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Obama Was Left Awe-Struck Following Trump's 2016 Win: 'What If We Were Wrong'?
Townhall.com ^ | May 31, 2018 | Matt Vespa

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.     


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: 2016election; barackhussein0bama; donaldtrump; hillaryrottenclinton; postedseveraltimes
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1 posted on 05/31/2018 3:45:29 PM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

PRISON!


2 posted on 05/31/2018 3:47:34 PM PDT by mountainlion (Live well for those that did not make it back.)
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To: Kaslin

What if you’re an idiot, Barry?


3 posted on 05/31/2018 3:47:55 PM PDT by TTFlyer
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To: Kaslin

Absolutely NO sympathy to any of these backstabbing lying vermin.

NONE.


4 posted on 05/31/2018 3:49:58 PM PDT by Texas Fossil ((Texas is not where you were born, but a Free State of Heart, Mind & Attitude!))
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To: mountainlion

That is where that arrogant pos and his entire administration belongs, if you ask me.


5 posted on 05/31/2018 3:50:36 PM PDT by Kaslin (Politicians are not born; they are excreted -Civilibus nati sunt; sunt excernitur. (Cicero))
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To: Kaslin

How can all these “smart” people have been so shocked? I was pleasantly surprised Trump pulled it off but shocked? Not. Trump had the winning message and Hillary did not plus she’s a crook.


6 posted on 05/31/2018 3:54:00 PM PDT by toddausauras (Trump 2016)
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To: Kaslin

“Sometimes I wonder whether I was 10 or 20 years too early”

His humility is something to behold.


7 posted on 05/31/2018 3:55:31 PM PDT by rightwingcrazy
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To: Kaslin

I wonder if the uptick in Trump’s polls are partly from non persons of color saying “don’t call me a white supremacist!” and non feminist males saying “don’t say I have male privilege and have no right to a good life because I must be keeping women down from advancement!”

These demographics would keep totally silent and secret because we have no freedom of speech in America, but then, like in 2016 would quietly vote for Trump supporters for the House and Senate in the election booth.


8 posted on 05/31/2018 3:55:35 PM PDT by frank ballenger (End non-citizen voting ,vote fraud & leftist media news censorhip or we're finished.)
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To: Kaslin
They cheated. They cheated a lot.

They had the media tell lies.
They stuffed ballot boxes.
They had a spy in Trump's campaign.
They stuffed ballot boxes.
They raked in millions of illegal contributions.
They stuffed more ballot boxes.

And it wasn't enough?? What do you mean, It wasn't enough?

She lost?????

It just ... it just ... it just ... it just doesn't seem possible.

9 posted on 05/31/2018 3:56:46 PM PDT by ClearCase_guy
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To: Kaslin

Everything about the Kenyanesian Usurpation was wrong.

Primarily because Obama is NOT a natural born citizen.

The founders wanted someone who was naturally a citizen because they could not possibly be anything else to ensure no foreign influence on the Presidency.

Obama was born a British subject as a result of his foreign national father.
People born with multiple citizenships were precisely who the founders were excluding.


10 posted on 05/31/2018 3:58:57 PM PDT by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizen Means Born Here of Citizen Parents__Know Islam, No Peace - No Islam, Know Peace)
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To: rightwingcrazy

b o’s next ten to twenty years should be spent in tropical Guantanamo Bay.


11 posted on 05/31/2018 3:59:17 PM PDT by chief lee runamok
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To: Kaslin

Related postings and comments from different sources:

Obama was shell-shocked by Trump win, asked ‘What if we were wrong?,’ new book says
05/31/2018 8:47:58 AM PDT · by cq · 68 replies
Fox News ^ | 5/31/2017 | Greg Re
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3659503/posts

How Trump’s Election Shook Obama: ‘What if We Were Wrong?’
05/31/2018 7:15:58 AM PDT · by keat · 50 replies
NYT ^ | May 30, 2018 | Peter Baker
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3659472/posts

How Trump’s Election Shook Obama: ‘What if We Were Wrong?’
05/31/2018 7:00:16 AM PDT · by COUNTrecount · 24 replies
NY Times ^ | May 30, 2018 | Peter Baker
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3659467/posts

How Trump’s Election Shook Obama: ‘What if We Were Wrong?’
05/30/2018 2:45:45 PM PDT · by tcrlaf · 122 replies
MSN/NYTimes ^ | 5-30-2018 | Peter Baker
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3659340/posts


12 posted on 05/31/2018 4:00:16 PM PDT by Repeal The 17th (I was conceived in liberty, how about you?)
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To: Kaslin

The liberal Messiah is having second thought?


13 posted on 05/31/2018 4:00:29 PM PDT by Lee25
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To: Kaslin

What if? You’ve been wrong for years, dickhead.


14 posted on 05/31/2018 4:00:47 PM PDT by snarkytart
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This was the best part of The Final Year Documentary! LOL



15 posted on 05/31/2018 4:01:55 PM PDT by KavMan
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To: Kaslin

I still can’t believe a Brave Network like FOX News hasn’t put on a 1 hour Comedy Show weekly Publicly ridiculing and Making FUN of Hillary, Obama and Company....


16 posted on 05/31/2018 4:02:15 PM PDT by eyeamok
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To: Kaslin

I bet $hit Stain Hussein still believes his greatest failure was the insufficient communication of his awesomeness to the electorate.


17 posted on 05/31/2018 4:03:30 PM PDT by MountainWalker
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To: Kaslin
"What If We Were Wrong"?

HA...!!

18 posted on 05/31/2018 4:07:12 PM PDT by unread (Joe McCarthy was right.......)
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To: Kaslin

Obama forgot about one thing , The voters ,LOL


19 posted on 05/31/2018 4:07:42 PM PDT by butlerweave
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To: toddausauras

The Anti-Federalist told us how. They live in DC, which is a royal court like Versailles. They’re out of touch with the common man.


20 posted on 05/31/2018 4:07:54 PM PDT by WilliamCooper1
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