Barack Obama is back, thank Gawwwwd!
The former President came to Illinois Friday to kick off his reentry into the American political scene and present a vision of leadership for the wandering Democrats, who know what they don’t like, but don’t know what to be these days.
It was a very strong presentation, as you might expect, full of things like this:
“We’re supposed to stand up to discrimination,” he said. “And we’re sure as heck supposed to stand up clearly and unequivocally to Nazi sympathizers. How hard can that be, saying that Nazis are bad?”
And that just on Trump’s reluctance to criticize one sliver of his support base, the Nazis who keep showing up at his events.
It goes on and on, each slap as strong as the last. The economy, the political mood of the nation, women, you name it, Obama landed on it.
Trump said he tried to listen but fell asleep. Too bad. He might have learned something. But then, he has been asleep most of his life from a learning perspective. So, no surprise.
“None of this is conservative,” Mr. Obama said to students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “I don’t mean to pretend I’m channeling Abraham Lincoln now but that’s not what he had in mind, I think, when he helped form the Republican Party. It’s not conservative. It sure isn’t normal. It’s radical. It’s a vision that says the protection of our power and those who back us is all that matters even when it hurts the country.”
This is an important pre-election moment. With the White House in confusion and searching for some way to bash its latest round of anonymous critics, out comes the former president as loud and as eloquent as ever.
The thought that a quiet collection of reasonable people in Trump’s administration will be able to control him gave Obama the chance to point out that stopping the craziest of the crazy stuff coming from the White House just won’t be enough, and isn’t how it’s supposed to work.
“I’m serious here. That’s not how our democracy is supposed to work. They’re not doing us a service by actively promoting 90 percent of the crazy stuff that’s coming out of this White House and then saying don’t worry we’re preventing the other 10 percent.”
So, where is this thing going to go from here?
Predictable on one side. Trump will keep on saying it’s not Obama’s economy that is improving until we are tired of hearing that (already). Obama can just sit back and pick his targets and his locations and then unleash his own smooth rhetoric.
This will do nothing to deter Trump’s backers, who aren’t going to take any advice from a Muslim from Kenya anyhow, dammit, and they should just Lock Her (Hillary Clinton) Up, too.
Not the point. Not at all.
This is about unleashing the power of Democrat voting in a contest that typically is ignored by all but the most passionate of believers.
President Obama is great at finding them and setting them to action.
It’s going to be an interesting couple of weeks, I would suggest.
Madigan’s Gleaner 