Luther King […]”
Christian? LOL!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7071713/FBI-tapes-Martin-Luther-King-Jr-40-affairs-laughed-friend-raped-parishioner.html
Read also:
http://www.alexanderboot.com/post-coital-suppression/
As POTUS, Obama probably knew that Martin Luther King was a disgusting sexual predator.
But he didn’t care!
Congratulations to the decent people of Kansas City, Missouri on not allowing the disgusting sexual predator to be commemorated in their township:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50321254
Is it time for the USA to abolish the annual Cultural-Marxist orgy of left-wingery known as Martin Luther King Day?
The chick’s got my vote too. Greets from continental Europe.
Gr8 b8 m8 I r8 8/8
Well, the chick’s got my vote. Sorry, Niall.
>>>>Obama nominated John Brennan as CIA Director. This guy is a follower of ISLAM which is counter to the best interests of the United States.
Apparently the allegation that so-and-so is a “secret Muslim” has replace the older conspiracy theory favorite, that so-and-so is a “secret Jew”.
Skeptic: It’s ridiculous to suppose that Jews have ever conspired to destroy civilisation.
Mahometans, OTOH…
But that’s not the point. The point is there is no evidence he’s a “secret” Muslim, just like there was no evidence the “secret” Jews were Jews at all.
Last one:
Foreign policy:
Militaristic, unilateralist, aggressive.
Massively increased the war in Afghanistan.
Withdrew from Iraq at the wrong time leaving a massive power vacuum into which Isis stepped.
Caused lasting untold damage in Libya – of which we now have to cope with the refugee crisis.
Interfered in Ukraine.
Supported and helped the coup in Egypt.
Race relations:
He weaponised race.
2009 – 22% thought race relations were bad.
2016 – 66% thought they were bad.
Ferguson and numerous other examples.
No sorry, I cannot even start to agree with the premise of this article.
I have not even started on the corruption that went on. There are hundreds and hundreds of examples.
He was clever, he ever sly and he was a PR genius and he has caused lasting destruction to the USA, and a lot of the world.
I could go on – 200 acts which caused misery.
He was supposedly tough in ISIS but at the same time, domestically he did the following:
Obama nominated John Brennan as CIA Director. This guy is a follower of ISLAM which is counter to the best interests of the United States. Now, Brennan is on the media spreading lies about President Trump.
Islamic Radicals at the White House: In 2012, Obama invited hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood radical Islamists to the White House for meetings.
Obama allowed terror-linked refugees into the US. Obama changed our immigration laws without Congressional authorization to relax restrictions on refugees and asylum seekers. He accepted 10,000 Syrians in 2016 into the US with no screening for terrorism.
2012 Obama bypassed Congress and sent $192 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The terrorist organization Hamas is a partner of Palestinian Authority. Five months later, Obama gave the Muslim Brotherhood $450 Million.
Obama negotiated with terrorists and exchanged six terrorists who were being held in a prison, for Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl. He was being held by the Taliban and had coverted to ISLAM.
Obama had a chance to deport the men who did the Boston Marathon bombing but he did not. The two brothers who commited the Boston Marathon bombing came to the US as refugees and were arrested for domestic violence in 2009. Obama could have deported them which would have prevented the Boston Marathon bombing from happening but he chose not to.
Under Obama’s administration, at least six terrorist attacks happened on US soil. Obama called these acts “workplace violence” or “damaging federal property” instead of what they were, which is terrorism.
Obama refused to link blatant acts of terrorism with radical ISLAM. The shooter, Omar Matee, pledged allegiance to Allah and ISIS before he started shooting people in the Orlando, Florida nightclub. After the couple in San Bernardino, California, who had pledged their allegiance to Allah and ISIS, shot into a room full of people, Obama went on the media to denounce gun violence.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/05/u-s-admits-record-number-of-muslim-refugees-in-2016/
Based on quarterly data released by the US Treasury, the debt at the end of 2008 — just before Obama took office — stood at roughly $10,699,805,000,000.
As of the third quarter of 2016, the most recent data available, the debt as Obama is set to leave office stood at $19,573,445,000,000.
Entire history of the world has never seen an increase like this – and it is past the point of no return.
We are also paying here for his policies.
Because he lowered interest rates to zero and printed billions, every other western country followed.
The bond markets and pensions have been destroyed.
We cannot get out of it now.
Everyone in Britain will pay for the disastrous policies of those years because we cannot solve the pensions.
Really?
9m foreclosures and untold misery – deliberate government policy.
Propped up zombie banks and the people who caused the problems were paid billions.
Created the largest deficits in world history.
Worst economic recovery in the history of America.
Pensions crisis created, destroyed the bond markets, created monolpoly positions in all sorts of areas.
Healthcare premiums rocketed, care went down and as above, stock holders made billions.
Guantano Bay – said he would shut it. Did nothing.
Survelliance state- increased in every area of American life.
Weaponised the state and this is the worst. – he did this in sorts of way but below is just one.
Perhaps the most well-known example of the Obama administration abusing its power to target Obama’s political enemies is the infamous IRS scandal. Over a two-year period leading up to the 2012 election, tea party groups and other conservatives were improperly scrutinized by the IRS. Twelve different IRS offices across the country were involved and the entire operation was orchestrated out of Washington, D.C., and there was also evidence of White House involvement. The IRS also targeted private individuals critical of Obama, GOP candidates, and Romney donors.
He wasn’t black anyway – he was mixed-race, but it suited the woke generation to refer to hm as black. Few refer to Meghan as the first black royal.
Thanks for this.
I used to teach overseas PG students. They were all closer to Obama than the grievance-bearers claiming to represent them.