This BBC article reports Obama’s comments while in Singapore.
Among them was this:
It’s hard to avoid a sense that this is aimed at Biden.
Or it’s aimed at Bernie, or Trump, or Bloomberg, or even Warren. He’s right though.
I’m pretty sure Obama doesn’t want Biden to be the president. He definitely doesn’t want Bernie, and by extension Warren (the less honest Bernie). I’m not sure who he does want though
It’s possible Obama wasn’t thinking about Biden or the 2020 election at all. His mind may have been referencing something else entirely. I doubt he would savage his own former VP that way.
Obama and Biden are friends. Obama is not gonna attack him.
Nah, in the circles that Obama travels in it’s just kind of expected that you’ll mention the inferiority of men and superiority of women from time to time.
Putting aside any personal feelings, Biden was Obama’s choice for Vice President. If Obama says Biden isn’t capable of being President then he’s also saying he screwed up when he picked him. Any attack on Biden is also an attack on himself.
It was eleven years ago. Biden was less old then.
I guess we all were, actually.
Obama was giving a speech in Malaysia…
Could he have been referencing Mahatiar?
The comments were made in Singapore…
Could he have been referencing the legacy style politics and paternalism of the Singapore political environment?
Funny, I found it startlingly easy to avoid that sense. Particularly after I actually read the article and understood: a) that Obama’s quoted comments were delivered at an Obama Foundation event to mentor young leaders, and b) the comment about old men getting out of the way was in direct response to the question of whether he would consider returning to political leadership.
Or, instead of taking remarks in the way they were intended, we could stoke imagined divisions and conflicts among the amorphous political left, based on flimsy interpretations and untested suppositions. Based on the recent past, I suspect that’s what we’ll do. (Did you hear about what Nancy Pelosi said to Chuck Schumer about AOC? SHocking!1)
On reviewing the above, I realize I may have implied something I didn’t mean.
I don’t think the OP was deliberately divisive or provocative, and I don’t believe that Xema is in any way posting in bad faith.
I merely want to discourage the sort of analyses of public remarks that try to excavate conflict and meanings that are unsupported by circumstance, context or history. There are organizations that are right now manufacturing that sort of thing out of whole cloth. “We” don’t need to go looking for divisions where they’re not, and we certainly shouldn’t work whatever wedges we find deeper into the body politic. Conflict should move us toward compromise and consensus, not toward fracture.
To set the record straight, Obama has never been enthusiastic about Biden running for president.
Just before reading this I was on Facebook and one is my friends posted that the intent was to help Biden by splitting the progressive vote. I guess we can read whatever we want into what he said. I think that he was just saying that it would be nice to have more women involved in leadership.
I don’t disbelieve you, and I agree that, if this is supported by direct Obama comments addressing the subject of Joe Biden running for president, it could be peripherally relevant to Biden’s campaign and to the 2020 Democratic primary season in general considering Obama’s so far rather passive role as an opinion influencer.
Could you help me understand how you would like that straightened out record to be understood by the electorate at large?
For the record (a different record), I’m not a fan of Candidate Biden, even though I like Citizen Biden quite a bit, and my questions and comments should not be taken as a defense of Biden, Obama or any particular politician.
Probably not because the record is so crooked and distorted that there’s no point in addressing any one part of it. Not just the record of Obama and Biden, but all the candidates and presidential politics in general. People just need to stop listening to candidates, political parties, and the media.
Imposing new invented narratives onto comments and actions removed from their original context is all the rage these days.
But yeah - this was never about Obama “attacking” anyone, least of all Biden.
So, should we all just subscribe to your newsletter?
I’ll admit that “attacking” may be a bit too strong here.
But Obama is smart and savvy - he well knows that a former US President’s remarks at even a minor event overseas will receive publicity and attention well beyond that event.
LOL
Nice try.
Or, maybe, just maybe, just for the shits and giggles, try thinking for yourself.