According to Obama …
… Republicans are trying to steal seats and rig the next election:
Listen to @barackobama. pic.twitter.com/oPjyWVCqpG
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) October 14, 2025
I guess it’s okay when Democrats say it.
What a pernicious influence he’s been on this country. And even though his influence has waned, unlike other ex-presidents before him he’s remained very heavily in the game for a long time. Also, he moved the Overton window substantially on many fronts, and for the most part that window is quite resistant to being moved back in the opposite direction.
Oh…, yes on 50. Yeah, that’s already getting quite contentious here. Even the non-political folks are paying some attention.
“I guess it’s okay when Democrats say it.”
Yep. Everything they say and do is okay. It is because they have defined themselves as the good people. That means that no matter what it is, If they do it, it is good.
Democrats ALWAYS accuse everyone of trying to do what they always do themselves.
Damn it. Martin beat me to it. I was going to say almost exactly the same thing.
Obama has done enormous damage to the country. If he actually cared about the country he’d just fade away and play golf.
Overton window resists a reset?
Except for gender fluidity among the young at least three recent surveys show the young getting off the Trans-queer bandwagon that rejects the two sexes, falling by half!
Is being normie back again?
The best part about the Obama era is all the racial healing.
–Jon Gabriel (Jul 15, 2013)
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Yeah, that worked well.
A great part of the Trump 47 era is the destruction of Obama’s reputation. Swirling down the drain.
It’s amazing how small, ineffective and petty Obama looks next to Trump.
Honestly in addition to being a scum move by a garbage human being this could be a major mistake if exploited well. The Republican Party proper probably is limited in what it can do legally, but have a bunch of grassroots and the like take this and spread it around partnered with “Stop the Steal! Don’t let Trump rig the election and become a King! DEMAND VOTER ID NOW!!! CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES!”
And put the dems in a pincer of trying to stop it while explaining why in a way that does not make them look guilty.
Turtler, the problem is that Dems view voter ID as a form of “stealing the election.” The same with any form of election integrity, which they argue is just a way to reduce D (legal or illegal) votes.
Well that convinced me to vote no on Prop 50 … just kidding, of course I was going to vote no anyway
Re: Redistricting
That’s what Obama’s video appeal is about.
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Obama backs California’s Proposition 50 to counter Texas redistricting
Former president urges support for the ballot measure Democrats say could add up to five US House seats In a new ad released on Tuesday, Barack Obama urged California voters to support Proposition 50, a November ballot measure that could reshape the state’s congressional map and deliver up to five new Democratic seats in the US House.
“California, the whole nation is counting on you,” the former two-term Democratic president says in the video. “Democracy is on the ballot.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/14/obama-california-prop-50-redistricting-texas
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There’s a whole lotta redistricting going on at the moment. Louisiana too. It’s probably important but difficult to follow.
Obama is an empty suit or an empty chair (Clint Eastwood)
Maybe he can get a sex change operation to spice things up with Michelle.
Lots of great comments
Need to add an upvote section
@TJ: Is being normie back again?
You mean … 🙂
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I used to be a renegade, I used to fool around
But I couldn’t take the punishment and had to settle down
Now I’m playing it real straight, and yes, I cut my hair
You might think I’m crazy, but I don’t even care
Because I can tell what’s going on
It’s hip to be square
It’s hip to be square
–Huey Lewis & The News, “Hip To Be Square” (1986)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB5YkmjalDg
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We’re going to see a lot of Reagan 80s attitude coming back.
Alan C — Beat me to it. The Left are experts at projection!
Mike Plaiss on October 15, 2025 at 6:19 pm said:
” Martin beat me to it. I was going to say almost exactly the same thing.”
And I was about to say the same thing as Alan Colbo.
Huxley, 8:51, re: Obama pushing CA’s redistricting —
Petty me can’t stand how people still look up to him. His arrogant speaking style is nauseating, & even embarrassing when he’s hemming & hawing.
“Democracy is on the ballot!”
