In 2008, with Republicans having been handed a massive defeat that resulted in Democrat control of all three branches of government in Washington D.C., George W. Bush decided to do the honorable thing by bowing to the will of the people and vowing not to publicly criticize the new President-elect. Now, 8 years later, President Obama finds himself in the exact same position as the American people have dealt his "legacy" a massive blow by handing Republicans total control of Congress and the White House.
But, unlike Bush, who had the humility to accept the will of the electorate, according to the New York Times, Obama has every intention of sticking around Washington D.C. in his retirement to fight the newly elected president. While White House aides say they expect Obama to try to refrain from criticizing Trump during the transition, Obama himself has indicated that all bets are off once he becomes a "private citizen."
“I’m going to be constrained in what I do with all of you until I am again a private citizen,” Mr. Obama, who will be living a few miles from the White House next year, told a meeting this past week of Organizing for Action, the group that maintains his political movement. “But that’s not so far off.”
For Mr. Obama, a return to the partisan fray was never the intention. His library and foundation will serve as a platform for him to travel around the world, confront systemic issues of race relations, and push for technological change aimed at improving society.
But that vision assumed that his presidential legacy would be protected and nurtured by Mrs. Clinton in the Oval Office.
In his remarks to activists, Mr. Obama urged them to stop moping and to ratchet up their opposition to Mr. Trump by Thanksgiving. He promised to join their cause soon after, telling them: “You’re going to see me early next year, and we’re going to be in a position where we can start cooking up all kinds of great stuff to do.”
He has echoed that message in private conversations, making it clear that he may not completely pattern himself after George W. Bush, who almost never criticized his successor.
One friend of Mr. Obama’s, who requested anonymity to discuss private discussions with the president, said the election results seemed to have made him more willing to remain part of the political debate.
“Everyone he talks to walks away with this impression,” the friend said.
In an interview with The New Yorker this week, Mr. Obama said that if Mrs. Clinton had won the election, he might have just turned over the keys and walked away on Inauguration Day. With Mr. Trump’s victory, he said he felt “some responsibility to at least offer my counsel” to the Democratic Party’s political warriors he leaves behind in Washington.
Why is it just so hard for Democrats to accept the fact that there is an unspoken majority of the American electorate that is unhappy with their leftist policies and Obama's "Hope & Change" farce.
But Obama isn't the only person gearing up for a fight with the Trump administration. Neera Tanden, the President of the Center for American Progress who gained notoriety for several controversial email exchanges with John Podesta exposed by WikiLeaks, is already organizing protests in Washington D.C. for inauguration week. We can't wait to see what kind of surprising characters Tanden, Robert Creamer and George Soros can bus in from all over the country to provoke riots that can then be blamed on the Trump administration.
Neera Tanden, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton and the president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, said her organization had begun hosting daily meetings and conference calls as it plots the best way to resist Mr. Trump.
She called Mr. Trump’s first appointments extreme and said they had helped to “stiffen the spines” of Democrats. And she said the election had sparked a grass-roots awakening, with largely peaceful protests across the country.
Two planned rallies in Washington — one for immigration and civil rights on Jan. 14, and another focused on women the day after the inauguration — were devised mostly by social media campaigns. Activists in Washington expect hundredsof thousands of people to gather for the second rally.
But Ms. Tanden warned of dangers posed by the Trump administration, and warned against treating them “in normal Washington political terms.”
“I think the issue is, we do have the makings of an administration that could do more damage to democratic norms than any presidency in my lifetime,” she said.
Meanwhile, proving that they learned absolutely nothing from the 2016 election, other democrats have said they're anxiously awaiting the return of Hillary Clinton to the public scene.
Some Democrats say they are eager for Mrs. Clinton to re-emerge after a period of recovery interrupted so far only by a speech to the Children’s Defense Fund on Wednesday.
It is unclear when, or if, she might return to politics, though many Democrats said they would welcome it. “She’s one tough lady, and public service is in her blood,” said Representative Adam Schiff of California. “Don’t expect her to go quietly into that good night.”
Almost two full weeks have passed since November 8th and democrats and the mainstream media still have not figured out what happened on election night. The election of Donald Trump was a wholesale rejection by the American electorate, not just of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but of everything tied to the corrupt, elitist, establishment ruling class in Washington D.C. And just to be perfectly clear, this includes you folks at the New York Times and all of the mainstream media that have been exposed by WikiLeaks as nothing more than cheerleaders for the democratic party. So, feel free to keep fighting these battles, organizing your protests and lashing out at the American electorate for their decision...although you haven't realized it yet...you've already lost the war.