I think he’s right and as a supporter of the Republicans I’m relieved that he couldn’t run against Trump. But my first thought upon seeing this story was, does he really have to stick it to Hillary when she’s down? I’m sure most people (well, except Trump) know that it’s true anyway, but why rub salt in the Clintons’ wound by trumpeting the fact in a major interview?
It almost feels as if Obama still has a major grudge against Hillary and that there’s no love lost between them. Is this a fair appraisal?
Reads more like it’s trying to provoke Trump in an area that he’s shown a particular insecurity in the past. And it worked:
“President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me. He should say that but I say NO WAY! - jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.” - Trump tweet.
Leaving how to parse the word “should” in this statement, Trump, as could easily be predicted, can’t just let it go.
I guess it could be – but I’d figure the simpler explanation is this: imagine that Obama gets up there in front of everybody to explain that he totally would’ve lost to Trump just like Hillary Clinton did. “Yeah,” he says, “I have to admit, the American people loved that guy’s message; it really resonated with them.”
Imagine he keeps opining like that for a good while: specifying that Trump would’ve beaten Bernie Sanders, would’ve beaten Elizabeth Warren; even if Joe Biden had run, even if Al Gore had come out of retirement, it wouldn’t have mattered, because, man, Trump sure knew what the voters wanted to hear, didn’t he?
That’d be demoralizing, right? What’s the takeaway for Dems: your message sucks, so your future campaigns are doomed?
So imagine it the other way around: he declares that he would’ve beaten Trump. He thereby implies, if you want to believe it, that Gore or Biden or Warren or Sanders or, what the heck, Keith Ellison, would’ve wiped the floor with Trump. That’s energizing, right? That’s reassuring and exciting at the same time. That tells Dems, hey, we have the right message; all we need is the right messenger.
Either way, Clinton lost; what’s better for the Dems to hear: that Clinton lost but others can win, or that Clinton lost and so would anyone else?
There were a whole bunch of people, prior to the election, that were confident Hillary would’ve beaten Trump too. I’m not certain Obama would have, but there’s no way to know.
If he was trying to provoke Trump, I don’t know what he hopes to accomplish by doing so. He’s a lame duck and Trump is his successor.
heh bill would of beat all 3 of them and bush 2 if they’d of all ran when he left office
It was the first time I heard about people wanting to over turn the prez term limit…
someone mentioned to me that she would of had a bigger chance if Michelle had been her running mate … that way they could of said they were keeping barrys legacy alive …
That was not my interpretation. The podcast and transcript are here, for those that may be interested: http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/26/politics/axe-files-obama-transcript/ . My take is that he is offering advice to Democrats in general on what they need to do better in the future. He praises Clinton in the interview, so I doubt his intent was to kick her while she’s down.
One of the claims made as to why Clinton (and Democrats generally) lost was that the Democratic Party no longer serves the interests of the working and middle classes. Obama was attempting to refute this notion by stating that the Democratic platform, in general, does indeed benefit the working/middle class better than the Republican platform. He’s saying that the Democrats’ flaw was in poor salesmanship, a lack of effort spent advertising and promoting the ideas of the platform. The “if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it” was Obama’s belief that he would have been able to successfully communicate “not only the dry policy aspects of this, but that we care about these communities”.
Trump should not be responding to provocations, real and imagined, by tweeting constantly. It’s undignified. Plus as president, he’s going to get provocations, criticism and abuse constantly, from people all over the world. He can’t possibly respond to all of it. So what he should do is just to ignore it.
I agree with everything you wrote. I wish someone could take away Trump’s Twitter account. But what would Obama achieve by getting a rise out of Trump, even if we were to consider an off-hand tweet “getting a rise”?
It was a simple correction. “plurality” is the more accurate term, not “majority” which John Mace used in #10.
ETA: We wouldn’t say Trump won a “plurality” either, at least, if we’re talking about the popular vote. Majority = 50%+1. Plurality = largest share of votes, but less than 50%.