dagblog - Comments for "How I Miss Obama"

Max Boot watched Obama's

artappraiser — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 05:29:34 +0000

In reply to How I Miss Obama

Max Boot watched Obama's Nelson Mandela lecture, but it can be read instead and I definitely found it worth the time:

Here it is at NPR in live transcript form

Here it is at The New Yorker in print form without all the live transcript interruptions

As a conservative, I despair

artappraiser — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 01:47:46 +0000

In reply to How I Miss Obama

As a conservative, I despair at Republicans' support for Trump. His vision is not conservatism

By Charles J. Sykes @ TheGuardian.com, July 22

It is hard to refute those who say Trumpism is a product of conservatism but refute them we must. We are better than this

(Charles J Sykes is a contributing editor for the Weekly Standard and the author of How the Right Lost Its Mind.)

Leaving the element of race

moat — Sun, 22 Jul 2018 00:04:40 +0000

In reply to In Conservative Shocked to

Leaving the element of race to the side for the moment, perhaps the contest is not between "elites" and "populists" but elites and widely different versions of class consciousness.
Michael W recently pointed to how "populism" is not necessarily a gang of angry natives but a political doctrine that can be embraced by all manner of folk. That is a helpful perspective when comparing the anti-globalism expressed by both Bernie Sanders and Trump. They both theoretically appealed to people who felt they were at the short end of the stick. As Dylan put it: in this they were not unique.

A historian surveys the

artappraiser — Sat, 21 Jul 2018 17:57:41 +0000

In reply to How I Miss Obama

A historian surveys the wreckage of the Trump-Putin summit

Michael Kimmage argued for reengagement with Russia, and had written about his high hopes for Helsinki. Then Trump started talking.

An interview with Christopher Shear @ Vox.com, Updated Jul 21, 2018, 12:06pm EDT

[....] In Foreign Affairs, a mere week ago, the historian and former diplomat Michael Kimmage made the case that the real action at the Helsinki meeting would quite likely occur behind the scenes, in unglamorous conversations among midlevel diplomats, who would begin much-needed exchanges about thorny issues including Ukraine and Syria.

Then President Trump stepped up to the mike. In a now-infamous press conference, he cast doubt on the US intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia hacked Democratic politicians and generally interfered in the 2016 election. (He subsequently backpedaled, unconvincingly.)

Trump “has destroyed his credibility on Russia even with people who might be Trump voters on other issues,” said Kimmage, who teaches at the Catholic University and who served, from 2014 to 2016, on the policy planning staff at the State Department, focusing on Russia and Ukraine [....]

WaPo "Right Turn" columnist

artappraiser — Sat, 21 Jul 2018 17:47:36 +0000

In reply to How I Miss Obama

WaPo "Right Turn" columnist Jennifer Rubin, back from vacation, in her July 20 piece, Four reasons we’ve reached a tipping point on Trump, among other things:

calls on Pompeo and Bolton to resign,

They are plainly enabling a president to betray American interests. Their obligation is to quit and share all they know with the American people

and calls the current Republican party anti-American

It is not an exaggeration to say a party that continues support for Trump is anti-American.

and says that Congress should not confirm Kavanaugh or any other judges now

refraining from confirming any new judges or executive officers until the cloud over the presidency is removed

and says it's imperative that Dems win in November

Finally, it is more essential than ever that the GOP lose heavily in November’s midterms.

In Conservative Shocked to

artappraiser — Sat, 21 Jul 2018 06:50:35 +0000

In reply to How I Miss Obama

In Conservative Shocked to Discover Obama Doesn’t Hate White People, @ NYMag.com, Jonathan Chait addresses the reaction of a different kind of conservative than neo-con type of which Boot always was, similar to Bill Kristol, which sort of illuminates a crucial difference for me.

This Jim Geraghty guy, "senior political correspondent" at National Review appears to be a street-fighting political type of guy who participated a lot in helping to create the false caricature of Obama so that Fox News and conservative talk radio would have a liberal bogeyman. And now they are false freaking out that the Obama caricature they made for political propaganda purposes wasn't real

The former president’s defense of liberalism included a defense of universalism, in contrast to a tendency in left-wing thought to essentialize all thought by its level of privilege. “Democracy demands that we’re able also to get inside the reality of people who are different than us so we can understand their point of view … ” he argued. “And you can’t do it if you insist that those who aren’t like you — because they’re white, or because they’re male — that somehow there’s no way they can understand what I’m feeling, that somehow they lack standing to speak on certain matters.”

