Tuesday, 16 February 2016

Who's the real Barack Obama?

Who's the real Barack Obama?

The Common Ills
Anne Gearan and Ed O'Keefe offer something at THE WASHINGTON POST.  Not really sure what, but it's something.

Mainly, what it is would be disappointing because there's no insight, there's nothing.  And both reporters -- solo or together -- are capable of far better than what they've written.

But some days inspiration just doesn't come -- we all have them -- and maybe that's what happened as they attempted to write about how the Iraq War is haunting yet another US election.

Here's an excerpt:

Clinton tried to expunge the record that helped sink her first White House campaign nearly a year before she launched her second. She apologized for voting to approve the war in Iraq, called it a mistake and sought to close the door on what seemed a long-ago controversy.

Sanders, a member of the House at the time, now touts his 2002 floor speech against the war as a prescient moment, when he spoke about how an invasion of Iraq could lead to a destabilized Middle East for years to come. Clinton was then a senator representing New York.


You wait -- or I did -- for them to seize the main point, to express what no one is doing in print but what we hear over and over as we speak on campuses: Bernie Sanders is Barack Obama.

Not the Barack in the White House but the 2008 candidate.

To be sure, that candidate was a fake, a fraud.

But who Barack pretended to be in 2008?

That's Bernie Sanders.

You may remember The Cult of St. Barack taking to the airwaves to insist that, unlike Hillary, Barack voted against the Iraq War.

I loved it when Patricia J. Williams, columnist for THE NATION and really bad academic, took to KPFA to proclaim that Barack's 2002 vote against the Iraq War showed great judgment and was why we should all support him.

I loved it even more when a caller to the program corrected Williams by pointing out that Barack did not vote against the authorization for the Iraq War because he wasn't in the US Congress at the time.  (He'd be elected to the US Senate in November of 2004.)

Diary of a Mad Law Professor?

Try Sputtering of a Guest With Egg On Her Face.

Repeatedly, that lie was pimped over and over.

But now we have candidate Bernie Sanders and he actually did what The Cult of St. Barack hailed as a modern day miracle: He voted against the Iraq War in 2002.


And 2008 candidate  Barack had far less experience than Bernie does.

But we were supposed to see Barack's 'fabled judgment' in his temporary stance against the Iraq War.

(Do not argue that temporary point with me.  I do not suffer fools gladly and, as Elaine and I have repeatedly documented, Senate candidate Barack Obama was for the Iraq War, he told that to us to our faces and we walked out of that fund raiser without giving him a cent because of it.  So go lie to someone else, I'm not in the damn mood at this late date for your nonsense.)

Today, Barack's backing Hillary and it's really hurting him with young people.


On campuses, there's a sense of failure when people talk about Barack.

But even now, there are a number who try to make excuses for Barack.

So you get the "He wanted to do more."

Or you did.

He's destroying that with his backing of Hillary because students are noting that Bernie is Barack in 2008 and Barack's refusing to support the position that he ran on and instead support the candidate he battled with.

Hillary still doesn't stand for anything.

She's a used car sales person who'll get a lemon off the lot and we're supposed to applaud that.

That's all she is.

In 2008, you could still pretend that she was something more (I did).

But her time as Secretary of State demonstrated the Iraq War vote was who she was.  There is only war, war, war in Hillary's DNA.

And that's why students -- male and female -- can't stand her.

That and the whole Oh Come Let Us Adore Me nature of her campaign.

Barack is doing real damage to himself and to his legacy by refusing to endorse the candidate who most mirrors 2008 candidate Barack.

And when Hillary dismissed Bernie's vote, Bernie should be shooting back that the vote mattered enough in 2008 to keep her from getting the nomination.

He should ask why this vote should matter less now?

Because her actions of Secretary of State means it matters more.

He should also start putting out press releases with Barack's 2007 and 2008 comments on the Iraq War to make clear who's the furthest from 2008 candidate Barack.

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