We probably will never again see a presidency like the Obama presidency, with undying opposition from one Party and unyielding support from the other.
As Jonathan Capehart put it four years ago, the Republican Party's steadfast opposition to Barack Obama did not begin in October 2010 when Senate Majority Leader McConnell declared "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Nor did it begin on inauguration night 2009 when some congressional Republicans met and agreed to demonstrate persistent opposition to the President's legislative program. It occurred earlier- during the transition period- when incoming vice-president Biden, he says, was told by seven GOP senators that McConnell had demanded unified resistance because "we can't let you succeed in anything. That's our ticket to coming back."’
The most visible and controversial (albiet not most significant) manifestation of GOP obstruction has been "birtherism," relentlessly pushed for 5+ years by the man who not coincidentally became the Republican nominee for President.
Now Donald Trump has tried to soften his image to gain acceptance among mildly conservative, osensibly independent voters by asserting "Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period."
There is nothing new under the sun, and nothing new to demonstrate the already obvious, that Obama was born in the 50th state, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961. Nothing recently unearthed has persuaded Grump that the fellow was born in the USA. He was lying then or he's lying now.
Hillary Clinton doesn't want him to get away with it, to erase history, not without some apology or acknowledgement that he was so wrong for so long. She tweeted "expressing zero regret for years of pusing a racist conspiracy theory, Trump again appointed himself judge & jury on #POTUS's citizenship."
Simillarly, Seth Myers doesn't want the "centerpiece of Donald Trump's political career" to be disappeared from history by fiat. He explained
You don't get to peddle racist rhetoric for five years and decide when it's over. We decide when it's over and it's certainly not over after a thirty second statement in the middle of a hotel commercial... Obama wasn't born here is your #1 hit. Saying you got it from Hillary is like Springsteen saying he wrote "Born to Run" because he heard Bon Jovi saying it once.
That's the way it should be and probably would be if not for disagreement from a corner of the Democratic Party occupied by a man whose blind support from Democrats has matched the blind opposition he has received from Republicans. On Saturday the Associated Press reported
President Barack Obama is joking that there’s an extra spring in his step now that the “whole birther thing is over.”
Obama is speaking at an annual dinner for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. The dinner comes a day after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump reversed himself on his long-held and false view that Obama was not born in the United States.
With an air of sarcasm, Obama says that the Islamic State group, North Korea, poverty, climate change — none of those things weighed on his mind like the validity of his birth certificate.
The president says the end of talk about where he was born will be a boost for him in the home stretch of his administration, and adds: “In other breaking news, the world is round.”
"In other breaking news, the world is round." Ha-Ha! We all laughed. Without a Democrat, Republican, or media member noticing, President Obama contradicted the Clinton campaign.
On November 2, 2010 Obama labeled as a "shellacking" the defeat of congressional Democrats that day, signaling to Republicans and the nation that whatever progressive agenda the Democrats had in mind had been repudiated at the polls. Republicans never have understood that President Obama has never wished to offend them while Democrats never have understood that Barack Obama, whether for selfish or patriotic reasons, will throw them overboard in a New York minute.
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