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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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To: Kaslin

Obama is a liberal fascist with a vision of a kinder, gentler totalitarian Utopia. How most of America feels about him is that they would NOT put him out if he was on fire.He supported Black Lives Matter, had them visit him at the White Hut.

Right now 28 police officers have been executed across the country, because he dissed police departments and legitimized the Black Lives Matter thugs.

No, Obama is a treasonous SOB. Men like him belong on small islands eating, raw coconuts forever as they try to swim with sharks circling them.Even that would be too good for him and his choom gang.


61 posted on 05/31/2018 5:51:21 PM PDT by Candor7 ((Obama Fascism)http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html)
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To: melsec

“ Thats because you will never be President”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All of the Bush League Republicans hell bent on turning the USA into North Mexico were saying the same exact thing.

Both parties have been intentionally preventing US from electing ANYONE as President who would enforce the laws and borders.
Amnesty candidate R or amnesty candidate D for 30 years.
The policy of non-enforcement has been bipartisan.
The illegal alien inundation was intentional.


62 posted on 05/31/2018 5:53:38 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: mel

Tribe???
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He really means nationality.
We like being Americans.
It means something to US that he will never understand.
He is a citizen of the world, literally.
British, Kenyan, Indonesian and American.
But not a natural born citizen.


63 posted on 05/31/2018 5:58:14 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: ptsal

ptsal wrote:

“Go look at the number of manholes (utility service points-of-entry) in front of the property....

There is either a lot of crap or some other use for all of those manholes.”

What property ?


64 posted on 05/31/2018 6:04:26 PM PDT by WildHighlander57 ((WildHighlander57, returning after lurking since 2000)
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To: MAGAthon

MAGAthon wrote:

“yes, they still have the media -

WOW!

Twitter: Jonathan Lemire, White House reporter for @AP. Political analyst for @MSNBC & @NBCNews. Ex-@NYDailyNews:

Tweet: The Trump motorcade just drove right by the old Texas School Book Depository building in Dallas
2.29 PM 31 May 2018

first reply:
H Nicole Anderson: Where is Lee Harvey Oswald when really we need him?
https://twitter.com/JonLemire/status/1002301157065347072

Tweeter Julian Rinaldi tagged/pinged the secret service to the twitter thread.


65 posted on 05/31/2018 6:11:12 PM PDT by WildHighlander57 ((WildHighlander57, returning after lurking since 2000)
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To: montag813

What is this wave your fist BS by white guys? That was the Black Power salute in late 1973. Are these kids whacko or what?


66 posted on 05/31/2018 6:37:13 PM PDT by Lumper20
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To: Kaslin

This story is bunk. It isn’t possible for Obama to ask himself “what if we were wrong”. He and his crew have no capability of honest, introspective contemplation or evaluation. It’s all about the glorious, collectivist revolution 24/7/365.


67 posted on 05/31/2018 6:41:19 PM PDT by Prince Caspian
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To: Lumper20

“Are these kids whacko or what?”

No,they’re just excited kids-—and an older guy is doing it too.

Who the heck cares what they were doing 45 years ago?

.


68 posted on 05/31/2018 6:41:23 PM PDT by Mears
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To: unread

Affirmative action C students are often wrong.


69 posted on 05/31/2018 6:50:31 PM PDT by KevinB (I do not care for that Obama fellow.)
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To: TTFlyer

What’s transparent and lies in a ditch?


70 posted on 05/31/2018 6:53:17 PM PDT by kiryandil (Never pick a fight with an angry beehive)
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To: Kaslin

I’d have said “gobsmacked” instead of “awe-struck” ... but I am not sure how any canny political observer could have been more than a tad surprised, at best.

Did they not see the crowds standing in line to attend Trump rallies? Mile long lines in sweltering heat? And his enthusiasm, the crowds’ enthusiasm?

Did the pollsters never get beyond the NYT/WaPo/NBC/CBS/ABC newsrooms? All that polling was an echo chamber of the elites.


71 posted on 05/31/2018 6:56:22 PM PDT by EDINVA
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To: Mears

I do as that is still the damn black power salute TODAY.


72 posted on 05/31/2018 7:16:05 PM PDT by Lumper20
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To: Kaslin

“What if we were wrong?” he asked aides riding with him in the armored presidential limousine.

That’s happens when you live in a media-reinforced bubble surrounded by like-mindless minions. No counterpoint. No crosscheck. Really no instrumentation at all.


73 posted on 05/31/2018 7:16:46 PM PDT by Flick Lives (Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation.)
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To: Mears

look at post 60.


74 posted on 05/31/2018 7:18:39 PM PDT by Lumper20
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To: Kaslin

The jug-eared halfrican scumbag was born wrong...


75 posted on 05/31/2018 7:22:33 PM PDT by snuffy smiff (Build the Wall and build it tall, then build a gallows and hang them ALL!)
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To: fhayek

Memorable remarks.

THEY LOST!!

WE WON!!

Thanks be to God.


76 posted on 05/31/2018 7:55:43 PM PDT by victim soul (victim soul)
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To: Kaslin

John and Ken radio show 640am. John said after ken read off the comments that obama was full of himself and that obama thought he walked on water.

Note to voters NEVER vote for a nut!


77 posted on 05/31/2018 8:26:32 PM PDT by minnesota_bound
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To: Kaslin
Obama Was Left Awe-Struck Following Trump's 2016 Win

Yeah; Trump has that effect on a lot of petty small-minded leftists.

78 posted on 05/31/2018 9:00:04 PM PDT by Boomer (Leftism is the Moral Equivalent of the Plague)
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To: Lumper20

Post #60 shows ONE kid and ONE adult raising their fists—and so what——they were just exuberant and were cheering.

.


79 posted on 05/31/2018 9:16:13 PM PDT by Mears
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To: Nateman; poconopundit
These comments of his expose Obama's duplicity like nothing else to date. This has to be the understatement of the year.

.....when Trump won Obama says he was "surprised".......

He had made sure the fix was in. To lose after abusing his power----
using govt intel against a candidate like some tinpot dictator----gave him major agita.

Oama is sweating it out b/c Trump is uncovering all of Obama's dirt.

80 posted on 05/31/2018 9:35:07 PM PDT by Liz ((Our side has 8 trillion bullets;the other side doesn't know which bathroom to use.))
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