Hope and change: be thankful for the 22nd Amendment
It strikes me (and not for the first time) that Obama must detest Hillary Clinton:
President Barack Obama still believes in the message of “hope and change” he campaigned on in 2008 ”” so much so that he believes it could have delivered him a third term over Donald Trump had the Constitution allowed him to run again.
“I am confident in this vision because I’m confident that if I ”” if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” Obama told his former senior adviser, David Axelrod, on Monday’s “Axe Files” podcast. “I know that in conversations that I’ve had with people around the country, even some people who disagreed with me, they would say the vision, the direction that you point towards is the right one.”
Poor old girl. She’s a hard worker, just like Trump said. But she just doesn’t have my pizazz.
By Obama’s assessment, Clinton performed “wonderfully under really tough circumstances.” But there were problems: Obama accused the media of “wildly” amplifying Clinton’s flaws because of a double standard…
Oh, there’s a double standard all right, President Obama, but I don’t think it’s the one you think it is (not that he really thinks that, by the way, but he’s hoping his acolytes will).
The funny thing—the really odd thing—is that “hope and change” is exactly what propelled Trump to victory too, although of course that wasn’t Trump’s explicit slogan. But “hope and change” has no specific meaning in terms of left or right. Hope for what? What sort of change? Trump campaigned on hope that the change would be towards the political right, towards the reinstatement of traditional American values of liberty, towards economic recovery, and towards America’s pre-Obama role in the international world as strong defender of liberty and the countries that foster it.
More from Obama:
“Obviously in the wake of the election and Trump winning, a lot of people have suggested that, somehow, it really was a fantasy,” he said, referring to the message of hope and change. “What I would argue is, is that the culture actually did shift, that the majority does buy into the notion of a one America that is tolerant and diverse and open and full of energy and dynamism. And the problem is, it doesn’t always manifest itself in politics, right?”
Funny thing, isn’t it? In this phrase—“the notion of a one America that is tolerant and diverse and open and full of energy and dynamism”—Obama has described Trump’s message. Now, you may not think he can accomplish it. You may not even think he means it (I tend to think he means it, especially the “energy and dynamism” part). But it most definitely was and still is his message.
[NOTE: Here’s the 22nd Amendment.]
Obama is completely delusional. His ideas have been completely rejected. I mean he is really, really sick.
And has he no shame for the migration disaster in the Mideast? The worst since WW2.
Why did he even bring this up? He KNOWS it is unconstitutional.
January 20th can’t come fast enough for me.
In about two years, it will be clear to everyone what a failure Obama has been.
And that “really was a fantasy” is just re-using Jackie O’s Camelot narrative.
Message to Barack: Go away. You were never the Black Jack Kennedy.
Barack’s fantasy of a third term is premised on young people and minorities voting for him. Trump still would have won the key states of WI MI and PA.
And Trump would have slapped Obama silly in the debates. No one has ever really attacked Obama.
For the life of me I don’t get how Obama has gotten a pass for blowing up both Europe and the Middle East.
Mr. Trump also campaigned on the hope that he could reduce or eliminate corruption in government, arguably the most difficult of his campaign commitments.
The first black President is above all criticism.
If Obama was recognizably white, he would be considered an even greater failure as a President than Carter. Of course if he were recognizably white, he never would have gotten nominated in the first place.
For as much as I despise what Obama represents, I must give him credit for this; he has demonstrated in election after election that he knows how to game the electoral process with the skill of a surgeon.
In that regard, I sadly think he’s correct; he could have had a third term if he could have run.
T:
Agreed. His approval rating is quite high.
” [Obama’s] approval rating is quite high.” [Neo @ 4:13]
This raises an interesting question. Polls show that Obama has a high approval rating, but these are the same polling agencies that showed us that Hillary Clinton was would be the next president.
So what and how are these polls measuring, and can we rely on these findings as representative of the national attitude w/ regard to Obama?
I have no idea if Obama is delusional, or just enjoys lying to the press because he knows they’ll never call him on it.
T:
Actually, those same national polls were almost exactly correct regarding Hillary. They were only incorrect at the state level, and one of the reasons for that was that apparently a lot of late-deciders broke for Trump, and state polls aren’t generally updated right before elections.
National polls are taken in a much more timely fashion. The national polls before the election got Clinton’s and Trump’s totals almost exactly correct (I’ve written about that in a previous post).
There is no reason to doubt that Obama’s popularity has been over 50% lately. Who knows the exact figure? Precision is not the important thing; it’s clear that he’s pretty popular. The polls also are important to look at in terms of movement over time. He has had quite a few lows during his presidency, but in the past year his stock his risen.
