Late last week, the political media’s collective heart fluttered as former President Barack Obama returned to the electoral fray, speaking at a rally for the failing Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam. As always, the self-referential Obama noted his relative absence from our national politics over the past eight months; it only sounds true if you are willing to pretend that he There isn’t He has issued a series of public statements in which he has sharply criticized his successor and Republicans on issues such as travel ban (“systemic discrimination”), Healthcare (“meanness at heart”), to immigration (“self-destructive” and “cruel”):
Obama says he ‘hasn’t commented on politics lately,’ but says he knows one thing for sure: ‘division doesn’t work’
— Jordan J Frasier (@jordanjfrasier) October 19, 2017
More lofty, self-aggrandizing babble from Captain Hope ‘n Change, who clearly expects his choral singing to add some humor to everything he says, while most of the journalists nod their heads like wobbly dolls:
Obama: ‘If you have to win a campaign by dividing people, you won’t be able to govern them. You won’t be able to unite them later’ photo:twitter.com/TPAkycVMXQ
— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 19, 2017
Division doesn’t worknow intones, to enthusiastic reception. Oh, is that so, sir?
(1) Obama’s (successful) re-election campaign has run ads against Mitt Romney that carry a robust message of “otherness,” telling Ohio voters that the Republican Party candidate is not “one of usThe “media whistle” clutching at the pearl, if the GOP had said the same about Obama, would be a sight to behold (here’s a little taste). Obama’s superPAC — which was formed after he opined that superPACs were a “threat to our democracy” — essentially (and falsely) accused the cruel, heartless Romney of killing a woman with cancer. To put it bluntly, Obama’s team was extraordinary mud throwers:
“Obama and his top … aides have been far more likely to resort to character attacks and personal insults than the Romney campaign.” — Politico, September 6, 2012 https://t.co/KNKasKiLuA
— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) October 20, 2017
(2) In demagogating Paul Ryan’s efforts to rein in federal spending and stave off a long-term debt crisis fueled by entitlement, Obama has set a field of straw men alight, suggesting that the Wisconsin Republican promotes pollution and worker abuse. His party has also lied endlessly about Ryan’s proposals, falsely fearing that they would devastate the elderly by destroying nursing homes “like a tornado.”
(3) The Obama campaign has repeatedly accused Republicans of waging a “war” on women (“binders!” “Vote like your womanly parts depended on it,” etc.), breaking pro-conscientious assurances issued to secure passage of Obamacare, and even went so far as to wage a lengthy legal battle against Catholic nuns to force them to allow the purchase of contraceptives that violated their religion.
(4) Obama’s team clearly gave former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid permission to baselessly smear Romney as a tax cheat, a claim he made on the Senate floor without any evidence. Years later, Reid effectively granted that he lied at the time, touting Romney’s ultimate defeat as a positive goal that justified his slanderous methods.
(5) During the political wrangling over the budget, senior Obama administration officials compared the Republican Party to “hostage takers“kidnappers” and “arsonists”, not to mention suicide bombers and terrorists.
(6) Speaking to a disproportionately large African-American audience during a campaign rally in Virginia, Vice President and Vice Presidential nominee Obama warned voters that Republicans want to “put you back in chains,” a remarkably unsubtle and disgusting racial attack.
(7) In pushing for a disastrous nuclear deal with Iran that was opposed by a immense bipartisan majority in Congress, Obama himself accused critics of creating a “common cause” with fanatics chanting “death to America.” Asked to tone down this vile slander, Obama refused.
(8) In 2008 Obama fired a broad swath of rural Pennsylvania voters — many of whom would poetically refuse to let Hillary Clinton become president eight years later — as bigoted rednecks who “cling to” their beliefs and religion and who resort to xenophobia to excuse their own shortcomings.
(9) “Let’s punish our enemies” – Obama instructed Latino voters in an interview with Univision before the 2010 midterm elections, the call was called “a firm call for identity politics.” Addressing a separate group of supporters in Philadelphia in 2008, Obama quoted The Untouchables commenting on the Republicans’ political attacks that unkindly foreseen would be racially tinged: “If they bring a knife to a fight, we bring a gun.”
(10) Obama’s wife recently spoke out about the Republican Party and the 2016 election, slamming women who refused to fulfill their Identity Politics obligation and voted for Mrs. Clinton, saying that women who supported Trump betrayed “their own voice” and bowed to the demands of men. She also argued that many minority voters distrust politics because the GOP is “all men” and “all whites”. This is blatant and biased racial and gender division. This is also garbage:
??Cc: @nikkihaley
@AjitPaiFCC
@SenatorTimScott
@Gov_Martinez
@marcorubio
@SecElaineChao
@EliseStefanik
@RepMiaLove
@HerreraBeutler e.t.c… https://t.co/f2LrICvE5o— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 5, 2017
Former President Barack Obama may have believed that “division doesn’t work,” but the words and actions of candidate and President Barack Obama tell a very different story. As a political figure, Obama has been a constant questioner of motives, a compulsive practitioner of division, and an enthusiastic abuser (and beneficiary) of identity politics—which is fundamentally and necessarily divisive. Granted, Donald Trump is a willing and instinctive divider and a shameless demagogue. His zeal for gutter tactics is unprecedented in contemporary presidential history. And yes, the Republican Party is undeniably sowing the seeds of calculated bitterness, and the right has took its own form identity politics. But it is exhausting and infuriating to sit through yet another self-conscious, empty lecture on unity from a cynical politician whose contributions to our national debates have often betrayed his misleading stance as a pragmatic, unifying post-partisan. Obama was a voracious demagogue whose schismatic rhetoric was smoother and more sophisticated than Trump’s clumsy, divisive jabs. And he was too often an arrogant, capricious, and dishonest actor who hated dissent, and whose self-serving and immature conception of “unity” has always conveniently required Americans to either “support…his party cause“or be complicit in the “problem” (“this is not who we are,” he says unbearable Physician, heal thyself. Meanwhile, spare us.
