Obama! Obama! Why hast thou obandoned us!
Ah, the good life! Kitesurfing in the Caribbean! Sampling exotic foods throughout Asia! Anticipating multi-million dollar book deals! Such are the wonderful perks of a post-presidency.
Very nice for Barack Obama but for the rest of the Democrats? Not so hot. That is the premise of James Wolcott in the April edition of Vanity Fair. The writer who fantasized about a revenge-tinged "reckoning" following an imagined Trump expulsion from office is now grumbling about Obama enjoying himself way too much while ignoring the Democrats in "CAN OBAMA RESCUE THE DEMOCRATS?" with a subtitle of "While Barack Obama revels in the perks of the post-presidency, the Democratic base longingly wonders if he’ll ever again direct his gaze their way."
This is strictly, sketchily anecdotal, so don’t strap me to the wall and drill for data, but listening to fellow liberal neurotic Democrats over the last year, I detect a sense of abandonment. Of Obandonment, to be more precise. Obama, Obama, where art thou? The Bat Signal scours the city night in vain for thee. Think of it, treasure the memory: A president who didn’t brag about himself. Who made it about “we,” not “me.” Who could lankily stride around the Oval Office without getting winded. Occupying the White House for eight years, Barack and Michelle Obama conducted themselves beautifully and irreproachably, elevating the national tone, embracing the once excluded, and leaving 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue radiating an afterglow rare for presidents and first mates, second terms usually being brutal and humbling.
Their afterglow persists, giving their absence a keener pang, but the halo effect they left on governance, integrity, and diversity was turned into a bent hubcap on Week One of the Trump presidency; it’s been Satyricon ever since under a chief executive whom political consultant, analyst, and Never Trumper Rick Wilson has crowned our “Kentucky Fried Nero.” The contrast between the recent Then and the nonstop Now is painful, poignant, and demoralizing . . . one stabbing reminder after another of what we have lost.
Paradise Lost thanks to the votes of those horrible deplorables! And after that paean to The One, the low level grumbling becomes louder:
This ache of absence comes with grumbles of resentment from some in the choir. So, goody for
The Obamas get to land a joint book deal in the ballpark of $65 million, which is one hell of a ballpark. Obama gets to deliver speeches to Wall Street firms for hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop while millions of Americans (whom I’ve never actually met but am certain exist) have to make do at Costco. O.K., maybe he’s earned his perk walk, his frolics in the holiday sun, but still!
Okay, James. Apparently you actually bought into that community organizer shtick about caring about the community. Finally he goes into a downbeat funk by noticing that the blessed Obama was mainly interested in himself, not the Democrats:
...as Obama’s personal Jedi mastery grew, foiling the worst excesses of Republican rollback, the political fortunes of the Democratic Party at large became enfeebled. Under Obama’s presidency, the Democratic Party didn’t flourish—it atrophied. This can be chalked up to the natural cycle of incumbency, the party in charge traditionally losing seats in the midterms, but the numbers are still sobering.
“In his eight years in office, Obama oversaw the rapid erosion of the Democratic Party’s political power in state legislatures, congressional districts and governor’s mansions,” reported Clare Malone in an article for Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight in January 2017. “At the beginning of Obama’s term, Democrats controlled 59 percent of state legislatures, while now they control only 31 percent, the lowest percentage for the party since the turn of the 20th century. They held 29 governor’s offices and now have only 16, the party’s lowest number since 1920.”
Malone points out that the weaknesses of the Democratic Party are structural and long-brewing, and can’t be dumped solely on Obama’s beach towel. But there’s no question that the grassroots wave enthusiasm that helped drive Obama’s election victories petered out at legislative crunch time. This is attributable partly to the decision to fold Obama’s original organizing machine—MyBO, later Organizing for America (OFA)—into the Democratic National Committee, where it was subsumed into the mother ship. There were sensible reasons for this at the time, but the result was a rinky-dink sideshow, as reported by Micah Sifry in an extensive investigative piece for The New Republic called “Obama’s Lost Army,” in February 2017.
MyBO? Who was the marketing genius that came up with that name? No wonder it was changed.
We will now allow Wolcott a final word of possible hope amid the despair of the current Trumpocalypse:
Obama plays a long game, doing his patient best to bend the arc of history an extra bend toward justice.
Yeah, that's just the ticket. While we think Obama is just kitesurfing in the Caribbean, he is really bending the arc of history an extra bend toward justice.