It’s possible some of his more recent moves—like the one about Israel and the UN—might change that, but I haven’t seen any polls that recent.
Cornhead, 3:00 pm — “And has he no shame for the migration disaster in the Mideast? The worst since WW2.”
He has no shame, *period*. Ditto regarding both Clintons. And Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Debby Wasserman Schultz.
“Why did he even bring this up? He KNOWS it is unconstitutional.”
My take here is, he’s trying to generate a sort of misty nostalgia for what might’a’-been-if-only.
“In about two years, it will be clear to everyone what a failure Obama has been.”
I *strongly* disagree. It’s already clear to the 40 percent of us on the right-hand side of the 40 yard line. There is no way in heaven above or here on earth that anything of the sort will be “clear”, or even a remote possibility, to the 40 percent on the left-hand side of the other 40 yard line.
I think you’re severely overestimating the left.
And friend, I even disagree about the 20 percent in the middle, in the sense that I don’t think “it will be clear to everyone” in that 20 percent. But I can go so far as to speculate that *some* people in that 20 percent *may* be open to the idea that Obama has turned out to be more or less a failure (in the eyes of those in that 20 percent who are indeed open).
I’ve never been able to get over the fact that Obama’s SAT scores and college grades are inaccessible, and that there’s no curiosity out there to dig them up. It’s a topic that never goes over well when mentioned to anyone on the left.
miklos000rosza, 6:47 pm —
To publicize The One’s grades may be damaging to furtherance of the all-important, inviolable meme that the Democrat is invariably more intelligent, more academically accomplished, than the Republican. Here’s a little nugget from a dozen years ago, from an obviously unimpeachable source [sarcasm]:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/kerry-grades-near-bushs-while-at-yale.html?_r=0
Kerry Grades Near Bush’s While at Yale
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JUNE 8, 2005
“Mr. Kerry had a cumulative average of 76, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday. He had four D’s his freshman year[; h]e also received one D in his sophomore year, The Globe reported. . . .
“The president’s transcript was published in 1999 by The New Yorker magazine. It showed that Mr. Bush, who graduated in 1968, had a cumulative grade average of 77 in his first three years at Yale and a similar average under a nonnumeric rating system in his senior year. Mr. Bush received one D in four years, a 69 in astronomy, and his grades improved after his freshman year, the transcript showed.
“In a written response to reporters’ questions, Mr. Kerry said, ‘I always told my dad that D stood for distinction.’ He said he had previously acknowledged focusing more on learning to fly than on studying.”
Being an ignorant old farm boy I have long, since his address at the dnc convention in 2004, considered bho as the would be naked emperor. IMO there is something of the enraged, neglected child inside this mannish boy.
Give thanks to whatever Diety you favor, including Gaia or Nothingness, for the 22nd amendment. It is barely conceivable that Obama could actually be elected to a third term. On the other hand, the same applied to a second term.
Obama vs. Trump!?
This presidential campaign of Trump Vs. Clinton was nasty enough; I do believe it would have been much worse with Trump and Obama going at each other.
Thanks to Hillary’s loss it’s finally sinking into Barry’s head that history’s opinion of him might need some affirmative action. Another term or a better follow-up candidate and things would be different, he’s saying.
I was just looking at Wikipedia on the 22nd Amendment. I’d never heard of any backlash against Roosevelt and his long tenure. I’m not the best historian. But there it is, passed by a republican congress and 41 states by 1951. Two states voted against it and five never considered it. The same president that inspired that is considered God himself by the democratic electorate.
Is it just a coincidence that the current ruler of China is, according to today’s Wall Street Journal, making noises about not wanting to promote the party leader who could become his successor after his next term, as the policy has informally been since Mao? It really makes you appreciate the rule of law.
The US pre-Obama never supported liberty as policy.
Saudi Arabia is a key ally, for example. How does that fit, given their total lack of liberty?
But you can add the Argentinian, South Korean, Indonesian etc strongmen. In the Indonesian case you disgracefully supported them against Britain with the Malaya incursions.
The only thing US policy was was reliably anti-communist. Not a bad thing in itself, but provided a country was anti-communist it need not have internal liberty
It was, after all, the sainted Reagan who started funding the likes of the Taliban.
Chester Draws Says:
December 26th, 2016 at 11:10 pm
“It was, after all, the sainted Reagan who started funding the likes of the Taliban.”
Where do you come up with this stuff ?
The “Taliban” ( “students” ) were a creation of Saudi madrassas within Pakistan preaching Wahhabist doctrines.