Big sigh and eye roll.
The left’s “dramatic abuse” of the “death of democracy” thteat is also embarrassing. It sure must of surveyed well a couple years ago! That it’s taken seriously by so many on the left shows a sad level of ignorance and shallowness.
What a pernicious influence he’s been on this country. And even though his influence has waned, unlike other ex-presidents before him he’s remained very heavily in the game for a long time.
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Dunno. The Clintons and Bushes have been hanging around for a while.
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I don’t think his political inclinations are distinct from the resultant of the vectors at work in the Democratic Party. His signatures are characteristic of someone who reached his late adolescent years in 1979 (the green energy and Iran shticks) or features of character and personality (his inability to build business relationships with members of Congress, his secretiveness, his spite).
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He cannot keep up the kind of public presence the Clintons did because his wife is just not interested in political office or political agitation and there is no indication to date his daughters are either. That aside, there comes a point when a family is bereft of salable inventory. The Cheneys, the Bushes, and even the Kennedys have reached that point.
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One thing you’re neglecting when you assess BO is that he was 55 years old when he left office. He doesn’t have a business to run, he never developed any distinct skills during his years in the labor force, and he doesn’t have a diverting and consuming avocational life. His various real estate projects one might interpret as efforts to keep busy (and placate Mooch).
One curio about Obama is that since leaving office he has remained a resident of metropolitan Washington (among other places). Since his daughter had five semesters of high school to complete at the time his term ended, this seemed practical at the time. Well, she finished high school in June of 2019 and he and Mooch (and Valerie Jarrett) are still there. There are other examples of this, but they have explanations. Hillary Clinton was a federal office-holder for 12 years after her husband left office, William Howard Taft was likewise for a period of nine years (1921-30), Woodrow Wilson was very dependent on his wife, who had been a resident of Washington for 18 years at the time the two met and was not a part of the political world or its social haze until such time as they did meet .
The Bolsheviks who were assisted greatly by Imperial Germany blamed the Czar to be in bed with Imperial Germany
It has never changed with the Marxists
There is so much bad about Obama that it’s difficult to cover it all but the worst is that his abominable Iran policy was a significant enabler of the Hamas 10/7 massacres.
I wouldn’t hold BO responsible for the Hamas massacres.
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The Democratic Party as a whole is awful. BO is an epiphenomenon.
“One big assed mistake america” has proven to be so true in so many ways.
BHO and FJB show how much ruin there is in this nation. But that wasn’t enough, fundamental tranformation requires elimination of political opposition, by whatever means. The Arc of History and all that.
I hope California Prop. 50 loses, but even if it doesn’t, Democrats are staring at the abyss. If the Supreme Court finds that gerrymandered majority-black districts are unconstitutional (as I believe they are), Democrats could lose many more seats than California could provide.
Presumably Justice Jackson’s claim that black Americans don’t have full access to their voting rights if they aren’t guaranteed a Representative who is also black will be rejected by the Court’s majority.
The entire jurisprudence on re-districting and re-apportionment is a mess and should be replaced.
“…The entire jurisprudence on re-districting and re-apportionment is a mess and should be replaced…”
Agreed, but who’s going to do it ? Both parties have used gerrymandering, both parties have benefited from it, and both parties want to continue benefitting. They have no incentive to dismantle the system, only to stop the other side from using it.
If there’s a way to abuse a system, then somebody somewhere will probably abuse it – that’s why we have separation of powers and a bicameral legislature.
Agreed, but who’s going to do it ?
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You might start with the appellate judges who manufactured it.
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There’s not much point to bicameralism in state legislatures unless the two chambers are functionally differentiated.
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There is a mechanistic set of procedures one can follow to undertake redistricting. It does not generate equipopulous districts, but it does limit the range of populations to a ratio of 2:1, creates districts which have populations which usually run within 20% of the state mean, and avoids a systematic bias in favor of metropolitan or non-metropolitan areas. Any discretionary cuts you might need can be supervised by trial courts whose jurisdiction encompasses the territorial aggregate which requires partition. No need to involve the state legislature at all. (The ‘bipartisan commission’ which manufactures California’s districts is phony).
