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In 2024, Barack Obama was on the ballot. The two Democratic presidential nominees, one of whom he ousted, was his former VP and the other had made herself over in his image. The campaign and policy operations of both Kamala and Biden were staffed with Obamanites.
And it was Obama who really lost the 2024 election.
Not just Obama, but Obamacrats, a party that championed every leftist policy and that turned over its policymaking apparatus to radical donor-groups, a congressional delegation whose younger members, especially the Squad, embodied multicultural transgressive hipness, lost.
Democrats had given Obama a mortgage on the party and in 2024 it all went bust.
The Democrats went into the 2024 election, as they had with so many others, on the promise of Obama’s fundamental realignment which replaced the white working class with a multicultural college educated elite, only to be smashed in the face with a whole new realignment in 2024.
Democrats aren’t just reeling because they lost an election, but their entire mission statement and generational plan for taking over the country and securing a permanent majority. This was not just an electoral defeat, but the destruction of a grand unifying theory of American politics.
The promise of Obama had failed. And now the party no longer knows what it is, what to believe in and what to do next. Everything that Obama had done is suddenly open to being unwound.
Unlike other former presidents who left office and moved on, Obama had cultivated a mystique as the party’s elder statesman, appearing to sit out the primaries before swooping in at the last minute to forge a leftist unity deal, like the one that put Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders in charge of the Biden administration, and then appearing on the campaign trail to make the case for the candidate in terms of his own personal appeal and philosophy.
This time out the Obamas emerged to campaign for Kamala and helped cost her the election.
The man who once seemed able to hypnotize a nation with glib rhetoric struggled to win over not only Americans at large, but even triggered a backlash from black voters with his criticism.
Did Obama lose his touch? Or did the nation that Obama seduced no longer exist?
America before Obama, a nation where much of the voting bloc consisted of baby boomers still enthralled by the Kennedy mystique and that viewed the civil rights movement as foundational to the national identity, was remade into a balkanized country with a vanished history.
The average American today was a toddler when the Berlin Wall fell and a teenager on 9/11. Instead of entering a national history of opportunity, they were inducted into a caste system based on their sex, race and other immutable characteristics to atone for America’s shameful past.
Obama did that. And in doing so, he destroyed the America that was moved by his speeches.
America after Obama is marked by separation not unity, by a relentless skepticism in everything and a distrust of oratory. That is why Obama could no more get elected today than Kamala could while running an Obama Lite campaign under the tutelage of Obama’s old hands.
Obama was the final link in a ‘type’ of progressive politician innovated by JFK, youthful, hip and optimistic, who could rebrand socialism as in keeping with the best traditions of America, and who would make the negative outcomes of his radical policies seem inspiring and aspirational.
Barack Obama, like Bill Clinton, was yet another and final copy of JFK who did not so much break the mold, as break America. JFK’s support for mass migration had brought Obama’s father to America and it was only fitting that Obama closed the circle by ending the legacy.
The core appeal of Obamanism, like that of JFK and Bill Clinton, had been the fusion of the leftist idea of the right side of history with American manifest destiny, but faith in destiny and other intangible ideas has never been lower. What people believe now is what they can touch. That’s why years of being told that the economy was wonderful was rejected out of hand.
Fake optimism no longer works.
During the Obama years, Americans underwent a fundamental change reflected in polls and surveys. In preceding eras, optimism about the future characterized Americans. Obama killed that hope. Polls and surveys show a country that no longer trusts its institutions, is not optimistic about the future and does not expect the next generation to be better off. The death of optimism also killed a certain rhetorical style that had dominated political speeches for generations.
Political rhetoric these days contains far less optimism, exceptionalism, and inspiration. And those speeches that do increasingly feel like holdovers from another age used by dated politicians or limited to small scale events by community groups rather than national addresses.
Much of that is due to Obama. And it also killed Obama’s abilities as a speaker. His recent attempts to deliver addresses on themes from the election to divisiveness fall flat because he remains a one-trick pony whose trick was overlaying American optimism over radical agendas. The Americanism and optimism ring false, as they always should have, and without them, there is only a small abrasive petty man who despite his past posturing can’t compete on insults.