“A madrassa is an Islamic religious school. Many of the Taliban were educated in Saudi-financed madrassas in Pakistan that teach Wahhabism, a particularly austere and rigid form of Islam which is rooted in Saudi Arabia.” [ Many = All, in this instance.]
Google citation should you google “madrassa.”
They never obtained a single dollar from the USA, EVER.
Riyadh funded them — 100% — and is proud of it.
Barry Soetoro attended a Wahhabist madrassa — when he was in Indonesia. That’s where he picked up his “pitch perfect” Saudi Arabic accent.
His ‘halting’ Arabic is an affectation — designed to obscure just how fluent he really is. Natural fluency is his genetic blessing. Note that his own Mother was fluent in Russian.
{ Here I’m referring to his Egyptian and Turkish addresses. Yes, Turks recognize Arabic common salutations. They used to run the joint. }
Well, Stubbs, my Dad’s first electtion was 1944, and he was of the “anyone but Roosevelt” school of thought.
I think this claim of Obama’s touches one of the great mysteries of the election. I agree with Neo – Obama may well be right, but we can never know of course. The mystery is that the electorate rebuked him 3 times – 2010, 2012, and 2014 by increasing Republican majorities in Congress, but they would not repudiate him personally in 2012. For what it is worth my second thought after PA was called and it was clear that Trump had won was: ‘My goodness, the electorate was finished with the establishment of both parties in 2008! That’s why Romney lost.’ The third thing I noticed was that I was relieved that Hilary had lost, just as I was relieved when Jeb bowed out. By the way, the first thing I thought of course was – Oh boy, now its on for young and old!’, but none of that explains why Obama remains so popular. In 2008 I could see he filled a Bobby Kennedy sized hole in the hearts of a certain generation, and I could see why, but I never believed it. Although I certainly didn’t have any inkling he would be inept enough to let the healthcare industry write the ACA or repeat Bush’s Iraq mistakes in Libya (with madame’s help according to Assange) cleverly avoiding the stupidity of having boots on the ground by leaving only two ex Navy Seals to stop chaos breaking out. Or killing twice as many people in Syria through inaction as Bush killed in Iraq plus handing the joint to the Russian air force and burying Angela Merkel in refugees. If Hillary’s defeat was a repudiation of Obama’s third term then perhaps the Republican electorate would have run someone other than Trump to oppose him. If Obama wants to play counter factual – we can too. Perhaps Rubio would have seemed just the idealistic fresh face to counter Hope and Change with his own version of it, but perhaps more likely the man with the razor slash mouth – Ted Cruz, might have cut Obama to ribbons in the debates. Romney did Obama pretty good in the first 2012 debate, but like a prize fighter who lacks the killer instinct failed to put him away. Sic transit gloria Obama.
“the notion of a one America that is tolerant and diverse and open and full of energy and dynamism” – That was Trump’s message? Sure, like Spinal Tap’s message was “Love your brother”:
“We say, “Love your brother.” We don’t say it really, but…”
“We don’t literally say it.”
“No, we don’t say it.”
“We don’t really, actually mean it.”
“No, we don’t believe it either, but…”
“But that message should be clear.”
A third-term discussion is like a popular vote discussion: that’s not how the system is set up, so can’t know the answer.
Since the passing of the 22nd Amendment, the goal of a first presidential term is a second term, whether you have the vision or interest or heath to pursue it or not. You win a second term, you’re a successful president. You lose, you’re a failure. There weren’t many presidents before the amendment who walked away from the office after one term, but I think there’s even more pressure now to use the reelection campaign to define your place in history.
miklos & MJR
Obama’s SAT’s can be reliably estimated. Four students transferred in to Columbia his year, and they averaged SAT’s of a little less than 1100. If his were much higher than that, it would mean that the other three were lower. None were on athletic or music scholarship (the most likely places for much lower SAT’s). Three acceptances at 1000, even under old scoring, was not likely at Columbia. Call Obama 1100 or generous at 1200.
Notice that to take the LSAT after that does not require math. This becomes important in the discussion. Whatever discount one applies to Obama for double affirmative action (black, foreign student) or the fact that 30% of HLS achieved honors his graduating year, he did nonetheless get honors at HLS, which requires some pretty solid verbal intelligence. So his SATV has got to be around 700. That means his Quantitative was 400-500 – not a good score for managing trillion dollar economies, frankly. As soon as they stopped testing for math, his career blossomed.
This is consistent with going to the best prep school in Hawaii and not being remarkable in either a positive or negative way. As a double affirmative action, if he had SAT’s of 1200 or better he would not have ended up at Occidental College. Oxy is a decent school but not top-tier.
Presidential IQ’s are sometimes discussed over at Steve Sailer’s site (he is on unz.com at this point), with a fair amount of supporting data and good reasoning.
