Joy and vibes or division and hatred: Pick one.
No, I’m not talking about the two major-party tickets this year, although you’d be forgiven for thinking that if you were former President Barack Obama. Instead, it’s the messaging. Which party will the Democrats be today? Will they be running on happiness and good feelings and coolness, or will they be telling you that their opponent is a literal Nazi who wants to arrest you and, in the same breath, accuse them of being the divisive ones?
It’s not just Vice President Kamala Harris or her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who have been peddling this message. In the closing weeks of the campaign, the Democrats have been increasingly relying on another president — not Joe Biden, but Barack Obama — to make the point for them.
If only people were buying it.
He was in Arizona campaigning for the Harris-Walz ticket on Friday when he talked about, of all things, divisiveness.
“Donald Trump wants us to think that this country is hopelessly divided,” Obama said during the speech. “Between us and them. Between the quote ‘real Americans’ — which, by which he means his supporters — and the outsiders who don’t support him.”
Obama then went on an odd — one might even say conspiracy-stoking — rant about a town hall that Trump interrupted earlier this week because several supporters apparently had medical emergencies and “derail[ed]” the event. That’s not my word, that’s how The New York Times described it. But to hear Obama tell it, it’s like he just decided he wasn’t going to answer stuff.
“The point of a town hall meeting is to take questions,” Obama said. “He just decided, you know what, I’m going to stop taking questions, and then he’s swaying to ‘Ave Maria’ and ‘YMCA’ for about half an hour.
“Folks are standing there, not sure what’s happening. Can you imagine if I did that?”
Should Obama stay out of politics?
Obama then went on to go off about Trump calling himself “the father of IVF” (“I do not know what that means. You do not either,” Obama said, apparently not having sat through Vice President Harris’ Fox News ramblefest earlier in the week) and that Jan. 6 was “a day of love” (that’s not a proper descriptor, really, but arguably closer — in most respects, anyway — than calling what happened an actual “insurrection”).
“They made Jan. 6 sound like it was Woodstock,” he said in the clip.
The clip was posted under this caption on Obama’s social media accounts: “We don’t need four more years of arrogance and bumbling and bluster and division under Donald Trump.”
No, let him do a few weeks of arrogance and bumbling and bluster and division instead, then leave it to Kamala for another four years.
We don’t need four more years of arrogance and bumbling and bluster and division under Donald Trump.
America is ready for a better story – we’re ready for a President @KamalaHarris. pic.twitter.com/Urn2kyl7qq
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 19, 2024
Except, as some people noted under the post, the guy who’s talking is the one who does a lot of the divisive talking himself:
Barack Obama started the division & takedown of America for his globalist masters. Now his endorsement goes to BlackRock owned Kamala Harris who’s slogan is literally “Let’s finish the job”
They are telling you to your faces they’re destroying America for their Globalist masters
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) October 19, 2024
You destroyed America dipsht.
Sit this one out
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) October 19, 2024
You were the most divisive president in American history
— Ashtronaut Girl (@AshtronautGirl) October 19, 2024
You did more division to this country than any other President in American history.
— Steve 🇺🇸 (@SteveLovesAmmo) October 19, 2024
Of course, any reaction is subject to an opposite and not necessarily equal reaction, like these:
Exactly how? Please do tell.
— Hubby, Papa, Indie Game Developer and Animator. (@GameRickster) October 19, 2024
How so?
— Kate (@KateMeeks4) October 19, 2024
How many instances do you need? From getting involved in the arrest of black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. to the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri after the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, the president saw himself as our cultural mediator in chief, yet only managed to make things worse by wading into it.
He changed the tenor of campaigning in this country to the point where his re-election in 2012 was less about “Yes We Can” and more about “Mitt Romney Thinks Corporations Are People, Kills Cancer Patients and Puts Dogs on Car Roofs.”
Since then, his brief reappearances in American political life have only served to amplify this, where — like here — he talks for 15 seconds about bringing America together and then for another few minutes about how it’s those dastardly Republicans that are tearing us apart. And even in this cycle, he’s managed to offend minority voters by his lectures to “the brothers” about not coming out in appropriate enough numbers to support Kamala Harris.
It’s almost like eight years after America elected Donald Trump to replace him, he still doesn’t get why.
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