Obama’s style was camouflage and it doesn’t work in the no filter era. Americans had let themselves believe too many times and after being burned, they prefer an abrasive authenticity to pretty words, conflict to hope, and are determined not to let themselves be fooled again.
There can’t be another Obama or JFK. America is all out of patience with slick college boys in blue shirts with haloes offering up quotes about “the better angels of our nature” to justify sticking it to the middle class even harder. Efforts by Beto O’Rourke or Pete Buttigieg to become the new JFK never even got off the ground. Kamala’s conviction that she was the new Obama led to a historic defeat. Camelot really has fallen for good this time and won’t come back.
What will come after Obama? Democrats muse about finding their own ‘Trump’ or “DeSantis’ or finding a new generational political talent and building a movement around him. But no such figure appears to be on the horizon. 41% of Democrats are willing to take another chance on Kamala while a significant minority are ready to give the nod to California’s Gov. Newsom.
Neither is likely to be the candidate but, even more significantly, neither has any kind of larger philosophy beyond excelling at Bay Area fundraising and agreeing with anything the Left says.
The hour may come when the Democrats become willing to embrace a true leftist insurgent candidacy, one that will openly make the case for dismantling America, and given the right social and economic conditions, they may even win. The new realignment is open to radical ideas and the worse things get, the more willing the public will be to open the Overton Window.
And that was always Obama’s real function.
Obama was never meant to be anything more than a transitional candidate from America to post-America, and while his legacy may be in tatters, his mission has been accomplished.
(Get a copy of Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America at the Freedom Center store.)
Obama and Biden have now passed Carter as Worst Presidents in America
NO. Obama, by far was the worst president ever as no one came close to being as destructive in so many ways as he did. He harmed the US, and the world for those who believe in liberty such that it will take years to regain what he corrupted, if ever.
Bathhouse, the man who boasted that he is good at killing people.
People don’t know about executive order 13603 which basically was Obamao’s fundamental transformation put into action by edict. The implications would have transformed our country forever.
Here’s an incisive article examining this radical executive order:
https://www.cato.org/commentary/obamas-plan-seize-control-our-economy-our-lives
Court Martial for Treason.
It’s the death penalty….hanging at gitmo..
As a MAGA (or MCGA) Canadian, I would like to see a dual hanging: Obama and the narcissistic,
sociopathic tyrant Trudeau who has f**ked over Canada. If Trump and the (hopefully) new expected CDN PM see eye to eye, the 2 countries with unmatched potential & resources would be a beacon to to world.
I vacationed in Vancouver once. It’s very nice.
Court Marshall-YEAH!!! But don’t stop here. Biden,, Harris, Mayorkas, Milley, Garland, Wray Hochal,
Newsom- you Americans know the rest.
Obama’s CIA head, John Brennan, a Communist and a Muslim, was in charge of conducting operations around the world against Communists and Muslims, but he, and Obama, were instead aiding and abetting their Communist Comrades and Muslim Brothers. Look at the world today and it is their Mission Accomplished!
National Voter ID could be the final nail in the Democrat Party .
I saw a map that didn’t require voter ID, including mine in NM, and they all went for Democrats.
Notice too, the lack of Drop Boxes, and their use, and more Republican observers, and Too Big to Rig, BUT here they go again in California where they had to find the votes for Democrat wins. How many long counts, in other states too, went for Democrats?
Here in NM in 2018, the Republican won on election night… then SUDDENLY the County Clerk found 5000 ballots and then she lost. She fought hard but the State Supreme Court is rule by Democrats. We’re pure Blue now, including the legislature which has ruled NM for 90 years! We’re last in Education and first in Crime and child poverty! Espanola, pop. 10,000, number one in Heroin addiction with mid-school kids addicted. Fentanyl killing Native Americans, up to four a month, on the Alamo Reservation, no news headlines. Socorro, pop. 10,000, ELEVEN DISPENSERIES. (???)
One of your best articles yet Daniel, although I’m not sure about America really embracing leftist radicalism. Not with the end of Obamaism. Maybe in 20-30 years.
I am always pleased with the plethora of “The end of Obama” articles. Long overdue.
Beginning with the Clintons, the 30 year grift of the radicalized commie Jihadi DemoCrats has finally come to an end. It continued with the fundamental transformation of grifter No.2, gay Muslim Barry Soetoro. It finally crashed and burned with Demented Biden. Each iteration was worse than what went before. Each iteration needed propping up from an increasingly corrupt “press”.
