NEITHER THE OLD OBAMA NOR A NEW OBAMA WILL SAVE US, EZRA

Because I'm a masochist, I read the transcript of David Remnick's interview of Ezra Klein for The New Yorker Radio Hour. What I wasn't really expecting was how obsessed both Klein and Remnick are with Barack Obama. They imply that he, or at least his style of politics, could unite us now, even though they acknowledge that he didn't succeed at doing that when he was president.

One of the first things Klein says about Obama is flat-out wrong -- self-evidently wrong.

Obama’s a very, very effective politician because he’s very good at containing opposites inside of him.... He was very good at having a sense that, if you’re going to push the country, you also need to create space in yourself—in your political movement, in your rhetoric—for the disagreement, for the concern, for the pushback. He was this generationally capable political balancer, holding both our liberalism and our illiberalism inside himself.

We know this is sheer nonsense because we're living in the Trump era. Is Trump able to "push the country"? Of course. Does Trump "create space in [him]self—in [his] political movement, in [his] rhetoric—for the disagreement, for the concern, for the pushback"? Not only does Trump not do this, he literally wants to make disagreeing with him illegal. So while Obama's approach was nice, and somewhat popular, and able to get a few things accomplished, it's absolutely not the only way to do politics successfully -- and it's questionable whether it would work at all in this era.

Klein and Remnick think Democrats' original sin was Hillary Clinton's "deplorables" speech.

Trump rises and you have, say, the Hillary Clinton “deplorables” speech, which is—

Which was a deplorable speech.

The worst word in that speech is “irredeemable.” She says that people voting for Trump are “irredeemable.” When you begin to talk like that, it’s a severing of political community.

Imagine believing that Hillary Clinton was the primary person "severing ... political community" in 2016.

Some of us remember that America's "political community" was being "severed" years earlier -- by the rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and Fox News. Klein was a youthful blogger back then -- he should remeber this.

Remnick, at least, understands that Obama failed to heal our politcal rift. Klein talks about the post-Obama period as a fall from grace, and Remnick questions him on that:

... one of my most strongly held views about politics is that the most important question for voters is not whether they like the politician, but whether the politician likes them. If voters are going to trust you with power, the first thing they’re concerned about is not whether they agree with you. The first thing is whether or not they feel you like them, and will take them into consideration.

But do you think any of that was centered on Obama himself?

Oh, there’s no doubt.

Why? Because of his character?

Because he was Black and foreign to people.

There you go.

But it wasn't just that. Obama was relentlessly othered by Republican Party's army of propagandists -- as a Marxist, as a jihadist, and more recently as a phony heterosexual with a trans wife.

Through no fault of his own, Obama is still regarded as an embodiment of extremist evil on the right. A Reddit poster has reproduced the text of a fundraising letter from Elise Stefanik, who's running in next year's New York governor's race, probably against the Democratic incumbent, Kathy Hochul:

Ever since he left the White House, Barack Obama has been looking for an “heir” to his political movement who will continue pushing his Far Left, socialist vision for America.

In other words, he’s looking for the *NEXT* Obama!

He’s reportedly considered several Democrat politicians over the years, including Kamala Harris before her disastrous defeat last November.

Now, it appears he’s finally found his “heir”...

According to communist Zohran Mamdani himself, he’s spoken to Obama “a number of times” on the phone to strategize about his campaign and begin planning what he’ll do in office.

Obama’s advice? Per CNN:

“You’ve got the inspiration part down, the former president told Zohran Mamdani, but there’s a lot riding on governing.”

Obama is no longer just giving Mamdani advice on how to run – he’s started coaching him on how to govern as a Leftist and pass a Far Left agenda!

Mamdani on his own was dangerous enough. But with training from Obama and the backing of his political machine, he’s a formidable adversary who’s got much bigger ambitions than just mayor of New York.

(Mamdani was born in Uganda, so he can't be president. Stefanik, a Harvard graduate who seemed intelligent and informed before she dumbed down her act to win the favor of Trump voters, undoubtedly knows that. But she knows that most of the recipients of this letter don't.)

[NAME], knowing what you know now, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to stop the rise of Obama before he got into a position of power?

Well, this is our chance to STOP the next Obama!

As the most senior elected Republican in New York, I am making a solemn pledge to you right now: I will fight with every fiber of my being to stop Mamdani and FIRE Governor Kathy Hochul who singlehandedly enabled his rise to power.

Hochul, of course, did not "singlehandedly enable" Mamdani's "rise to power." It took her weeks to endorse him after his primary victory.

Nevertheless, you can understand why Stefanik would want to tie Hochul to Mamdani in order to motivate Republican donors. But why bring Obama into this?

Because for all Obama's efforts to "create space in" himself "for the disagreement, for the concern, for the pushback," Republicans still hate him and think he's the epitome of left-wing extremism. Obama's efforts to heal the divide failed, because the Republican Party doesn't want it healed.

In the interview, Klein says,

The idea that a country as big and diverse, with as much political argumentation and division as we have, was actually doing the work of democracy, doing the work of politics—that’s actually amazing. And I think Obama wasn’t able to keep that story going, and nobody kept it going after him.

He blames -- yes, really -- social media:

One of the ways I view politics is that the communication mediums upon which it happens are very determinative of what then becomes powerful and popular and energetic. The move to social media and algorithmic media was really a move toward a style of political communication that is somewhat hostile to the liberal project and the deliberative, open-minded, thoughtful, on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand mode of discourse that Obama is good at. He’s bad at Twitter. You ever read Obama on Twitter? It’s not his thing. Trump is good at Twitter.

You know what else is "hostile to the liberal project and the deliberative, open-minded, thoughtful, on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand mode of discourse"? Every form of right-wing media since at least the Clinton era.

It's modish to say that social-media algorithms created bubbles for everyone who follows politics. But right-wingers have been living in a self-imposed media bubble since the 1990s. They stopped believing anyone except their favorite radio talkers and Fox pundits. They started to believe everything in the "liberal media" was fake news even before they started using the term "fake news."

Obama could only fight that to a draw. And a post-presidential Obama, or a new Obama, won't persuade us to be nice to one another again, because the GOP smear machine won't allow it.