Hope and change: be thankful for the 22nd Amendment.
Jose Serrano, a Democrat Congressman from the Bronx, has introduced bills to repeal the 22nd amendment: in 1997, 1999, 2001,2003, 2005, 2007, and also in 2009. Third term for Obama? Only in 1997 and 1999 did Congressman Serrano have a cosponsor for his bill to repeal the 22nd Amendment. Every time his repeal bill has died in committee. As this source is from 2009, it is quite possible that Representative Serrano has introduced such bills after 2009. In any event, he is a repeater.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Representative Serrano has also been a fanboy of Hugo Chavez, who did achieve his goal of President-for-Life. From ABC News, gathered from a Bing search:
There is not very much dignity going on in Venezuela at present. Nor, with murder rates that have approximately quadrupled since 1998, is there increased humanity in Venezuela. The food supply in Venezeuela is much worse at present than it was with $10 oil in 1998, the year Chavez was elected the first time. So much for addressing problems and issues.
For those who claim it was a case of good Hugo and bad Nicolas, the reply is that the difference between the two is $100 versus $50 oil.
http://tinyurl.com/gom4dk4 Bing Search: “Jose Serrano” Chavez
Neo,
I have been thinking about your response above (12/26/16 @4:58) where you write:
“Actually, those same national polls were almost exactly correct regarding Hillary. They were only incorrect at the state level, and one of the reasons for that was that apparently a lot of late-deciders broke for Trump
[snip]
There is no reason to doubt that Obama’s popularity has been over 50% lately.”
Charlie cook has an essay out yesterday that notes much the same thing:
https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/646194?unlock=O0PSAHTAHF7G58Y1
For me, the money quote from that essay is:The Clinton campaign and super PACs had several of the most highly regarded polling firms in the Democratic Party, yet in the places that ended up mattering, very little if any polling was done.
In other words, it’s like saying: “We analyzed the disease and understood the pathology, but we missed that it was communicable and fatal.” Oops doesn’t quite cut it under those circumstances.
If the national polls, as Cooke states were not polling where it mattered, how do we take them credibly that Obama’s popularity rating actually is ~53%? Are they leaning leftward allowing the hagiographic treatment of Obama influence the results? Are they measuring the “popular opinion” and getting it right or are they still not polling where it matters?
Now, if the polls are correct and if Obama’s popularity is accurately that high, I have great misgivings about the electoral public; it’s as if they don’t connect popularity with failure, or don’t recognize failure when it bites them on the hand (or even further south). That would certainly be true of the 2012 election results. Conversely, do they realize that and is it that Obama just that good at gaming the system?
Above, I credited Obama with being a master at gaming the electoral system. I reaffirm that but note that such gaming is different than popularity. I think Obama could win a third term even if his popularity was not great because he, unlike the Clinton campaign, understands the concept of campaigning where (and how) it matters.
If his opponent in a third campaign would have been Donald Trump . . . well, as an adversary Trump clearly knows how to game the system too. If we think the 2015-16 campaign cycle was bizarre, IMO dueling campaigns between Trump and Obama would have been a sight to behold.
Brian Swisher Says:
“Well, Stubbs, my Dad’s first electtion was 1944, and he was of the “anyone but Roosevelt” school of thought.”
My father also intensely disliked him, and as far as I know, never voted for a democrat after him. My father held cotton allotments as the cause his farm never made much money (he sold it in 1964).
T:
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say about Cooke’s essay on polls. You write:
But that’s not what Cooke’s essay was saying at all. In fact, it was saying something quite different. At the outset, it is important to know the difference between internal polling (special types of polls funded by candidates, the results of which are not public and are usually only known by campaign insiders and the candidate him/herself) and public polling (the kind we report on and read about in the media).
Let me try to summarize Cooke’s points that I think might be relevant:
(1) as far as public polling goes, the national polls for the 2016 presidential election were very accurate
(2) as far as public polling goes, the state polls for the 2016 presidential election were off, most likely for a combination of two reasons (a) state polls are usually done by lesser polling companies; and (b) state polls are usually not done recently enough, and in this race there were probably a lot of late-deciding voters who broke for Trump, and the polls missed them.
So, in points #1 and #2, Cooke is saying basically what I have said.
Cooke also says the following, which I didn’t discuss in my post. The following is only about the Clinton campaign’s internal polling, which is completely different from the national and/or state polls (the public polls) discussed in points 1 and 2 above:
(1) Clinton’s internal polling concentrated on a different sort of polling known as “analytics,” which relies on different techniques. Obama’s campaign had used analytics with some success, and that’s why the Clinton campaign relied on them.
