“It’s not as if we didn’t see some of this coming,” said Barack Obama, a note of bleak humour in his voice. “I will admit it’s worse than even I expected, but I did warn y’all!”
The crowd at a sports arena in Norfolk, Virginia, half-laughed and half-groaned. “I did,” Obama added. “You can run the tape.”
Now Obama is back on the campaign trail, for Democrats running for governor in New Jersey and Virginia. It gives him a platform to deliver an alternative State of the Union address. And the gloves are off.
To hear the expectant buzz of the 7,000-plus crowd in Norfolk as candidate Abigail Spanberger promised that Obama’s entrance was just moments away was to be reminded that Democrats did once have a president who could match Trump’s superstar charisma.
They increased because Obama legalized and normalized the worst excesses of the Bush admin and gave those powers to subsequent presidencies. But sure let’s stand up more for the guy who said “we need to look forward, not backward” when it came to prosecuting the Bush admin for war crimes, and then wondering why no one would stop Trump from criming all his presidency when we couldn’t even lift a finger for war crimes.
I’m not saying Obama is a villain, but he fucked up in some very major ways on those issues.