Posted on 05/31/2018 3:45:29 PM PDT by Kaslin
President Obama was probably very, very confident Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election. Nevertheless, he took unprecedented steps to stump for his former secretary of state. In the end, he couldn’t drag her over the finish line. She went down in defeat. It was one of the biggest political upsets in American history. It was a punch to the mouth of liberal America. The rural voter had his/her revenge. The urban elites were silenced. The irony is this tribalism, this electorate, was not the one Obama was trying to nurture or preserve; he wanted to change our politics, remember? Did he go too far? That’s what he was left grappling with when it was clear that Hillary Clinton would never become president. Obama urged Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to be more vocal about defending their shared values, Angela Merkel told the soon-to-be-ex-president that she felt obligated to run for another term in Germany due to Trump’s win.
“She’s all alone,” Obama remarked in his final meeting with her. Yet, the former president also wondered if he pushed too far, reinforcing the old divisions of Left and Right. Well, when you push anti-gun policies, like about health care reform, and dither on Syria and Crimea—yeah, you are going to legitimize what people have been saying about the Democratic Party: they’re left wing policies are ruinously expensive, they’re weak abroad, and attack the cultural core of rural voters. In this case, it was gun ownership.
Obama’s former foreign policy guru, Ben Rhodes, has his book coming out, where he also says he can’t shake the notion that he didn’t see Trump’s victory coming. Yeah, a little Monday morning quarterback here, but he admits that at its core, Trump ran on the same message they did in 2008 that slayed Clinton: she’s part of the swamp and can’t be trusted to bring change. As Obama was left devastated by Trump’s win, his aides assured him that he would have won a third term if the Constitution permitted it, and that Millennials are more aligned with his agenda (via NYT):
Riding in a motorcade in Lima, Peru, shortly after the 2016 election, President Barack Obama was struggling to understand Donald J. Trump’s victory.
“What if we were wrong?” he asked aides riding with him in the armored presidential limousine.
He had read a column asserting that liberals had forgotten how important identity was to people and had promoted an empty cosmopolitan globalism that made many feel left behind. “Maybe we pushed too far,” Mr. Obama said. “Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.”
His aides reassured him that he still would have won had he been able to run for another term and that the next generation had more in common with him than with Mr. Trump. Mr. Obama, the first black man elected president, did not seem convinced. “Sometimes I wonder whether I was 10 or 20 years too early,” he said.
[…]
Set to be published next week by Random House, Mr. Rhodes’s memoir, “The World as It Is,” offers a peek into Mr. Obama’s tightly sealed inner sanctum from the perspective of one of the few people who saw him up close through all eight years of his presidency. Few moments shook Mr. Obama more than the decision by voters to replace him with a candidate who had questioned his very birth.
[…]
Mr. Obama and his team were confident that Mrs. Clinton would win and, like much of the country, were shocked when she did not. “I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should have seen it coming,” Mr. Rhodes writes. “Because when you distilled it, stripped out the racism and misogyny, we’d run against Hillary eight years ago with the same message Trump had used: She’s part of a corrupt establishment that can’t be trusted to bring change.”
Yet, Rhodes and Obama were left stunned by the 2016 results. It’s a prime window into the insight of the Left’s elite members, stunned that their condescending attitude, the lecturing, and the pervasive apathy towards those who don’t live in cities somehow came back to bite them in the ass. I think what’s more stinging is that millions of Obama voters flipped for Trump. Hope and change was shot up like Swiss cheese. Make America Great Again had overtaken it. Yeah, I guess for a man who had built a virtually unbeatable voter coalition would be left adrift by these results, but because of that—let us give thanks that we have term limits. Today, the Left still hasn’t learned. Simple outreach to white working class voters on jobs, trade, job protections, and being proud to be an American get your foot in the door. This isn’t a hard voter bloc to win over. They’ve voted for both parties in past elections. Instead, Democrats would rather consider them to be irremediable racists, a batch of deplorables - which is the mentality that contributed to their 2016 loss.
Agreed.
Keep in mind, the list of records removed is Hillary's list and cannot be verified. Dollars to donuts they removed some incredible evidence of criminality.
You missed the right arms raised with hands made into a fist. That is the black power salute. White kids doing the black power salute. Unreal.
Obama, the worst President ever, wonders why people voted against his candidate - amazing how ignorant these professorial libs are.
And this “who cares what they were doing 45 years ago?” Sorry to inform you that most NFL games last year not only had blacks kneeling during the national anthem-they were also raising arm and fist in black power salute.
Thanks for the ping. Surprised doesn’t even begin to describe it - the fix was in and their smug overconfidence came through loud and clear, but against all odds - a miracle really- DJT was elected. SCHADENFREUDE - still going strong here.
We were warning peeps about this before it happened in 2008... :/ We saw this coming.
You forgot to put “Brave” in quotation marks...
Of course, I am sure you just left off the /sarc tag
Of course, I am sure most of us don’t need the /sarc anymore >.<
“You missed the right arms raised with hands made into a fist. “
I didn’t miss it,I commented on it——one kid,one older man,———so what.
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That’s it! Except the picture I remember was of Hillary alone holding the punch bowl. Where is it now? Is it in the custody of the State Department in their museum of gifts from foreign dignitaries? Or, is it gathering dust in one of Hillary’s homes? Or, perhaps, Chelsea has it in her $10 million NYC apartment, or the new house right next door to mummy and daddy in Chappaqua? That bowl retails for about $2000 if it is a regular one. Much, much more if it is one of their “masterpiece” editions — well above the “gift” limit established by the US government.
Not that the criminal Clintons respect our law-——but US president and other officials are only permitted to keep gifts worth $150.00.
Obviously you do not care if blacks take a knee and raise their arm and fist as BLACK POWER SALUTE. Where do you think this kid and so called adult learned that? Look up black power salute 2017. Yes, it is still going on.
Liz, many thanks for the ping. I need to send a request to our President to clean up election fraud.
I’ll bet that her houses and closets are filled with gifts she’s not entitled to keep. I think that officials are allowed to ‘borrow’ some of their gifts back from the government archives — such as jewelry, etc. But you know the ‘count the silverware’ Clintons, she has sticky fingers.
About 30 years ago, Tip O’Neill’s family tried to get an appraisal from the government for an antique grandfather clock that he’d taken home after his retirement. They wanted to gift it, or sell it, to a museum, or college. Turned out to belong to the US Government, and O’Neill had no right to take it.
It is said that Tom Foley had several warehouses in Washington State filled with US Capitol furniture — all ill begotten.
There was a Speaker of the House in the Johnson era, I believe, who took home the marble balustrade that divided the body of the House from the Speaker’s platform. It was removed during a remodeling. But, that was probably before the current law was in effect.
My understanding is that there are warehouses and warehouses full of furniture and other accoutrements belonging to we, the people, in DC. So much stuff that nobody should ever have to purchase another desk or chair for the US Capitol. Reupholstery (sp?) and refinishing should keep artisans employed forever.
I should mention that each Congressman is allowed to take home one office full of furniture to use in his retirement, but Foley far exceeded that permission.
“Where do you think this kid and so called adult learned that? “
He didn’t LEARN anything——he was exuberantly cheering and had no idea that raised fist meant ANYTHING.
Go to Google images and look at “People cheering Trump”-————quite a few raised fists——it’s a method of cheering.
You might want to be less suspicious of a harmless gesture.
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That’s true, as with most liberals, their arrogance is their downfall. In this case I certainly hope so!
Thanks Liz!
Thanks Liz!
Cheering? BS
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