Can you imagine what a Hilary presidency would have looked like? A scandal du jour. Fortunately Trump won against her and we got to see what normalcy looked like albeit for four years. Otherwise it would have been continuous scandal and grift, through Clinton, Obama and Biden into the Harris admin. Grift-a-palooza.
Thank God Harris was so monumentally awful as a candidate. Back to normalcy and greatness with Trump 2.0.
When you have spent the better part of 30 years engaging in the identity politics grift, I don’t know where you go when you get whacked at the polls
“Fortunately Trump won against her [Clinton] and we got to see what normalcy looked like albeit for four years.”
Well, for three years, anyway. The Covid panic put Democrats back in charge, whether as white coat bureaucrats (Fauci, Birx and Collins), state governors, or Teachers Union leaders. They drove the shutdowns, restricted access to cheap therapeutics, kept the schools closed, and radically increased government spending. Republicans just went along.
I think you have been in DC too long and a lot of that blue pessimism has rubbed off on you. Maybe you should move to a red state. Try Texas. The water’s just fine there.
The Kenyan is a half-white communist sodomite. There’s plenty more where he came from.
WHAT STARTED THE BLACK SUPREMACIST MOVEMENT!
The Leader: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon!”
***Beer Summit!
***Beyonce’s Super Bowl Half time show with raised BLACK POWER FISTS honoring the Murdering Black Panthers. (Which one of them killed Betty Van Patter? Investigations ongoing or in a Deep Freeze?) (Two Black NFL players sacked a White Quarterback and they stood over him with RAISED BLACK POWER FISTS…. and got away with it! Why? NFL too afraid to Open a Can of Worms.) (Blacks kneeling during the Anthem and now they have their own. I WANT ONE TOO! What about Asians, Arabs, and Native Americans?)
***Coming to the defense of Black Thugs Only! (Same with OJ and Blacks supporting him only because he was Black!)
*** THE DEI MOVEMENT!
***BLACK LIVES MATTER except those lives in his Chicago, so many other cities, because there’s no agenda to promote and that would expose that these cities are led by Democrats!
***OBIDEN: “I will pick a WOMAN of COLOR for VP/SCOTUS!”
***Obama, Michelle, and Oprah, all products of Rev. Wright and his Black Liberation Theology, DEMANDING Blacks vote for Kamala only due to her skin Color turning MLK’s Dream into his worst NIGHTMARE!
THE AWAKENING
***Trump campaigning in Harlem.
***Blacks for Trump.
***Youtube filled with Blacks speaking up against Obama!
***Chicago’s Blacks shouting at the Mayor for spending millions on ILLEGALS and not on them.
***Their Bullet missed so OBAMA PLOTTING with Bill/Hillary, Brennan, FBI, CIA, DHS, Dick Cheney!
***TRUMP WINS but “THEY” can’t let him make it to J6 certification… “Oh look at all the drones. One could accidently take down a plane!”
“Obama was the final link in a ‘type’ of progressive politician innovated by JFK, youthful, hip and optimistic, who could rebrand socialism as in keeping with the best traditions of America, and who would make the negative outcomes of his radical policies seem inspiring and aspirational.”
JFK was a monumental FRAUD propped up by the MSM, academia, Hollywood, gullible voters, and actual violent, murderous, criminal gangsters, just like Obama.
yet, JFK was the only Pres who was planning on addressing the Federal Reserve… so they took care of him. for that one reason i believe he was the best Pres we ever had thus far. (Trump didn’t address the Federal Reserve… but we can hope.
Obama started the fundamental transformation of America and grew the Deep state with his people.
This is the article I mentioned above regarding Obamao’s subversive presidential executive order 13603, designed to fundamentally transform America forever. More than anything, this executive order laid bare his malign intentions for America:
https://www.cato.org/commentary/obamas-plan-seize-control-our-economy-our-lives
One can assume that the regime of Hamas Joe was just a continuation of Obamao’s war against America.
