That's naive and you know it. A massive drive for him was electing the first black president. A less, but still not-insignificant drive was for Hillary as the first female president.
Thats your opinion, Obama could have been white, and he still would have been voted for by 99.9% of those who voted for him. Young Kennedy-like candidates are rare (eg Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) but are incredibly electable when they show up.
Towards the end of his presidency, most of us forgot he was even black. Just those white southerners and a certain old guy in New York who were fixated on his race from the beginning still thought he was a DEI elect.
There were hit songs about what a big moment it is that he was black. At least among minorities that was a massive deal. If you didn't see that, I think you're probably closer to those white southerners than you might think you are.
Can you imagine if mainstream entertainers made songs celebrating having a white president?
Given that all of them but one are white, what the point that would be? Songs are not because Obama is black, but because he was the first black on the role.
So you are opposed to fixating on people's race and yet there you are singling out white southerners. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
Most people forgot Obama was black except them, they are also the ones constantly accusing Obama of being racially divisive, they should just own what they say. This is kind of like Trump calling people names but then being greatly offended when someone calls him a name, right?
I’d be shocked if Hilary had a net benefit being a female candidate. We’ve had 2 chances to elect a female president and they both lost the general election with not that great turnout.
John McCain’s VP was female during 08 and he lost by a huge margin.
In a way yes. Kamala lost because she was the ultimate DEI candidate (in how own words that the only reason he picked her to be VP). Regardless of her personal skills or qualities it’s very hard to move past that..
Had she had a chance to prove that she could win a primary things might have been different
In a way yes. Kamala lost because she was the ultimate DEI candidate (in how own words that the only reason he picked her to be VP). Regardless of her personal skills or qualities it’s very hard to move past that..
Biden fucked up in many ways, but he also got a lot of flack from bad timing and poor messaging. It’s easy to say COVID hurt Trump in 20 and Kamala in 24, but I think the details mattered.
The inflation rate fell significantly under his presidency, but during periods of high inflation prices soared. Coming back from that after generations of extremely low inflation would have been tough for someone without failing facilities. I think a great politician could have weathered that storm, Biden wasn’t up to the task and Kamala’s messaging didn’t help.
Republicans getting out ahead on that inflation messaging similarly did wonders for Trump and other Republicans. Planting the idea that America somehow didn’t do well when we did far better than the rest of the world was brilliantly executed IMO.
Kamala probably wins in 2016? I mean this in a very nice way but I think you may want research the politics and candidates in the US a little more before bold statements such as that. Kamala was unable to even register on a scale in the primary and what noise she did make was to play a false game on which she essentially accused Biden of being racist filth. I think it is not just that she had no qualifications for office, we could argue about what constitutes a qualification for a long time, but she had no reasoning or theory of why she would even be someone yo run for office. She tablet in such incomprehensible ways that one could not even discern a point from her utterances. You may say the current president rambles but she think the point is always present. Kamala on her best days just spoke in long winded tautologies: “we are always doing each day the things we do every day” or whenever nonsense she chose to present to the public. Further, he main qualification to place herself as one of the poor people was to constantly talk about being a “middle class kid.” The problem is in her generation, the middle class did quite well for themselves so it was such a false premise. Let’s not discuss the accents.
That was not at all the main reason Obama got elected. He was charismatic, likable and promised hope and change. Why is it that the people who don't want identity politics to be a focus make it a focus?
"To all those who supported our campaign, I'm humbled by the faith you've
placed in us. To all of those who did not support us, let me say this. Hear me
out as we move forward. Take a measure of me and my heart. If you still
disagree, so be it. That's democracy. That's America.
The right to dissent peaceably. Within the guardrails of our republic, it's
perhaps this nation's greatest strength. Yet hear me clearly: disagreement
must not lead to disunion. And I pledge this to you, I will be a president for all Americans, all Americans. And I promise you, I will fight as hard for those
who did not support me as for those who did."
Obama taught constitutional law and served in the state and US Senate before running for president. He was [not] some unqualified hack thrust into power because they needed a person of a different race in power.
Obama's campaign was far less about race than Trump's campaigns in 2016 and 2024. Unless you can't hear the dog whistles.
You can't claim that while claiming wanting to elect a black president wasn't a big driver in much of the turnout for Obama. There were multiple musicians literally making songs about finally being able to elect a black president.
Trump's initial popularity was due in no small part to the anger of American white supremacists and the alt-right, this was well documented even back in 2016[0,3]. That the President elected after Obama was the man who mainstreamed the birther conspiracies against Obama was not a coincidence. It wasn't entirely about Obama, but he was the straw that broke white America's back.
The social justice age wasn't a rejection of bigotry. It was a Mccarthy-esque movement of dividing everybody between sexual and racial lines into a hierarchy of who was and wasn't allowed to speak. Speaking against the party line meant exile.
The SJW/Wokeism movement had nothing to do with true equity and "rejection of bigotry". That's why there was such a revolt against it.
Of course, I didn't claim that the republicans aren't now doing everything they claimed to revolt against but worse. As it turns out "free speech" absolutism only applies to things that pwn the libz.
I call b*t. The reality is that the there is a outrage campaign in the right wing media trying to drive anger about some perceived victimhood in people who have largely been privaledged all their life. They would have found something else instead.
Obama was genuinely qualified to be president. Trump was clearly unfit in 2016 (having never held elected office and run nearly all his businesses into the ground), and constitutionally disqualified after Jan 6 2021.
Trump was also reluctant to denounce or criticize white nationalists. He repeated and reposted neo-Nazi content and phrases. He is the one ordering a zealous yet haphazard dismantling of anything that breathes the words racial equity, and without a hint of pushback from his voters.
So when Trump admitted on Howard Stern that he likes to walk in on naked teenage girls because his role of running the teen universe beauty pageant allows him to get away with that, that is ok because he wasn't running a campaign at the time?
>There are places in America that are among the most dangerous in the world. You go to places like Oakland. Or Ferguson. The crime numbers are worse. Seriously," and retweeted a false claim that 81% of white murder victims were killed by black people.
> "We've just seen many, many crimes getting worse all the time, and as Maine knows—a major destination for Somali refugees—right, am I right?"
Yeah I mean to be clear, I think Obama was a remarkable leader and it's hard to believe he once occupied the same seat DJT does today
He didn't explicitly use his race (the way Hillary often used her gender), but many who campaigned for him and large parts of his caucuses did. For better or for worse.
