Insulting Obama

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a pretty big surprise, possibly to everyone except for the current president.  We'll never know, of course, because he would probably tell you that he knew it all the time.  But one of the curiosities of it being such a surprise is that it was sort of a "before and after" thing.

What I mean is that the reality prior to the election was a different one from that immediately afterwards, in many respects.  Moreover, with some specific exceptions, we tend to have set aside and, perhaps, even forgotten, some things that we just took for granted when they were just superfluous garbage.

And speaking of superfluous garbage, let's look at the words of the immediately former president, Barack H. Obama, Jr.  As I get reminded every once in a while, back in September, Mr. Obama stated loudly that he would regard it as a personal insult if (in this case) black Americans did not vote for Hillary Clinton.

They did not, of course, in one sense -- the turnout was weak, and Hillary got 5% less support (93% to 88%) among black voters who actually did go to the polls.  Actually that's a pretty good "in one sense", and that probably makes some sense.

I suppose that, given the tangible outcome and Mr. Obama's own words, that he should distinctly feel personally insulted.  That voting percentage by which Hillary was lower than Obama, didn't exactly go out and vote for President Trump; his numbers were about the same as Mitt Romney's in 2012.  But they certainly did do what was supposed to be an "insult", and we ought to mention that.

Barack Obama hasn't exactly owned up to the fact that a bunch of "his people", at least on his father's side, insulted him.  He hasn't gone out and waved his finger in a typical Obama-like, professorial lecture and castigated the people who "insulted" him, probably because it is not in keeping with being a leftist to concede that there are people who disagree with your world view, certainly not enough to vote for the other guy.

But he said it.  "If you don't vote for Hillary you are insulting me" (not that he cared about Hillary or her presidency, of course).  And I would really like to have someone in the press -- why do I keep having to suggest stories to them? -- sit down with the mercifully-former president and talk to him about that line.

Why, we might want to know, does he think all those black voters were willing to insult him rather than pull a lever for Hillary Clinton?  He can't even invoke anything Trumpian at all, because those voters didn't vote for Trump either -- they voted for third-party candidates or stayed home.  Donald Trump certainly didn't destroy old "Crooked Hillary" in the mind of those voters; if anything, she did so herself.  Or (gasp) Obama and his failures did.

OK.  Reflecting on what I was saying about "before and after Election Day", Obama said it, and a goodly chunk of the black voters were willing to insult him by not voting for Hillary.  So which of her 1,277 reasons she lost does he think relate to the black voting public who voted for him in '12 but not for Hillary in '16?  James Comey?  Emails? The weather?  Russia? [OK, at this point, I don't even know what "Russia" would refer to, since there is no real indication that anything Russia did either hurt or helped her on Election Day, but she keeps invoking it so I will, too.]

So I really want to have someone ask him that question and make him answer it directly, no mealymouthed, diverting answer.  Was he or was he not insulted by the large number of black voters that didn't vote for Hillary, when he said he would be insulted if they didn't?

If no one asks, well, I will be personally insulted.  Do you care?

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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