I hope that Americans are waking up to the Dems real product. (It’s not hope and change.) Since Obama, they’ve been forcing us to take their toxic medicine that was supposed to cure all of our ills. Instead, it tasted awful and made people sick. The logo on the label of their bottle of magic elixir should be changed from a donkey to a skull and crossbones. Plus it should carry this FDA warning: “Poisonous if taken seriously.”
IMHO, Mr. Greenfield, one of the best you have ever written. Precisely what needs saying.
Obama will continue to operate behind the scenes, in the shadows, just waiting for the opportunity to jump into action with his “Destroy America” routine. He and his “wife” Michelle, the former Michael LaVaughn Robinson still want to be “players” with skin in the game. I’m still not convinced that Obama is an American citizen since an investigation into his Hawaiian “birth certificate” concluded that it was a forgery.
Daniel,
Thank you again for this somber & thoughtful analysis. Watch your six, though. Thanks to discerning mind (a gift from God), all my red flags went up listening to the schmuck hussein obaMao for 5 minutes. I thought he is more dangerous & a better prevaricator than kommandant klinton. The more I was shocked by the blindness of Cal Thomas, G. Will & even C. Krauthammer, drooling over the impostor for a year before seeing the light. Something nasty in D.C. water, I’m sure.
Lastly. Daniel, did you know to be famous in Prague, the city of Rabbi Yehuda Loew, Golem & the Old New synagogue from 11 Hundred? Czech it out on the server Conservative News (KN). Your piece Thought Police was published in Czech: https://www.konzervativninoviny.cz/myslenkova-policie-v-akci/
Happy Hanukkah.
yet, JFK was the only Pres who was planning on addressing the Federal Reserve… so they took care of him. for that one reason i believe he was the best Pres we ever had thus far. (Trump didn’t address the Federal Reserve… but we can hope.)
Only one problem… JFK is far more like Reagan and Trump than Clinton and Obama. JFK ran on a platform to increase Military Spending to erase the Missile gap. JFK cut taxes to stimulate the economy. Reagan was quoting JFK when he said “a rising tide lifts all boats”. JFK was a life member in the NRA. JFK, while a mediocre officer, was never the less a war hero who risked his own life to save the lives of his shipmates. JFK is in many ways responsible for the tech revolution which has made our country wealthy by motivating the nation to go to the moon.
We do not want to disparage JFK’s name by associating him with Clinton and Obama. Instead we should be holding up his name as an example to Democrats to return to their roots and abandon their radical agenda. That, our claim him for our own to rally the working class to our ranks…
OBAMA’S WORST FEAR HAS COME TO LIFE: people have awakened to the fact the man is a total FRAUD.
The Evaporation of the Obama Mystique
The disappointed former community organizer suddenly disappears.
December 17, 2024 by Victor Davis Hanson
Barack Obama had long been rumored as the catalyst for the 2020 Biden nomination—and thereafter played the whispering puppeteer behind the subsequent lost Biden administration years.
As such he and his coterie proved the virtual architects of the Biden administration, one of the most unpopular and failed presidencies in American history.
Recall earlier that after a flailing candidate Joe Biden lost the first three 2020 primaries and caucuses, his inert campaign was headed nowhere.
Barack Obama and fellow Democratic insiders abruptly engineered the withdrawal of his rival 2020 presidential candidates: hard left but likely sure-loser candidates, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg.
The Obamas ignored or withheld from the public their own firsthand knowledge that Biden was suffering from signs of dementia.
Instead, they found Biden’s cognitive decline and his former concocted reputation as workingman’s Joe useful as a veneer for a veritable Obama third-term, “phone it in” administration. Or as wistful Obama once conditioned his dream of a third term—”If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in.”
Great article. He omitted the climactic scene, like the third act in a Shakespearean play.
The climax for me was the first hundred days of Obama’s first term. He got elected on the promise of healing America’s racial division. There was no other reason that compared to that. If he had done so, he would have guaranteed his place in history and probably a bust of him on Mr Rushmore. He won with a vast majority and mandate. The hope for racial healing spread to Europe, which awarded him a Nobel Prize based on hope and expectations.
All he had to do was follow the directions of his mandate and promises. He didn’t and may never have intended to do so.
His regime tore down the foundations and self-image of the country. When he said, “You didn’t build that,” the message heard was that you don’t deserve it. By the end of his first term, his path switched from immortality to a path of infamy.