And missing lots of trees and the freaking forest as well.
Two articles. The New Yorker, David Remnick’s Obama Reckons with a Trump Presidency and The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald’s The Stark Contrast Between the GOP’s Self-Criticism in 2012 and the Democrats Blame-Everyone-Else Posture Now
Those that have President Obama up on a giant pedestal and believe that the Democratic Party is still swell will love Remnick’s piece. It’s not without real merit and I appreciated that he does highlight and reinforce the “No Drama Obama” perception (or is it a meme?). After nine years on the national public stage, I’ve never seen any reason to doubt the President Obama’s equanimity is anything other than authentic. Evident in many of his candid and not so measured comments in the article. The quality of his basic temperament was, IMHO, a major factor in why he beat Clinton in the primaries and McCain in the general and has continued to figure into his favorable public opinion ratings. Given a choice between a hot-head and one with a calm but not weak demeanor, a majority of the electorate will choose the latter. Particularly when it’s combined with a wry and sometimes witty sense of humor. (That was one of the keys to the success of the senile Reagan.)
Unfortunately, Obama’s equanimity may also have been his Achilles heel. (Combined with his high self-regard.) He would be the bi-partisany President that Democrats since 1972 believe is what the majority wants and most importantly, what they’ll vote for.
It’s as if Obama learned nothing from his 2008 campaign, but perhaps his campaign was too much of a marketing effort and nothing below the superficial was worth bothering with or reflecting on after the fact.
(As I said in a comment a few days ago, winners that don’t study why they won, all too quickly find themselves in the loser’s circle. A mere two years later after both of Obama’s presidential wins.)
Obama covers the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. issue and from this angle: The biggest drop that I had in my poll numbers in my first six months had nothing to do with the economy. It was `the beer summit.’ Regardless of whether or not that was the sole, or even a major, reason for his loss of public support at that time (and I don’t buy that because congressional Democrats were getting an earful from their constituencies in the summer of 2009 on jobs and the economy and after reporting that to Obama, he dismissed their concerns), had he handled the Clinton and media attacks on him over Rev. Wright the way he handled the Gates matter, he would have lost the nomination.
Some seemingly small matters are embedded in large issues that vex this country and the world. Deflecting that small with a two or three sentence response, regardless of the correctness of those sentences, can not only not make it go away but also make that small seem larger and on its own, important. From the campaign trail that’s exactly what he did until he seized the opportunity to confront the raw politically driven brouhaha to confront it head-on and in its largest scope in his televised A More Perfect Union speech. Brilliant, but one great speech — with an implicit message that this is something we need to talk about — doesn’t make the broad issue go away. The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. arrest called for another “we need to talk about this” speech. Not a private “beer summit” with Obama and Biden acting like conflict resolution counselors between the two parties. The outrageousness of being arrested for doing nothing other than having difficulty in getting into one’s own home isn’t beyond the ability of most Americans to appreciate and have empathy for anyone put in Gates’ position. If its properly articulated as something that could happen to anyone under the right circumstances and at the right time.
Nobody told him that his job as the first black President would be easy and as that person he would need to address one issue again and again as it surfaced in various guises. And do so with the same gravity, thoughtfulness, and on the largest possible venue so that the “let’s talk about this matter” doesn’t end up as a sound-byte that opponents can use for their own advantage. The conciliatory “beer summit” may have contributed to further feelings of being disrespected within the law enforcement community. Not because in words Obama put the police officer in the wrong, but because the staging of the “summit” implied that to police officers.
Belaboring the “beer summit” as a criticism of Obama is not the reason I’ve done it. The Gates’ arrest and subsequent handling of it by the WH is of minuscule importance. Perhaps, a lost opportunity for Obama and the country, but not much more. What is disturbing is that over seven years later Obama cites it as the reason his poll numbers dropped and denies any responsibility on his part for this outcome. While my guess is that it was completely unintentional on Remnick’s part, Obama’s own words repeat his “denial of responsibility” for negative outcomes.
That is particularly disturbing as it appears along with signifant inflation of Obama’s Presidential accomplishments.
…we accomplished as much domestically as any President since Lyndon Johnson in those first two years. But it was really hard.”
Wrong. Only someone that doesn’t have even a superficial understanding of LBJ’s domestic accomplishments would view Obama’s in the same league as Johnson’s. Correct that it was “really hard” for Obama, but LBJ spent eight more years toiling and tilling the soil in the Senate before he made his move for the WH than Obama had. Unlike Obama, he didn’t get lucky in his first run for a Senate seat and had to cool his heels for seven years in the House before he could make another run at that. When he did go for the big job, he was knocked down by a young whippersnapper and then accepted the consolation prize of VP and was humiliated by JFK’s inner circle after that. And when he did get there, he wasted no time in getting going on his agenda because it wa still “really hard.”
That comment and other comments in the article reveal that Obama doesn’t know what progressivism is and uses it interchangeably with liberal and Democrat.
