Civility Politics

Let us now praise the ever-hopeful and idealistic Michelle Obama.

While campaigning for a Virginia state House candidate, former Attorney General Eric Holder said

They have used the power that they have gotten for all the wrong things. They want to keep themselves in power. They want to cater to the special interests. It is time for us as Democrats to be as tough as they are, to be as dedicated as they are, to be as committed as they are.

Michelle always says- Michelle Obama, I love her, you know she and my wife, like really tight, which really scares me and Barack but Michelle says "when they go low, we go high." No, no.

When they go low, we kick them. That's what, that's what this new Democratic Party is about. We're proud of hell to be Democrats. We're willing to fight for the ideals of the Democratic Party. We;re proud our our history, we're proud of our present and we're proud of the future that we can create for this country and we're not in this just to make a statement. We're in this to win, alright?

To her credit, Michelle Obama responded. To her discredit, she was wrong when she stated

Fear is not — it's not a proper motivator. Hope wins out. And if you think about how you want your kids to be raised, how you want them to think about life & their opportunities, do you want them afraid of their neighbors?”

Hope worked for Senator Obama in the fall of 2008. By the fall of 2012, the bloom was off the rose, Obama's margin over the GOP opponent declined, and only Chief Justice John Roberts' vote to uphold the the President's Affordable Care Act saved the nation from Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. In July of 2016, 62%-70% of Americans were "dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time."

Still, President Obama- as is his style- went high and, running for a third Obama term, Hillary Clinton did, also, Unfortunately, her (ultimately winning) opponent did not:

“One of the candidates, as you recall, was predicting that the election was going to be ‘rigged’ in some way,” said Jeh Johnson, the former secretary, referring to President Trump’s unsubstantiated accusation before Election Day. “We were concerned that by making the statement we might, in and of itself, be challenging the integrity of the election process itself.”

Mr. Johnson’s testimony, before the House Intelligence Committee, provided a fresh insight into how the Obama administration tried to balance politically explosive information with the public’s need to know.

Ian Bremmer recalls

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.

So give Michelle Obama some credit. It's not all of us who can convince themselves that the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter bunny exist, and that the American people are yearning for happy talk from politicians.  With any luck, however, she will convince few other Democrats and Eric Holder's clear notion of reality will prevail.

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