On Obama and Iran, I distinctly remember hearing Obama say that we would not allow Iran to have nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, though, that ship seems to have sailed, along with the good ship Obama. I once thought that Netanyahu might manage to do something about Iran’s nuclear program (seeing as how Israel would be their first if not immediate target). But Netanyahu is too busy screwing the pooch in Gaza to try to do anything else. We’re going to live (and die?) with a nuclear Iran whether we like it or not.
The only way Obama could have made the racists not feel divisions would have been to lose to McCain. His very presence in office was an affront to them.
While I think Obama certainly had some missed opportunities, you’re kidding yourself with a talking point if you think a black President who received 400% more death threats than his wildly unpopular white predecessor could unite this country along racial lines in any meaningful way. . Barack Obama faces 30 death threats a day, stretching US Secret Service
Republicans: Obama was born in Kenya and was an illegitimate president Also Republicans: Obama is responsible for racism in this country
I didn’t say it would be easy. Obama was elected only because millions of white people voted for him. Personally, I was initially curious and then proud that we elected a black president for the first time. He wasn’t up for the challenge as most cave under political pressure, and I am happy to see him away from the highest office. He’s a bully, just like Trump. Obama did his bullying in a more savvy and sneaky manner. Also, much easier when you’re coddled and protected by the liberal media. Obama did not attempt to mend the nation. He did quite the opposite. Also, every politician and many leaders in any industry receive threats.
Right. As conservatives claimed he wasn't really an American, that his health care plan would create government death panels, that he was planning a personal army of armed brownshirts, that a routine military exercise in Texas was really Obama declaring martial law, etc., etc ... Obama should have someone brought us all together.
You forgot that he was gay, his husband is a man, that he was a Muslim/Arab (very unifying in the wake of 9/11), and that he even had the audacity to impugn the dignity of the office by wearing a tan suit (yet a President wearing a red baseball with a campaign slogan on it around the world is somehow acceptable haberdashery). Yeah, that guy was supposed to unite us. But now for my favorite part--the same people who criticized the mass public protests after George Floyd (even the peaceful ones) are now offended by Obama because he was....wait for it..... "sneaky".
First, I think it's important to note the context of Haley's comment. She was not saying prior to Obama there was no racism in America. She was suggesting that race relations generally improved over time in America (with some hiccups along the way) since the civil rights movement until Barack Obama. The people who disagree with that tend to fall into the same camp suggesting Trump is the disease of everything wrong in our politics rather than a symptom of the disease, the people who think Trump just made us so divisive and tribal, if he just went away, we'll go back to singing together around the campfire. Race relations generally improved (again, with some hiccups) every decade since the civil rights movement. Enter Obama, and the streamlining of the Black Lives Matter movement, they start getting worse. And they've been getting worse ever since. The only difference is you have some folks blaming Obama and others blaming Trump. With respect to our leaders, Obama was the one who started moving us back in a more divisive direction. Trump just threw gasoline on the fire. But it's obviously more complicated and bigger than any one person. I just think Obama is probably the greatest single person influence on the Democratic Party in at least the last 20 years and he was a major contributor to all of this.
The Wokescold: "The issue isn't Obama, the issue is all of those pesky Republicans who weren't ready for a Black President (which is generally untrue, definitely a small minority of racists who meet that criteria, but that's neither the story of Obama's opposition nor Trump's support)." Also the Wokescold: "Why are these people who weren't such big fans of Obama so angry?" I don't know. Maybe when you slander all of your critics as racists, a particularly powerful threat to reputation in modern America, they don't seem to like you very much.
There's nothing that Democrats hate more than mirrors and a taste of their own medicine. As soon as their own rules and standards are applied to them, they completely lose their shit and play the victim.
It's also worth noting that American foreign policy with regards to Iran continues under the Biden Administration. Still trying to be buddy-buddy and brown nose to people who hate us, and people who happen to be enabled rather than persuaded by brown-nosing. "Deescalation" doesn't mean no backbone. Often-times it means precisely the opposite without starting a pissing match. Scare your threatening enemies without pissing them off is the best policy. If your enemies don't respect you and they already hate you, and that's not changing, "at least we didn't piss them off" is a pretty small consolation prize.
That's nothing. Trump was born in Hell and will be an illegitimate president just like he was before. He has a scorched-earth policy just by walking on it. He wants people to go back where they came from. Well, he can go straight to Hell.
The first is really the most instructive. "Not really an American" was an easy way for people who didn't view themselves as racist and/or didn't want others to view them as racist to express racist viewpoints. Birtherism made no logical sense. If you really think about the story, it involves his mother flying half way across the world while heavily pregnant in 1961 (a time in which commercial flight was relatively less developed), having her baby in Kenya, then, immediately after giving birth, flying halfway around the world again to return to Hawaii and faking a ton of paperwork, all so that her son could become President of a country in which her marriage to his father would have been illegal in a lot of states at the time due to racism, an event which could have occurred if she just hadn't flown half way across the world. It is so beyond absurd logically that you need to start looking for why anybody would buy this. It was based more in feelings. Specifically, the notion that non-white people aren't fully American, a common racist belief that many people might not like to admit to themselves or others.
It'd be one thing if he tried and failed. He chose to sneer at his critics and stoke racial tensions on every race-related story he was confronted with.
Ding-ding-ding. We have a winner folks. Obama's the type of guy to give you a back-handed compliment deliberately trying to provoke you then ask "I don't know what upset him so much, I'm sorry he feels that way and I hope he can put the hate in his heart to rest." Trump will just outright insult you without any subtlety whatsoever. How different are the two really? It really just looks like one is a high school mean girl and the other is a stereotypical jock bully.
When he did "beer summit" thing people criticized that too. The "empty suit" critique of Obama is probably more accurate, because people just sort of see what they want, that was the basis of his political success as well as for why the people dislike him seem to make up the wildest of fantasies, like that hes some kind of Kenyan anti-colonialist bent on racial revenge. Everyone sees what they want because nothing is actually there, hes a cypher.
Obama did not do anything do divide our country with respect to race. Him being elected upset a lot of people. Trump capitalized on it even before the election with the birtherism movement. By the time Obama was elected, the racial division was already in place. We have not recovered from it, and no, it wasn't Obama's fault.