Obama insisted that there were gifted Democratic [progressive] politicians out there, but that many were new to the scene. He mentioned Kamala Harris, the new senator from California; Pete Buttigieg, a gay Rhodes Scholar and Navy veteran who has twice been elected mayor of South Bend, Indiana; Tim Kaine; and Senator Michael Bennet, of Colorado.
Kaine and Bennet progressives? Oh, dear.
Remnick is on solid ground in the first part of this excerpt:
Obama is a patriot and an optimist of a particular kind. He hoped to be the liberal Reagan, a progressive of consequence, but there are crucial differences.
Then he goes off into how Obama is more more intellectually sophisticated. That Obama publicly asserting that America is the exceptional world nation for eight years now, he doesn’t really see it that simplistically. What Remnick chose to ignore is that to be a “liberal Reagan,” a President would have to go about the task of dismantling what Reagan Republicans had built. Except they haven’t built anything. Their agenda has been to tear down and rip apart what Democrats built from 1933 through 1973. Obama’s “Grand Bargain” was furthering the objectives of the so-called Reagan Revolution. As neither Remnick nor Obama seems to understand that, it’s not surprising that the 2016 election results stunned them.
What is revealed about Obama is that he’s in line with other elite Democrats in blaming others and scapegoating for Democratic Party failures of their own making. He soft-peddles some of the blame game compared to others currently so engaged, but not when it comes to Putin. He asserts as fact that Putin and Russia were instrumental in the election losses. Even if true (and I’m still a “doubting Thomas” on this because the requisite tech capacity required to break into the DNC and Podesta emails isn’t all that rare or even high level), maybe he should have reconsidered treating Putin with raw contempt from day one. He’s not quite old enough to have absorbed and fully integrated a blind hate for all things Russian from the Cold War propaganda. So, where did he get this antipathy?
One odd note from Remnick:
The party of F.D.R. and Robert Kennedy was at its weakest point in decades and had been cast as heedless of the concerns of white working people.
In real time, nobody ever referred to the DP as the “party of FDR and Robert Kennedy.” Diehard Kenney supporters may have spoke as if it were the FDR and JFK party, but that wouldn’t even have been accepted by all Democrats. That sentences says something about Remnick, but I don’t know what it is.
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Greenwald adequately addresses why the Democratic Party is in serious need of a thorough and analytically tough review of what went wrong in the 2016 election and all the prior elections as far back as four decades ago. He’s correct that the GOP did perform such a review after the 2012 elections and issued a sobering, hard-facts report. However, praising the GOP for their effort is a bit like praising the CIA for its Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US. Both ended up in the round file because their was no buy-in among decision-makers for what was being said. Even with GOP openness and willingness to change, they had no clue as to how to effect it without losing the next election, more likely several future elections, and conceding power is simply not how the GOP rolls.
(Greenwald gets a C for this effort or far below whatever grade I would have given Remnick for his piece.)
As Obama’s comments in Remnick’s article should make very clear, the Democratic Party decision-makers believe the party is just fine. That fmr SOS was a good candidate and ran a good enough campaign. The only reason Clinton lost was unfair interference by … and Republicans got lucky because an ignorant loose cannon seized control of their party. We can win back power (even as it’s been eroded in the last three national level elections and for much longer at the state level) by doing more of the same, only effecting it much better.
This attitude is common to institutions. Oh sure, when they’ve had a major setback or have been in a slump for some time, they all commission a review or study and get a report. Outside consultants are hired by larger institutions to perform the task. (Recall that the Pentagon Papers was Robert McNamara’s order for a review of the Vietnam War. Deep-sixed when completed.) If, and that’s a big if, the report details serious changes that can and must be made for the survival or renewed growth of the institution, the buy-in hurdle is enormous. Not infrequently because the smarty-pants consultants don’t know what they’re talking about. But mostly because there are too many high level stakeholder in not rocking the boat and they all aren’t about to go quietly into the good night (although many would welcome a recommendation to can those they view as troublesome nemeses).
A modern day FDR could try to seize control of the Democratic Party and would be beaten back. That’s not going to change as long as the big money keeps rolling into the coffers of the national party and those occupying the congressional seats with some power as the minority party. (Soros has been holding his post-election summit and David Brock has issued the invitation to his.) As we’ve seen, change is even more intractable when the DP has its brief periods of being in the majority. Democratic voters get one message: STFU and 1) don’t make us lose what little power we have and get to work to get us more power or 2) protect our majority even if you think we’re a bunch of DINOs because the GOP is craaazy.
This is the thinking of the 2016 Democratic Party; Chuck Schumer July 2016
He suggested that the electorate’s sense of economic gloom was actually working to his party’s advantage: “The electorate is moving in a more Democratic direction. When middle class incomes decline, people tend to move in a more progressive direction.”
…
…”For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”
IOW, pray for economic gloom and for Republicans to rescue the Democratic Party. (And people have the audacity to accuse me of being cynical.)