Obama's Fourth Term

The coalition that won't release its grip has overstayed its welcome

It took me a long time to realize that those unseen hands we’ve watched govern our government belonged to Obama. I had my suspicions, but removing Old Joe and installing Kamala Harris leaves no doubt whatsoever that he’s calling the shots.

The Obama coalition has now led America for 16 years, even including the four years Trump was in power when they did not allow him to govern effectively and went to war on him every single day he was in office.

They impeached him two years into his first term. They wasted our time and tax dollars with the phony Russiagate story. They attacked him all through the COVID pandemic to paint him as a failure and even coaxed his strong economy into collapse with lockdowns.

Then, they funded and amplified the racial protests and riots in 2020, and then they ballot-harvested their way to a fake win. Trump still won Florida, Iowa, and Ohio, which proved there were signs of life somewhere in America.

Now, I listen to Kamala Harris, who is an empty vessel. She’ll say what anyone wants her to say and shift her positions just to win, but she sounds like Barack Obama here:

Her delivery, ideas, humor—everything. Hillary did it too, but she couldn’t pull it off. Now that Harris knows what part to play, she’ll play it.

Watching old video from just last year showing what people thought of her juxtaposed with her extreme makeover is mind-blowing. It would make a great movie if anyone had the guts to write it.

Trump is not just competing against Harris. He's competing against the system, the machine. They have all the writers in Hollywood, all the money in the world, all the media - and they have an army of true believers online who obey every command.

Lee Smith has written a strong piece about Obama’s long game in Tablet. He believes that Obama has changed America into something else that was never meant to be.

Lee Smith writes:

But without a primary, without a popular referendum, without even the open convention that Obama was rumored to favor, how did the people make their will known, and strongly? Was it social media influencers? Mass rallies across the country? Media chronicling the excitement surrounding a Harris candidacy? No, it was nothing like that. Obama is the people. The people are Obama.

Much of what he writes is about Israel, Iran, and October 7th, the day Obama decided Joe had to go. One point of correction is that he says Harris won’t pick Josh Shapiro because he’s Jewish, but it looks as though she has chosen him since she’s holding a rally in Philadelphia next Tuesday. Who else could it be?

That will cause a fracture in the party or, at the very least, might blow up the convention, though it will secure “the Jewish vote” for them, leaving Harris free to pander to the other side.

Smith’s piece ends ominously, but it is a truthful account of what many of us are feeling watching the machine completely overtake American democracy, with our only hope, Donald Trump, making one last play to save the country:

We are now in the second decade of a phenomenon previously unknown in American politics. Instead of identifying it, dissidents have devised formulations to avoid naming it, like the deep state or wokeness or DEI, etc. But these are just the adornments of a deracinated regime, and to cast an amorphous leviathan in the role of adversary is to commit to a never-ending and ultimately unwinnable struggle. It is in this space where people lose hope, for it’s a vacuum that engenders the culture of the conspiracy theory—elaborate and colorful accounts of despair explaining that we have no control over our lives, our fate, the future of our families, communities, or our country because of hidden forces that are too big and too entrenched.

The truth is that an American political faction is employing third-world tactics—surveillance, censorship, election interference, political prosecution, and political violence—to put the United States under the thumb of a single party led by a man who in his mind has become the people.

Maybe that’s true, and maybe it isn’t, but lately, I have felt Obama’s presence more than ever. Now it seems clear he can’t let go of the country he believes he created. They destroy anyone who dares challenge their power. Trump was the one guy they couldn’t destroy. There’s still time.

For all of their talk about how Trump is a cult leader, think of what it must be to be as loved as Obama has been. His influence is felt in every corner of American life. Obama has the protection of being half-Black, which means any kind of criticism of him is chalked up as racist. But think about it: what it would feel like to be him.

I’ve written too much in the last five years about the epic battle between Donald Trump and Barack Obama that began in 2011. Trump brought out the birther story that Obama was not born in America. That began the low-frequency hum that racism had slithered its way into American life.

By 2012, Critical Race Theory was trickling down to college campuses. In 2013, Tumblr was incubating young girls who would help invent cancel culture and the New Woke Order, based on the fear of racism and the idea that America was a “white supremacist” country.

By 2014, girls were starting to trans themselves because the oppressor/oppressed narrative was in full swing. So was the idea that cops were racist and out to kill unarmed Black men. Then, Trump won in 2016, and everything went sideways.

The Obama coalition decided that Trump was not allowed to serve this country. His voters were clinging to their guns and religion, the basket of deplorables that really belong in re-education camps. They had no right to participate in the America Obama ruled over.

It’s hard to hold out hope. Watching them attempt to chew up and spit out JD Vance like they have so many others before him is beyond ugly. Running for office should not mean complete character assassination, but that’s what it has become. Think of everything they did to the Trump family, to Ivanka. To Melania.

I think about Steve Bannon thrown in prison for the four months leading up to the election. Think about the upcoming sentencing of Trump. Think about what the October surprise will be.

They can win this election as they did in 2020 and 2022 by shielding their candidate from press interviews and ballot harvesting in the swing states. If the GOP can’t match them, the Democrats will win.

The people won’t care if Harris isn’t up for the job. If they’re honest with themselves, they don’t even imagine she will be doing the job, just as Biden wasn’t. Those unseen hands guiding us through since 2016 will continue to rule. All Harris and Shapiro have to do is whatever they’re told.