Oh sorry, that was Obama circa 2006. Or Obama 1.0. I think we’re on Obama 3.0 now. You know, the one who is for gay marriage, bombing Iraq and forcing nuns to fund abortions. Also really fond of executive abuses of power.
Never mind what he said back then.
“[T]here’s no denying that many blacks share the same anxieties as many whites about the wave of illegal immigration flooding our Southern border—a sense that what’s happening now is fundamentally different from what has gone on before,” then-Senator Obama wrote in his 2006 autobiography, “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.”
”Not all these fears are irrational,” he wrote.
“The number of immigrants added to the labor force every year is of a magnitude not seen in this country for over a century,” Obama noted. “If this huge influx of mostly low-skill workers provides some benefits to the economy as a whole—especially by keeping our workforce young, in contrast to an increasingly geriatric Europe and Japan—it also threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans and put strains on an already overburdened safety net.”
“Native-born Americans suspect that it is they, and not the immigrant, who are being forced to adapt” to social changes caused by migration, he said.
“And if I’m honest with myself, I must admit that I’m not entirely immune to such nativist sentiments,” Obama wrote. “When I see Mexican flags waved at pro-immigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.”
The only real lesson here is that Obama succeeded in part because he was good at mirroring the emotions that he thought his audience was feeling. The coldness that so many of his supporters complain about is the effect of what happens when the con artist stops mirroring and the imaginary relationship collapses.
Think of the actor ending his performance.
Obama pretended to care about blue collar workers and foreign flags so he could get into power. Now he doesn’t have to pretend.
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