I didn’t get to “Obama’s” but did see Hillary’s, and got to Death Saturday. I liked them, but they are limited.Both make the case that the Democrat Party has been racist and exploitative of minorities, and that (with exceptions) the Democrat politicians of the Segregationist South did not convert to the Republican Party. Hillary illustrated that by showing black-and-white thumbnails of two thousand Democrat politicians before the Republicans took over the South, and converted only about a dozen to color to show the ones who switched parties. Death showed the same thing, but restricted its attention to senators and congressmen, only one of each having switched (one being Strom Thurmond). Hard to say which is better, both say the same thing, Dinesh could compromise and show both.
The other point which Death makes more explicit than Hillary is that “The Big Switch” supposedly happened in Nixon’s 1968 victory over Humphrey. And the “Southern Strategy” claim has a problem - Nixon didn’t win the deep South. Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia all went to George Wallace. And yet that didn’t throw the election to the House of Representatives, because Nixon won California as well as the rest of the South and Midwest. The popular vote was like 31 M for Nixon and 30 M for Humphrey, with Wallace picking up about 10 M. But Nixon got 301 EV, winning the Electoral College fair and square - convincingly - without the deep South. Humphrey was a regional candidate, not Nixon.
In a way I think D’Souza tries to make too many (good) points. I think a case can be made that blacks should seriously consider the Republican Party and President Trump, and Dinesh tries to make it but not, perhaps, in the right way. To make that case, you have to address the Great Society and its effects, as well as perhaps the New Deal. And on a philosophical level, subvert the “three fifths of a person” canard. Obviously, omission of that rule would have allowed the slave states significantly more Congressmen - and the slaves had no say in who “represented” them.
A case can be made that blacks should care about the Holocaust, and the culpability of the Democrat Party for being an inspiration, as Dinesh says, for some of that. But since modern blacks have a tendency towards antisemitism, that nexus needs to be developed in a nuanced manner. And the fact that Republicans have an interest in black prosperity - whereas “Democrats love poor people - that’s why they make so many of them.”
I very much enjoy Dinesh’s work, all of it. I just wish the people who need it would watch it.
Probably the best thing Dinesh could do would be to start with a more skeptical view of the Framers, and develop fully the reasons why in fact their work - the Declaration and the Constitution - deserve respect. I tend to think that that might best be the subject of a miniseries rather than a string of overlapping movies.
I wonder what would happen if Dinesh got together with Thomas Sowell on a project to appeal to black voters??? Dinesh clearly wants to accomplish that, and Sowell clearly has ideas about how that should be done. And that it should be done.