Obama Is Nothing Like Trump
This is turning into a continuing series.
Meghan McCain is a pitiable figure if you have nothing better to do with your time. Her father’s memory is the rock upon which she built her career. However, the only people who truly appreciate the late Sen. John McCain these days are Democrats and Never Trumpers. McCain is defiantly neither. Yes, she’s critical of Trump for personal reasons, but she’s more consistently an “anti-anti Trumper” — right-wingers who resent Democrats more than they dislike Trump.
In response to the successful nationwide “No Kings” protests last weekend, McCain posted on social media, “So can I ask a question about the ‘No King’ narrative — how is that the line on the left when they literally, LITERALLY treated President Obama like a diety (sic) and let his power go ramshot unchecked for 8 years? I just don’t get how anyone has a leg to stand on here …”
People tragically abuse the word “literally” nowadays, but the left never even figuratively treated Barack Obama like a deity. The political left — no more capable of satisfaction than Prince’s mother — turned on Obama fairly quickly. In the May 2009 Politico article “Some on left souring on Obama,” Josh Gerstein wrote, “Barely four months into his presidency, Obama is confronting growing dissatisfaction among members of his liberal base, who feel spurned by a series of his early decisions on issues ranging from guns to torture to immigration to gay rights.”
Obama didn’t move quickly or aggressively enough for the left, which soon decried Obama as not “not liberal enough.” Progressives argued that Obama hadn’t fought hard enough for the public option in 2009, as if he could’ve gone Suge Knight on Joe Lieberman and dangled him off a balcony until he changed his vote. John R. MacArthur at Harper’s Weekly declared in December 2009, “More and More, Obama Seems a Faux Liberal,” because for so many on the left, a “real” liberal is someone capable of governing in a fantasy land where everyone does what you want.
By the end of 2009, progressive commentators Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann were openly criticizing Obama’s performance. Maddow suggested that Obama sounded too much like George W. Bush after he gave a speech at West Point, and she initially called the Affordable Care Act an “electoral defeat” because of concessions made in the bill regarding abortion access. Later, as part of a deal with conservative Democrat Bart Stupak to pass the ACA, Obama would sign an executive order reaffirming a ban on federal funding for abortions. The left (and right) hammered him over this.
Of course, Obama was only in a position to displease the left because moderate and conservative Democrats, such as Lieberman and Stupak, openly defied him. It’s much easier for Donald Trump to keep his base happy with radical, libs-owning Cabinet picks and lawless use of executive power because supposed “reasonable” Republicans, such as Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, and Thom Tillis, always fold to the mad king’s whims.
However, even when Trump clearly fails or breaks any one of his more absurd campaign promises, the MAGA cult acts as if this were all part of the plan. Trump said he’d lower grocery prices and end the war in Ukraine, all on Day One. He’s done neither, but his supporters pretend they don’t notice. Fox News, in particular, covers Trump as if he’s the political equivalent of Michael Jordan during the 1986/1987 NBA season. If a Fox News anchor was as critical of Trump as Maddow and Olberman were in 2009, they’d be fired, perhaps actually literally.
McCain’s specious claim that the left let Obama’s power go “ramshot unchecked for eight years” seemingly ignores that the left constantly challenged Obama. Liberal groups, specifically environmentalists and abortion rights activists, claimed that Obama was a lousy negotiator who didn’t just compromise with Republicans on important issues but outright caved.
In June 2010, liberal activists warned that Obama couldn’t count on their support, even as radical far-right Tea Party candidates had won primaries across the nation. Whatever their issues were with Obama, a Tea Party Congress would only worsen the situation, but an alarming lack of foresight from the far left remains a problem to this day.
Although I’m not sure The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart would call himself a “progressive,” McCain would definitely classify him as part of the “liberal media elite,” and Stewart regularly mocked Obama as a “timid” leader who had backtracked on his bold, visionary campaign rhetoric once he’d become president. (This shift from campaign mode to actual governance is hardly new, but with Obama, it was treated as an act of betrayal rather than the acceptance of political reality.)
Of course, after the 2010 midterm “shellacking,” Obama took full responsibility for Democrats’ losses and didn’t promote a stab-in-the-back narrative. He remained respectful of those on the left who’d joined the dogpile, because he understood this is how a functioning democracy works. That was pretty big of him because the left almost immediately started attacking him for making deals with the Republicans who now controlled the House of Representatives and who’d sent the Democrats who had managed to keep their seats hiding under their beds. By December 2010, there was talk of a primary challenge from the left.
Democrats across the spectrum weren’t afraid of criticizing Obama or outright distancing themselves from him. However, Republicans under the Trump regime behave more like courtiers to a mad king, who fear banishment from the royal court if they speak out of turn.
I do agree with my British friends who point out that “No Kings” is a little unfair to their actual king. Charles has his flaws but he’s not the tyrant Jonathan Groff played so well in Hamilton. Trump is a power-mad, wannabe despot, and that is why millions of Americans peacefully assembled to wish him an unhappy birthday. When voters rejected Democrats at the polls in both 2010 and 2014, a humbled Obama moderated his positions. Now, Americans have every reason to worry that an electoral defeat won’t deter Trump, who commands the military and controls the nuclear arsenal.
Barack Obama was never treated like a king or minor deity, and he never behaved as such. He was a public servant. Meghan McCain knows this but she’s desperate to remain relevant within the mad king’s court. That’s what true tyranny looks like — members of the pampered elite kissing the leader’s boot and hoping he won’t press it too hard into their faces.
I’m old enough to remember how quickly so-called progressives turned on Obama. The green lanternists who believed he had a magic ring of power that he just refused to use. And when they realized he wasn’t the Obama they’d created in their own minds - man! they pivoted fast! And to this day they seek a savior - the one who could turn loaves into fish. Fish into loaves. For far too long time they saw Bernie that way. But isn’t it a puzzle that they never saw our 2016 and 2024 nominees that way? Well, of course, women can’t be trusted with power.
Meghan McCain is a vapid, textbook Dunning-Kruger douchevessel who is completely unaware of her own limitations and contributes nothing to society. Her entitlement is also off the fucking charts; she'd be lucky to have a part-time gig at Hooters if it weren't for her famous dad.