Obama’s Charge!

23 October 2020

The speech was so subtle and so hard hitting in parts that one could see why the US has presidential term limits, else we would have had not just Obamacare, but an Obama era! At Philadelphia in the backdrop of the Lincoln centre, Obama spoke for about half an hour, as if he was in the fight of his life. I have never seen Obama so charged up, so strident, even when he was defending his own first term record. Of course, Trump getting angry or trying to belittle his predecessor’s political instincts is not surprising counter. Of course the polls in battle ground states would show an uptick in support for the Harris-Biden ticket but more importantly in the coming days, it will show an upswing for the entire Blue Ticket from White House nominees to the local State legislature or municipality that is on the ballot for 3 November 2020.

American politics is one where money offers an insight into the political currents in more ways than one. The campaign Blue of not just Biden, but individual senatorial contestants like the one opposing Lindsay Graham is rich with war chests swelling to unprecedented levels, but with the incumbent senator actually asking for $10 donations even for his own campaign! The mention of this one contest, is not because I look at Graham as a paragon of all that is wrong with the original Republican party of Reagan, as one who is so unprincipled, as one who has sold the soul of the Republican party to Trump! But it is because, here is a person who would otherwise, have held a rather easy reelection, however, is now facing a challenge that increasingly, looks like Graham could not return to The Capitol at all next January!

What Obama did in his searing speech https://www.npr.org/2020/10/21/926189735/entreating-pa-residents-to-vote-obama-delivers-rebuke-of-trump was to appeal to the Democrat base who were Bernie camp that things improve incrementally, that each vote counts and making change happen is a slow process heavy on follow through. His other part of asking voters to flip Blue the entire ticket not stopping at just the top of it, was to tell them that no Democrat leader in government should face what he faced in his second term. So for concerns of how narrowly Hillary lost in battleground states ( a margin of less than 1% in three of them in 2016), to how now Biden enjoys a beyond polling error margin lead in most of them, was another matter. Obama said clearly that unless the defeat was comprehensive, Trump with his domination of the SCOTUS once Judge Amy Barrett is confirmed( she is expected to be as early as coming Monday after the Judicial Committee voted 12-0 with 10 Democrat members abstaining from participation in that vote yesterday placing portraits of Americans who would lose medical cover if Obamacare was repealed in their empty seats) and his core supporters of gun toting white supremacists militias could steal the election from the American people. One has never heard Obama so strident as he was on these points. He was not just lending the prestige of his voice to the Biden ticket, but basically issuing a rallying cry for for the entire Democrat and liberal caucus. Then Obama did something more. He actually spoke for Republican conservatives too, saying that we need the Presidency to be decent, to be Presidential, to carry allies along, and here he used Trump’s infamous retweet that said the Bin Laden raid was a hoax! When he was speaking to Republican voters to now vote Biden, he was combative and appealing to their sense of affiliation and solidarity with the military by pointing out how Trump had dissed on Fallen soldiers and US military personnel, by pointing out Trump’s indiscretions, his actions or lack of them for Russian bounty offers in Afghanistan against US active duty personnel.

For the record I am not impressed by Obama because it is too late in the day ( Not for November 2020, but in the sense that America experienced Trump for these last four years.) What he did now in 2020, he should have done in 2016. Yes, like Dr Manmohan Singh in 2014, he did warn Americans that electing Trump was going to be a disaster, but exactly like Dr Manmohan Singh, Obama never went on record to defend his terms in office. Allowing history be the judge is poetic but neither pragmatic nor practical as 2020 has revealed unfortunately for American politics. Yet, I would also be not a student of American politics, if I took only that view! May be the warhorse was reserving his one last major punch for two things that are larger than the immediacy of this 2020 Presidential race.

In 2022, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/20/politics/2020-election-state-legislature-governor-election/index.html?iid=ob_article_organicsidebar_expansion legislative majorities would give the Democrats an equal upper hand that 2010 did to Republicans, when they redrew Congressional districts and state level electoral maps to suit their support base of constituents. This is official, redrawing of electoral map of the USA at every level, which gave Republicans such a majority that it took nearly a decade for the Democrats to regain control of the US House of Representatives in 2018, this process is called Redistricting. Even now the legislative foot print of the Reds is 60% to the Blues 40% across all the legislatures in the USA at every level, because of the finesse with which Republicans drew the electoral map when they had control in 2010. Then Obama has to contend with a Republican ability to appear so ‘optically good’ even when they indulge in actual debasement, which was evident with Senator Dianne Feinstein’s https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/16/feinstein-hug-graham-hearings/( Ranking Member belonging to Democratic Party) effusive praise for the Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsay Graham when they closed yesterday, before the controversial vote to pass on Judge Barrett’s nomination to the Senate! To say that Graham was fair on more occasions was too much, but to actually call the process of Barrett confirmation hearings as ‘One of the best set of hearings that I’ve participated in!’ was crossing all limits. Then she continued “ It leaves one with a lot of hopes, a lot of questions and even some ideas perhaps of good bipartisan legislation we can just put together.” sealing it with a walk across to hug Senator Graham. So what is actually a larger problem that Obama realised in his presidency was the unwillingness of the Democrats to commit to the larger mandate the nation was willing to give them as by popular vote. It undermined his presidency no doubt, but is also left his legacy in peril. So today, Obama leads the Democrats in a different approach, for not only was Senator Feinstein immediately called for private counselling by Senate Minority leader Schumer, but there was growing calls to retire the lady and after all she is from California which is a blue deep blue state, so we could well see that she will not be the next Judicial Committee chairperson if Democrats take the Senate now ( 75% chance as per pollsters). It could well be, that Feinstein was softening the blow for Graham? Was trying to make Republican base less disconcerting with the #BlueTidalWave? That is the internal politics of the party.

So Obama senses the need for a Democratic legislative presence up and down the ticket across legislatures in the US Congress and States, to ensure that the democratic and liberal constituency is not set back by another decade. Then there is the issue of Michelle Obama. We have already seen Hillary Rodham Clinton as Presidential candidate, so we could have Michelle herself run for office. In all likelihood this would first be a senatorial bid as early as in 2022, and if Biden would leave in 2024, moving Kamala Harris up the ticket, Michelle could join it easily, if she nursed such ambitions. Yet, in my assessment, Obama’s move is basically to ensure that Black voters don’t slacken, particularly male and elderly voters who ensured what at one time pollsters called a Democratic presidential vote bank!

Finally, in his leading this charge, Barrack Obama has lent legitimacy to Nancy Pelosi, to the new Democrats that include AOC and others like her in the House of Representatives, even as he continues to inspire traditional Democrats and old world charm Republicans who look for eloquence, an certain degree of understatement, a bipartisanship and gentlemanliness that his legacy is now in safe hands with the current generation under Biden-Harris.
I feel that Obama has sealed the deal for Democrats. I would stick my neck out to say that Republicans now face a rout! The win would be so deafening, that the SCOTUS deciding the Obamacare repeal appeal will be forced to heed its echoes…