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In a pivotal moment of the campaign that may have helped Kamala lose the election, Barack Obama got up on a stage in Pennsylvania and rebuked men in general and black men specifically for not being enthusiastic enough about Kamala.

“We have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all corners of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running,” Obama complained. “Now, I also want to say that that seems to be more pronounced with the brothers. You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses. I’ve got a problem with that. Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.”

“Putting women down? That’s not acceptable,” he warned.

Not only did it not swing black men leftward, it led to a backlash even among many black Democrats. Obama’s claim that black men were more open to supporting Trump because they were sexists was not only insulting, it wasn’t even true because the swing began when Biden was the candidate. Were those black men who picked Trump over Biden really being sexist?

Michelle Obama doubled down on the same message on the campaign trail, claiming that the only reason not to vote for Kamala was sexism. “Kamala Harris is an extraordinary human being. She is an extraordinary candidate and she will be an extraordinary president of the United States of America. I got to ask myself, why on earth is this race even close?”

“It’s clear to me that the question isn’t whether Kamala is ready for this moment because by every measure, she has demonstrated that she’s ready. The real question is: as a country, are we ready for this moment?” she insisted.

These smears didn’t work. And what’s more, we now know that the Obamas didn’t believe them.

The Obamas claimed that there was nothing wrong with Kamala. People only thought there was because they were prejudiced against women. But as we now know, Obama had fought to block Kamala from getting the nomination. Was the former president also one of those sexists?

The wave of campaign books by veteran mainstream media reporters, who kept all this material secret during the actual campaign, has exposed the hypocrisy of Obama’s sexism smears.

For example in “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House”, NBC News’s Jonathan Allen and The Hill’s Arnie Parnes revealed that Obama had tried to sabotage Kamala’s bid.

Obama had berated black men for their hesitancy in getting on board with Kamala, but it took him 5 days to endorse her and the only reason he did it was fear of losing his position.

According to the journalists, Obama “didn’t want Kamala Harris to be the replacement for Biden. He didn’t think that she was the best choice for Democrats, and he worked really behind the scenes for a long time to try to have a mini-primary, or an open convention, or a mini-primary leading to an open convention. He did not have faith in her ability to win the election.”

Even though Obama’s plan to stop Kamala failed, “as the hours rolled by, and it became clear that she was well on her way to seizing the nomination by storm, Obama’s opposition to her grew more confounding” and “Harris was ‘very annoyed’ with him, according to a confidant.”

Obama only came out for Kamala when he was warned that there would be consequences and “his actions against Biden and Harris could diminish him in the eyes of Democratic elites.”

Barack Obama was obviously right that Kamala was a poor candidate. Much as he had been right that Biden should not run. (But catastrophically wrong in backing Hillary Clinton in 2016 and then an even more disastrous bid by Deval Patrick, rather than Kamala. in 2020.

That might have allowed Obama to make an ‘outsider’ case for Kamala’s presidency.

But instead Obama decided to accuse millions of men, including black men, of hating women for having some of the same doubts about Kamala that he did. Was Obama not “feeling the idea of having a woman as president”? Were his “reasons and excuses” for opposing Kamala just a cover for his sexism? Was that Pennsylvania speech a confession of sexism by Obama?

Or did Obama really believe that every Kamala skeptic except him was a sexist?

Obama did what he had done throughout his career, weaponize identity politics, hurl accusations of racism and sexism that he didn’t believe in for a momentary political benefit.

And we now have evidence that he didn’t believe in them.

Barack and Michelle Obama did not really believe that Kamala was an extraordinary candidate and that the only possible reason not to vote for her was sexism. When Michelle Obama insisted that the question wasn’t “whether Kamala is ready for this moment because by every measure, she has demonstrated that she’s ready” but “are we ready for this moment”, did she include her husband in that indictment? Or was the entire thing desperate overcompensation?

Sensing Kamala’s defeat, the Obamas pulled out all the stops so that no one could later blame them for not having her back. Obama overcompensated for his previous opposition by calling more than a quarter of the country sexists for not having enough energy and enthusiasm for her.

Obama had exploited racism to make the case for his own candidacy. And he had no better way to make the case for Kamala’s candidacy than sexism. He of all people knew that there was no other case to make. Divisive identity politics, weaponizing identity, race and sex, was his familiar strategy for turning a weakness into a strength, shaming doubters and skeptics for having secret bigotries, bypassing the argument to appeal to motive had worked so many times before.

But 2024 marked the systemic failure of identity politics. The former master of identity politics trying to shame black men into supporting a candidate he didn’t support watched it all fall apart.

No one believed in the divider-in-chief’s divisive message anymore. Not even he believed it.