(2) Because of the Clinton reliance on analytics rather than traditional polling, the Clinton campaign didn’t even do the traditional type of state tracking polls that have been used in the past as part of internal polling, and in retrospect it turns out that such polls might have been very useful in informing Clinton of what was happening at the last minute in the all-important states of Wisconsin and Michigan.
So, you are comparing apples and oranges when you write, “If the national polls, as Cooke states were not polling where it mattered, how do we take them credibly that Obama’s popularity rating actually is ~53%? Are they leaning leftward allowing the hagiographic treatment of Obama influence the results? Are they measuring the “popular opinion” and getting it right or are they still not polling where it matters?” In fact, the national polls in the 2016 presidential election could only be described as “not polling where it mattered” because presidential elections are always state-by-state elections due to the Electoral College. National polling can never tell you all that much compared to state polls in a presidential election; state polls will always be more important than national polls in a presidential election if it’s the least bit close (and national polls told us this one was pretty close).
But a “favorability” question in a national poll has nothing to do with the Electoral College, and a state-by-state breakdown into state polls is not required. As already stated, in 2016 the national public polls got the popular vote correct, and those are the same types of polls (and in fact, often the exact same polls) as the ones that measure favorability. So there is every reason to suppose that the national polls rating Obama’s favorability are right on the money.
The national public polls in 2016 didn’t “lean leftward,” either. They were (as already stated) quite good. The state public polls would seem to have “leaned leftward,” but those polls did not measure favorability. And they didn’t really lean leftward; they simply didn’t poll people often enough close enough to the election.
The Clinton internal polling also didn’t perform its own state tracking polls. That error was made because of the Clinton internal pollsters’ (not the national public pollsters) over-reliance on “analytics,” a different kind of polling from the traditional type. But Clinton’s internal pollsters’ failure to do state tracking is completely irrelevant to the question of national public (not internal) polling about favorability ratings.
Further to my point about the mysterious disconnect between the electorate voting against Obama in three Congressional elections while reelecting him in 2012 and still giving him high favorability ratings I think it may be that they still like him personally while not wanting any more of his policies. I have always found him likeable and still do, but would think his policies traitorous if he didn’t strike me as sincere. That would cause me to say unfavorable to a pollster but maybe it doesn’t for a lot of people. I’d like to see how the question is asked I must add.
Neo,
Thanks for the response. My apologies for not being clear, so let me try again.
First, note that I cede your point about the polls and the popular vote; I even note that Charlie Cook’s essay agrees with your observation. Further, I think it’s safe to say that you put more stock in polling than I now do. Let me clarify why I don’t.
You say the polls correctly predicted the popular vote but they got the states wrong. So what? The president is not elected by the popular vote; the state distribution of votes is everything. So they predicted something that did not matter. They correctly predicted an irrelevancy like trying to predict what color car will win the Grand Prix when other factors are pertinent to the win.
Furthermore, because they do not distribute the vote state-by-state, the polls imply an even distribution of the vote across the country. As the Investors’ Business Daily article pointed out, Hillary’s popular vote margin came exclusively from California. Without California, Trump won the popular vote by ~1.4 million. This speaks to the inordinate distribution of the vote which caused the election results, rather than the popular vote which they were polling. Again, they got the popular vote right—so what? (Further, note the Clinton Archipelago which demonstrates that her votes were even more concentrated within states, than just state BY state.)
Again, they were not/are not attempting to poll this distribution, but such distributions mean everything in a national election because of the electoral college. IMO, their predictive ability is questionable. When they’re right their right, but that’s a tautology; they are only right when the facts conform to their prediction. This is not the same as being able to be predictive of the facts. It’s more like the stopped clock syndrome; make enough predictions and one is bound to get something right.
Now back to the original point on which we agree—that Obama knows full well how to game the system. As to my polling cynicism above I question whether these polls accurately reflect a ~53% positive popularity for Obama, but I believe that, too, is irrelevant. To my original point, I believe that Obama is capable of gaming the system well enough to have won a third term under normal circumstances even if his popularity rating was 43%. In other words, it’s Obama’s ability to game the system that would have given him a third term, not any popularity as determined by any poll.
IBD Link:
http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/its-official-clintons-popular-vote-win-came-entirely-from-california/
Clinton Archipelago Link:
http://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=zJvT7ODy&id=6F091C4748FB55F2BE884CA18BC1598C12C2E7BC&q=clinton+archipelago&simid=143292569479&selectedIndex=0&ajaxhist=0
“When they’re right
theirthey’re right, but that’s a tautology . . . .”Typo, sorry!