The yes on 50 commercials are basically anti-Trump. No actual explanation of what the proposal is.Three pro 50 for every one anti 50.
Also:
California voters transferred the power to draw congressional lines from politicians to a bipartisan citizen commission in 2010 [1], with sources indicating this independent redistricting commission was created nearly two decades ago [2]. The commission was specifically established to take redistricting power away from politicians and give it to citizens [3].
California’s current extraordinary redistricting effort led by Governor Gavin Newsom. This represents a significant departure from the normal decennial cycle, as Newsom is pushing for a redistricting plan that could temporarily override the commission and create districts more favorable to Democrats until after the 2030 Census
https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/california-redistricting-history-3db923
The No on 50 people should turn it into a “Citizens vs Politician” contest.
Majority def dislike politicians. Maybe mix in a suggestion pro lifers and Trump supporters are “Yes on 50”.
Confuse the leftys..
The commission has Republican, Democratic, and supposedly non-partisan members (who side with the Democrats; that’s why they’re appointed). If you want a functionally impartial commission, it should consist of four members, two appointed by the Republican state chairman and two by the Democratic state chairman. (The pitfall here is that it may decay into an incumbent protection scheme; where you have a vigorous rotation-in-office rule where a minimum of 1/3 of the current legislature has to stand down every four years, this tendency might be mitigated).
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The insistence on equipopulous districts with little variation is what generates a demand for centralized and purely discretionary re-districting.
The ironic thing about California’s independent commission is that it nevertheless has produced districts weighted towards Democrats; the 40% of California voters who vote Republican do not have anything near 40% of the Representatives. So Prop 50 calls for an even more gerrymandered map.
In a single-member-district order, the majority party will have some advantages and have a seat haul which exceeds their share of the vote, depending on how evenly spread is their advantage. (Were their advantage perfectly evenly spread, they’d win everywhere).
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If you want proportional representation, you have to switch to some sort of slate system.
huxley quoting Huey Lewis:
Barack Obama, in his time as a student at Occidental College, was also concerned about hip vs. square. From Dreams from My Father:
From an early age, Barack Obama was a poseur, adopting certain opinions or behaviors for the purpose of creating a certain impression on others. Some might call that the stance of a phony. But it is also the stance of a born politician. Barack chose his profession wisely. 🙂
Kate on October 16, 2025 at 10:58 am said:
“Presumably Justice Jackson’s claim that black Americans don’t have full access to their voting rights if they aren’t guaranteed a Representative who is also black … ”
Except we realize, given the state and status of many Democrat run cities and states, that we can hope one day blacks (or “blacks” or Blacks) may realize that having a black Representative has not been all that beneficial over having one who just works on their behalf, no matter his/her racial or other identity allocations.
Clearly part of achieving that is overcoming the march through the institutions.
Re: Obama quote
Gringo:
I do remember that quote. In 2008 Obama styled himself as above it all, beyond red and blue.
But I noticed that when Obama was young he wasn’t hanging out with Young Americans for Freedom or William F. Buckley’s circle.
So is it possible that Obama is now finally exposed for what he has always been? I make no claim to anything like unusual powers of perception, but how was it that I was able, almost immediately to catch the whiff of a grifting charlatan on Obama when everyone else was singing his praises as a “healer,” our national savior, the embodiment of enlightened patriotism, the lightbringer and on and on, ad nauseam? He was not elected by blacks, although they voted for him overwhelmingly on account of his skin color (cafe au lait, but close enough for government work) but by gullible white Americans! No, it’s your fault, Mr. and Mrs. (and moreso, Mx.) America; you gave us this rotting, stinking hater of all things traditional and good, this quisling, this islamophilic, anti-Christian, anti-American, lying sack of merde. Thanks ever so much.
He’s gone stale and knows it.