Obama Implores Americans to Defeat Trump

As I have noted both on this blog and on Facebook, the 2020 presidential election is a stark choice between (i) morality - i.e,. anyone other than Trump - and (ii) immorality as embodied in Donald Trump, a malignant narcissist whose stock in trade is endless lies, hate and bigotry and an utter disregard for the best interests of the majority average Americans. There truly is no middle ground, some my Republican friends will be confirming whether or not they are moral and decent individuals or not based on how they cast their vote come November.

 While Barack Obama made mistakes while president (we are all mortals after all), overall I believe he stands for morality, the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.  That is certainly the feeling I got the one time I was up close to him and heard him speak at a campaign event in 2012.  Trump, as noted, is the antithesis of morality, equality under the law, and constitutional government.  Indeed, in my view, Trump is nothing less than evil. Hence why Obama is now beginning a series of campaign appearances for Joe Biden and other Democrat congressional candidates.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Obama's message to Americans.  Here are highlights:

Joe Biden’s campaign has long viewed his partnership with former president Barack Obama as one of his chief assets in running for president. He spoke often of “my buddy Barack” during campaign events. . . . . But for the past year and a half, there has often been a critical piece missing: Obama.

That began to change in April, when Obama endorsed Biden. On Tuesday, it went a step further, as Obama and Biden made their first joint appearance in years, the former partners allied as they attempt to defeat President Trump.

Obama was the main draw at a virtual fundraiser for Biden, raising more than $7.6 million from 175,000 individual donors, according to Biden’s campaign.

“You’re all feeling a sense of urgency, the same kind of urgency I’m feeling right now,” Obama said near the start of the fundraiser. “I’m here to say: Help is on the way.”

Obama launched into an in-depth criticism of Trump, without mentioning him by name, and said that while his own administration inherited problems, “the foundation stones, the institutions we had in place, were still more or less intact.”

“My predecessor, who I disagreed with on a whole host of issues, still had a basic regard for the rule of law and the importance of our institutions and democracy,” he said.

“What we have seen over the last couple of years is a White House enabled by Republicans in Congress and a media structure that supports them . . . that suggests facts don’t matter, science doesn’t matter,” Obama said. “That suggests that a deadly disease is fake news. That sees the Justice Department as simply an extension and an arm of the personal concerns of the president. That actively promotes division. And considers some people in this country more real as Americans than others.”

[T]his is serious business. Whatever you’ve done so far is not enough . . . We have to do more,” Obama said. He warned Biden supporters of Trump’s strength, and not to underestimate his ability to harness his supporters.

“We can’t be complacent or smug or say it’s so obvious this president hasn’t done a good job,” Obama said. “Look. He won once.”

Obama also turned toward Biden, touting his work with “our presidency” and saying that the tragedies in the former vice president’s life allow him to better understand the lives of average Americans. “This is somebody who has been touched by tragedy in a direct, profound way and as a consequence has enlarged his heart to embrace other people who are undergoing tragedy,” he said.

The event marked a new phase for Obama, who is expected to increase his campaigning not only for Biden but also a full slate of Democrats aiming to preserve the House majority and win back the Senate.

Obama is seen as vital to energizing elements of his coalition with whom Biden has struggled, including young black voters and liberal voters who have distrusted the former vice president, who built his career as a moderate who could work with Republicans. He appeared to target one of their disconnects with Biden when he directly addressed his age.

“I’ll be honest, and hope Joe doesn’t take offense,” he said. “Joe’s been around a while. Sometimes what happens is we take that for granted.

“There’s a tendency to always look for the new and shiny object. But for my money, one of the things that counts the most is to have somebody, whatever mistakes they’ve made or hardships they’ve gone through, have they shown the kind of character that stands up,” he said. “And my experience with Joe Biden is that’s who he is.”

After Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) suspended his campaign in April, Obama released a lengthy video endorsing Biden. In the video, he reflected on the shifts within the party he once led and called for more assertive action.

“To meet the moment, the Democratic Party will have to be bold,” Obama said. “I could not be prouder of the incredible progress that we made together during my presidency. But if I were running today, I wouldn’t run the same race or have the same platform as I did in 2008. The world is different. There’s too much unfinished business for us to just look backwards. We have to look to the future.”

Trump can use opposition to Obama to mobilize his supporters — on Tuesday, his campaign sent out a fundraising email with sirens and the subject line “BARACK OBAMA” — but Obama is generally viewed favorably by most Americans. A recent Fox News poll had Obama with a net favorability of 28 points, compared with minus-12 points for Trump.

Obama has recently shed some of his reluctance to engage in national politics, sharply criticizing Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic last month by calling it “an absolute chaotic disaster” during a call with a network of former staffers and supporters.