The way for conservatives to acknowledge the appeal of Obama’s speech was to insist it somehow contrasted with his behavior as president.

“Of course … this is the president who made Al Sharpton his ’go-to man on race’ and who said Latinos needed to ’punish’ their ‘enemies,’” writes National Review’s Jim Geraghty. “It’s great that Obama realizes that identity politics can be corrosive to civil society and that they can Balkanize a once-thriving, relatively harmonious society. It just would have been good to hear this wisdom from a president instead of an ex-president.”

In fact, Obama said the same things many time during his presidency. (For examples, see here, here, here, and here.)

Geraghty’s examples hardly establish that Obama devoted his presidency to stoking hatred against white people.

I think serious Neo-cons like Boot and Kristol always knew this and didn't participate in making the false bogeyman Obama, they knew this:

Obama, of course weaved universalist themes into his appeal from the very outset, beginning with his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote speech, through his address about race in 2008, to his 2015 speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Selma, which placed the civil-rights struggle at the heart of the American story. The whole idea that Obama was elected twice, and left office with a 60 percent approval rating, by attacking the racial group that accounts for 70 percent of the electorate is absurd on its face. What possible logic would there be for Obama to attack the constituency that supplied the majority of his votes in both 2008 and 2012?

They just disagreed him on some points of foreign policy and maybe economic policy. I.E., Obama says he's not against all wars, just stupid wars, and they disagreed, they thought some of those wars not so stupid.

What comes to mind for me is one of my favorite topics, how the current political parties don't really seem to me to serve our body politic correctly. It has always seemed to me that true neo-conservatives and neo-liberals have a lot more in common than neo-conservatives have with like Fox News/talk radio conservatives. And paleo conservatives like populist pitchfork Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul have a lot in common with angry Bernie Sanders types and other lefty types. And the first group is proudly elite and the second populist.

I'm reminded of how back in the early TPMCafe, the Bush years, Josh Marshall had a section for neo-liberal foreign policy wonk friends to blog. And how much the lefty part of the audience hated them. Who were also the same people who hated the choice of either Obama and Hillary....(not to mention there was a group of those type of people who just loved them some pitchforks..some members even made up a pitchfork avatar.)

I guess all I am saying is that I am not surprised by Boot's op-ed. And that's because I've always seen a link between intellectual neo-cons like him and neo-liberal types like Obama and Hillary. It's always seemed to me that the natural big tent two-party divisions should be "elite internationalist globalist neos" vs "pitchfork America's-problems-first" populists.

An unrelated point. I think this is a real prescient point to remember for Nov. 2018 elections:

What possible logic would there be for Obama to attack the constituency that supplied the majority of his votes in both 2008 and 2012?

I just don't think bashing white people for falling for voting for Trump is a smart way to go, it feels like a mistake to me. I am thinking how before he was elected I always liked Obama's potential precisely because he was very much bi-racial, as in being able to get in and understand the minds of "flyover" suburban whites because his grandparents partly raised him.

I truly understand this

rmrd0000 — Sat, 21 Jul 2018 00:07:58 +0000

In reply to How I Miss Obama

I truly understand this feeling. Trump is a racist buffoon. If Obama did what Trump is doing, there would be impeachment proceedings under way. Instead of measuring how bad the election slaughter will be for Republicans, we are instructing Democrats on how they need to win over a subset of white voters. My frustration is that majorities of every other ethnic group wants Democrats. The only reason I can find for Trump’s ability to withstand all the crap is white supremacy. Trump is a Russian puppet, he separated black and brown babies from their parents, he is a pathological liar. There is no rational reason for his support in one ethnic group. If the Blue Wave does not materialize, it will be because of one group of voters. Other ethnic group suffer from the same pathetic outreach from Democrats, but majorities are still woke enough to vote for Democrats over Republicans.

Obama was treated like crap because white supremacy held him to a higher standard.

Edit to add:

Trumps approval at 538 is 41%. There is a MSNBC/WSJ poll scheduled for release on Sunday. We will see if approval is beginning to fall after all the racism and incompetence shown by this evil man.

2nd Edit to add:

If President Barack Obama did what Trump is doing and a majority of black voters continued to support Obama, what would the storyline be regarding black voters?