It’s Over.

 

since the rise of Barack Obama, Democrats have seen themselves as destined to rule. With his presidential victory in 2008, they created a seemingly unbridgeable political empire. With the support of big cities, young progressives, universities, the media and an ever-expanding government workforce, the party [] imagined it could stay in power indefinitely.

— Joel Kotkin, spiked

the time has now arrived for Barack Obama to leave Washington and exit American politics, now that his Shadow Presidency — which proved to be even more counter-productive and chaotic than Trump’s first term in office — has gone down in flames.

— David Samuels, UnHerd
 

The worst thing about Obama America: the absence of excellence.

Democrats care about government. So it’s unsurprising they used to be about governing well, bringing out the best in leadership. FDR New Deal and World War II victory; Truman Marshall Plan, NATO, UN defending Korea; JFK to the Moon, Cuban Missile Crisis, Tax Reform, Nuclear Test Ban Treaty;, LBJ Civil Rights Acts, War on Poverty, Great Society; Clinton Welfare Reform, Balanced Budget, Israeli-Palestinian Peace. Excellence projected through well-qualified, top appointments, “Best and Brightest,” Sound economic growth to 2000. That was then.

Obama misfired in his first two years.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was to save and create jobs and to provide relief to those most affected by the economic crisis of 2008-2009. In the end, as Obama said, “‘Shovel-ready’ was not as shovel-ready as we expected.”

Obama’s great victory was passing the “Affordable Care Act,“ a.k.a. Obamacare. Obama’s memorable promise., however, went unmet:

if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.

Obamacare’s actual launch, two years later, was a mess. As noted in Government Executive:

establishing the federal insurance exchange and a secure, user-friendly website so people could sign up for the health plans presented complex technical problems, those challenges were made significantly more difficult because of lousy management—misplaced priorities, poor communication, insufficient contracting know-how, and a reluctance among senior officials to receive “bad news,” to name just a few of the problems the IG identified.  

In Obama’s first midterm election, Republicans gained 6 Senate seats, dropping the Democrats' majority from 59 - 41 to 53 - 47. The GOP also added 63 House seats for a 242 to 193 majority, gaining control of that  chamber. Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley observed after the midterms, “the act of being a president is to deliver on those promises. We are finding out that it's often tougher than candidates think."

“Demography is destiny.”

— Auguste Comte (1798 -1857) 

Approaching the 2012 election after his mid-term setback, Obama needed a substitute for unrealized administration success. He chose racism, couched as "identity politics." With white women seeking equity added to people of color wanting equity with whites, identity politics would yield a natural electoral majority. Demography as destiny.

“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon and I think [his parents] are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves."

— Barack Obama at a White House Press Conference, March 2012 

Treyvon Martin provided identity politics its needed symbol. The white-like (George Zimmerman is Hispanic) authority figure (armed security guard) shot and killed Martin, a black teenager. The 2012 Treyvon Martin story became the first to receive more attention than that year's presidential election campaign itself.

Martin’s martyrdom led to 2013’s creation of Black Lives Matter, then to mass demonstrations following the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri, and to riots sweeping the country after George Floyd’s choking death in the “lock-down” Covid Summer of 2020 — all using identity politics to counter “white male oppression” of unarmed persons of color, white LBGTQ+, and white women, plus progressives pushing climate change mandates. This identity politics coalition around Obama held political power that overrode meritocracy concerns from 2012 on. Until today.

Problems with identity politics showed up when Asians disadvantaged by Harvard’s affirmative action admissions policies sued and won at the Supreme Court, breaking Obama America’s constitutional underpinning..

Similar identity politics misfires turned off white mothers, Latino tax-paying immigrants, and black males looking for work. As even “Rajin’ Cajun” James Carville said, his party had become enamored with radiating the repellent idea that “identity is more important than humanity”.

Following the 2024 elections, Manhattan Institute conservative Heather MacDonald wrote the Obama-guided forces

initiated a period of disruption beyond anything current generations have seen [by] enabling millions of Third World illegal aliens to enter the country, enforcing a mass delusion regarding the malleability of biological sex, ending meritocracy in favor of race and gender quotas, and setting up a collapse of the electrical grid through fantastical requirements regarding “green” energy.

Obama, your hope has yielded America’s latest change.