Former president Barack Obama appeared Thursday in Beverly Hills at a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. It was the first of three fundraisers he'll attend and he displayed his characteristic boldness. Edward-Isaac Dovere of Politico reports
He did not specifically discuss immigrant families being
separated at detention centers. He did not discuss the travel ban or other
rulings from the Supreme Court this week. Teed up gently but directly by DNC
chairman Tom Perez, who was seated next to him on a small stage asking
questions to prompt the discussion, he dodged a question about Anthony
Kennedy’s retirement. Merrick Garland’s name wasn’t mentioned, and neither was
the current push by most Senate Democrats — and supported by Obama’s former
vice president Joe Biden — to say that Trump’s nominee should also not be given
a hearing until after the next election.
A couple of thousand children being taken by the
Trump-Sessions government from their parents? Not a big deal. Ihe most
important vacancy in recent Supreme Court history? Not worth talking about.
It was classic Obama, who (sarcasm ahead) humbly stated
I’ll be honest with you, if I have a regret during my
presidency, it is that people were so focused on me and the battles we were
having, particularly after we lost the House, that folks stopped paying
attention up and down the ballot.
In this telling, the Party didn't lose seats because voters
were becoming increasingly fed up with his presidency. He was just so darn
compelling that all eyes were focused on him.
If I have a regret during my presidency? While Obama was
wishing and hoping, Kim Jong-un was strengthening North Korea's nuclear weapons
program. The minimum wage was not
increased. The titans of Wall Street,
having brought the world's economy nearly to its knees shortly before Obama
took over, were given a pass.
These are only a few of the policy failures in 2009-2016, and far
more than would render "if I have a regret" to be anything less than
obscene.
But the failure of his presidency was not limited to policy. Ian Bremmer reminds us
The U.S. government under Obama knew what the Russians were
doing. Obama was warned repeatedly by Eastern European governments that Russia
was meddling in their own elections. And while Latvian elections don’t exactly
rank high on the list of an American president’s priorities, the White House
could have guessed what the Russians were gearing up to do — and should have
sent them a forceful message to knock it off. Obama apparently issued a direct
warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin when they met in person in
September 2016, but it came too late and had little effect.
The lack of defensive cyber weapons to deter the brunt of
the meddling obviously complicated matters (and still does). Still, if you
can’t formulate effective cyber-defense measures, at least put together clear
policies to deter future attacks—go on the offensive and freeze Russian bank
accounts, threaten to publish embarrassing information about Putin and his
inner circle, and so on.
Instead it looks like there was barely any deterrence from
the Obama administration — and that’s on him. By the time Wikileaks was
starting to make waves in the presidential election with suspiciously timed
email leaks, the response from the Obama administration was too weak and too
late to stem the tide of false information.
Politico notes "Obama stuck to his routine of never saying President Donald Trump’s name in public, but he spoke at length about what his problems are with the Trump presidency."
Obama will not mention the name "Donald Trump" but
at least he criticizes the incumbent, for whom every day is "opposite
day" in reversing everything Obama. It is the least the former President
can do and in his post-presidency, the least he can do is exactly what Barack Obama
will do.
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