On the call, he also criticized the Justice Department’s decision to drop charges against Michael Flynn, who served as Trump’s first national security adviser, saying that it was “the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that . . . our basic understanding of the rule of law is at risk.”

Obama is expected to ramp up his campaign activities over the coming months, with those close to him pointing to his 2018 involvement as a template: He spent the summer raising money before doing two rounds of endorsements and stumping in 11 states as Election Day neared.

George Will Leaves the Republican Party; Calls for Defeat of Republicans

In my view America is at a point where each individual needs to make the decision as to whether or not they will support or be complicit in evil or instead work to oppose it. While his supporters may shun me or unfriend me, in my view, Donald Trump and the policies he is pursuing personifies evil, "childgate", if you will being only the most blatant example of the man's immorality.  I strongly reject Andrew Sullivan's argument that Democrats need to give Trump his border wall in order to address the irrational fears of his base that they are "losing their country" - a country stolen from Native Americans.  Appeasing irrational fears and outright racism and bigotry is not a solution.  Moreover, Trump's promised wall would likely never be completed given the decade or more of condemnation lawsuits that would be required to acquire the land on which it would be built. Thus, the true way to oppose the immorality of the Trump/Pence regime is to flee the GOP and work to defeat EVERY GOP candidate until the Party either rejects Trump and Trumpism or dies as a political force.  As Fortune reports, George Will - a long time GOP stalwart - has left the GOP and is calling for opposition to Trump.  He is not alone.  Here are article highlights:

George Will, a longtime political commentator and staunch defender of the conservative movement, chided the Republican Party Friday, citing the party’s support for Donald Trump in the upcoming 2020 presidential election. Will mentioned that he had switched his voter registration from Republican to “unaffiliated” in the state of Maryland. He told the Washington Post, where he writes a column, that he made the change several weeks ago, after House Speaker Paul Ryan endorsed Trump for the 2020 election. The move follows the departure of other notable conservatives from the Republican Party, such as Mary Matalin, a longtime strategist for the party.

On Friday, Will published a column in the Washington Post that further explained his view, using the kind of excoriating language his columns are known for. The column, titled “Vote against the GOP this November,” argued that the number of Republicans in Congress “must be substantially reduced.”

Quoting from a variety of works, such as Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons and The Federalist Papers, Will also found caustic words of his own for Republican leaders, notably Ryan. The House Speaker, Will wrote, “sold his soul… for a tax cut” and had become one of “the president’s poodles.”

Although Will has been a vocal critic of President Trump in the past, his statements and actions on Friday surprised many political observers on social media.

Will was a contributor to Fox News between 2013 at 2017. In May 2017, he became a political contributor for NBC news and MSNBC. Previously, he served as editor of National Review and wrote a back-page column for Newsweekbetween 1976 and 2011.

Will's Washington Post piece is something I never thought I see come from him.  In the end, Will puts morality and decency ahead of party.  Here are excerpts:

Amid the carnage of Republican misrule in Washington, there is this glimmer of good news: The family-shredding policy along the southern border, the most telegenic recent example of misrule, clarified something. Occurring less than 140 days before elections that can reshape Congress, the policy has given independents and temperate Republicans . . . . fresh if redundant evidence for the principle by which they should vote. The principle: The congressional Republican caucuses must be substantially reduced. So substantially that their remnants, reduced to minorities, will be stripped of the Constitution’s Article I powers that they have been too invertebrate to use against the current wielder of Article II powers. They will then have leisure time to wonder why they worked so hard to achieve membership in a legislature whose unexercised muscles have atrophied because of people like them. Consider the melancholy example of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), who wagered his dignity on the patently false proposition that it is possible to have sustained transactions with [Trump] today’s president, this Vesuvius of mendacities, without being degraded. . . . . Ryan traded his political soul for . . . a tax cut.
 Ryan and many other Republicans have become the president’s poodles, not because James Madison’s system has failed but because today’s abject careerists have failed to be worthy of it.  Recently Sen. Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who is retiring , became an exception that illuminates the depressing rule. He proposed a measure by which Congress could retrieve a small portion of the policymaking power that it has, over many decades and under both parties, improvidently delegated to presidents. Congress has done this out of sloth and timidity — to duck hard work and risky choices. . . . But the Senate would not vote on it . . . .
 The Republican-controlled Congress, which waited for Trump to undo by unilateral decree the border folly they could have prevented by actually legislating, is an advertisement for the unimportance of Republican control. In today’s GOP, which is [Trump’s] the president’s plaything, he is the mainstream. So, to vote against his party’s cowering congressional caucuses is to affirm the nation’s honor while quarantining him. . . . And to those who say, “But the judges, the judges!” the answer is: Article III institutions are not more important than those of Articles I and II combined.