Obama : you are right to be concerned

[PainRack]

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/ ... ats-685940

Do not wait for the perfect message, don’t wait to feel a tingle in your spine because you’re expecting politicians to be so inspiring and poetic and moving that somehow, ‘OK, I’ll get off my couch after all and go spend the 15-20 minutes it takes for me to vote,’” Obama said in his first public comments in months, which only a few reporters and no cameras were allowed in for. “Because that’s part of what happened in the last election. I heard that too much.”

“Boil it down,” Obama said, reiterating an argument he made on the campaign trail for Ralph Northam in 2017 about the existential challenge Trump poses to America. “If we don’t vote, then this democracy doesn’t work.”

He almost accepted some of the blame for the state of the party, though he framed it less as the DNC atrophying from years of benign neglect while he was in the White House and being saddled with his reelection campaign debt and more as people making the mistake of falling too much in love with him.

“I’ll be honest with you, if I have a regret during my presidency, it is that people were so focused on me and the battles we were having, particularly after we lost the House, that folks stopped paying attention up and down the ballot,” Obama said.

Barack Obama says he told Donald Trump to rename Obamacare and take credit for its success: Report

"I said to the incoming president, 'Just change the name and claim that you made these wonderful changes and I would be like, "You go,'" Obama told donors Thursday at a fundraiser Democratic National Committee event in Los Angeles, according to CNN. "Because I didn't have pride of authorship, I just wanted people to have health care

http://www.newsweek.com/barack-obama-do ... 2240?amp=1
So.. on Thursday, Barrack Obama was at a DNC fundraiser in California and apparently discussed a large swath of broad politics.

His healthcare bit was amazing if true, where he claims he told Trump you could call it Trumpcare and he wouldn't care, because the important thing was that people had healthcare. It jives with previous messages he made about healthcare reform.

However, his speech regarding focusing on the presidency and not up and down the ballot is telling... Ex senator Al Franken pointed out Obama didn't fundraise for him during his campaign unlike Clinton and during the months long legal recount of votes, gave an embarrassingly small check from the DNC to help finance his legal team.

This when combined with a Republican defection, Al joining the Senate was crucial to the lock hold Obama needed.... Although given his naivety about crossing the aisle and remarks made in the first year of his presidency , a more favourable narrative could be Obama simply didn't think in terms of partisan party politics then.../

[The Romulan Republic]

That fits with other things I've heard about Obama over the years. I think he genuinely cared about making the health care bill work, but I also think he suffered too often from a delusion that he could be bipartisan and conciliatory toward people who were calling him a Nazi Communist Muslim born in Kenya.

[Elheru Aran]

That fits with other things I've heard about Obama over the years. I think he genuinely cared about making the health care bill work, but I also think he suffered too often from a delusion that he could be bipartisan and conciliatory toward people who were calling him a Nazi Communist Muslim born in Kenya.

To give him the benefit of the doubt, I think he was acutely aware of the dignity that *should* accompany the position. As such, I suspect that more often than not he was polite, bipartisan and conciliatory mostly because he believed it was more appropriate than dishing out sass in return. That, and if he had made critical remarks in response, he would have just been accused of being another "mouthy [N-word]" or whatever by the right wing, which they did often enough anyway. I suspect that's part of why he has tried to keep taking the high road-- whatever slurs they can cast on him, at least he can point to what's on record and stand upon it.

I would not be surprised at all if about a couple decades or so down the road, his memoirs come out with some rather juicy personal comments made in private... long enough after his Presidency has passed that it won't much impact his public profile, but well within living memory for people to be quite aware of whom and what he was speaking of at the time.