THE REPUBLICANS SECRET WEAPON: IS IT TIME FOR THE OBAMAS TO FINALLY RETIRE FROM POLITICS?

It’s done. America has decided. In January 2025, the 47th President of the United States of America will be... the 45th President, Donald J. Trump! And what a ride it has been. For those who, like me, found themselves with ‘election fever’ growing on an almost daily basis, this might have been the most exciting campaign in living history. A former President fought the sitting President to occupy The White House once again.

They battled it out – there were accusations of Biden’s mental incompetency, lurid insults being exchanged from both sides, then the President suddenly dropped out of the race, immediately replaced with the VP despite her not winning a single vote in the primaries; there were multiple assassination attempts, live TV debates, flubs and blunders, vastly misleading polls (it’s now clear that it evidently wasn’t the ‘neck-and-neck’ race that mainstream media repeatedly told us it was), legal challenges, Identity Politics, threats of war, accusations of media bias, cheating and much more.

And now it’s over. It was a Republican landslide. The Democrats are left picking up the pieces of their disastrous campaign, and the finger pointing has already begun with gusto. So, who exactly was to blame for the Dems losing to a sea of Red?

There’s a lot to explore here. Swapping out the Presidential candidate midway through an election campaign, forcing Trump to start his opposition campaign from scratch with only 100 days to go, was seen by many as undemocratic and underhanded. The vile, politically-motivated accusations of totalitarianism, Nazi-ism, fascism etc, from citizens of one of the safest and most prosperous free nations on Earth during a democratic election campaign struck a very aggressive and divisive tone that was far removed from reality, as did the President’s utterance that the majority of the electorate he’s supposed to represent are “garbage”. Strong policies from the winning side struck a chord with Americans’ priorities in a way in which the weak, undefined policies from the Dems simply couldn’t compete with. Rambling word salads and dismissive responses turned undecided voters off in droves.

Paid endorsements from twerking celebrities is now thought to have caused more harm than good... If billionaire Oprah genuinely believed that a vote for Kamala was as important as she told us, did she really need to be paid $1MILLION to say so? If Jennifer Lopez wants to shield herself from the general public so much that she won’t allow comments on her social media, and won’t partake in an interview that isn’t carefully managed and censored by her PR team, is she really the right person to lecture the general public about their concerns? This is all barely even scratching the surface. The brutal dissection will probably continue until 2028. The list of mistakes goes on and on...

But there’s one contributing factor I’ve heard come up time and time again, that seems to be largely overlooked and ignored by left-wing media and the Dems who are still busily licking their wounds – the Obamas. Their campaigning for the Democrats might have been lost in the media onslaught, with so many other factors being reported on, but there they were – campaigning feverishly for President Biden’s re-election bid, insisting that he was mentally competent, focussed, sharper than ever, and more than capable of winning. And, although they might have been a little slow in showing their support, they eventually decided to back Kamala Harris’ campaign, taking to the road in a campaign trail that they obviously felt would help secure her victory.

They were wrong. In fact, they couldn’t have been more wrong. She lost both the public vote and the electoral college, by a wide margin.

Kamala's bid to hold office raised over $1 BILLION. As the VP, she also had access to all millions raised to fund Biden's campaign. And yet, Dems have still reportedly managed to overspend by $20 MILLION. Compare this to Trump's significantly smaller $750 million budget, and consider that she didn’t make a SINGLE gain on Biden’s 2020 campaign. She was outperformed by even Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign. She staggeringly lost swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nevada... they even managed to turn traditionally blue states into red Republican voters.

There hasn’t been an election landslide this big in decades! The message from voters is clear – ‘you don’t tell us the Nation’s priorities; we tell you.'

So how could the Obamas have got it quite so wrong? Is this a sign that they no longer understand the American electorate, that they’ve become out of touch with American concerns and priorities, and that they no longer know how to represent the mood of the nation?

According to David Garrow, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author behind Barack Obama’s award winning official biography, this is exactly what Obama fears he has become. In fact, the only person outside of his own family who arguably knows him best, went even further, suggesting that Barack’s habit of “talking down” to voters, coupled with his “tone-deaf and clueless” lecturing actually helped sink Harris’ campaign, rather than boosting it.

This might seem extraordinary for the “Yes, we can!” twice-elected President, but the truth is that his influence and relevancy has been waning for some time, as he’s been seen to have repeatedly backed the wrong horse on issues that are important to the majority.

The first sign of his finger no longer being on the pulse came when he flew to the UK to tell Britons how they should vote in their Brexit Referendum. This was also seen by many as tone-deaf posturing that had misjudged the mood of the nation, as he criticised Brexit campaigners and told Britain that a vote for Brexit would put them “at the back of the queue” with trade deals and threatened to limit the US’s trade with the UK – a false doomsday prophecy that didn’t actually come to fruition. This was almost immediately followed by the unprecedented, zealous campaign blitz he engaged in to help Hillary Clinton’s failed Presidential bid.

It is worth noting that his wife, Michelle, despite being largely unpopular with Republicans, still saw fit to volunteer her influence and wisdom on both of these unsuccessful campaigns.

With hindsight, Identity Politics seems to have turned voters off to a staggering extent, something that the Obamas are frequently accused of engaging in. Barack spent a lot of time in this campaign targeting black citizens, and telling them how to vote. He drew on their race constantly. Every other sentence was “black” this and “black” that, so much so that you’d almost think he believes that black and white voters are living in different nations. It obviously alienated voters, because the Trump campaign won across all demographics, and set new records for new black Republicans. The fact that Obama flippantly dismissed Kamala's dismal campaign with his 'bruthas' as simply because they're "not feeling having a woman as President'', arrogantly focussing on the ONE thing she cannot control, instead of all the many, many, many valid reasons they had for not wanting to vote for Harris, was just patronising and insulting.

These kind of Identity Politics deny agency to tens of millions of men and women, be they black, white, Hispanic, gay, straight etc. who thought very carefully about who could best represent them, and voted accordingly. Lecturing a black only crowd that they’re simply “not feeling” a female President assumes that they’re misogynistic, shallow, and incapable of any depth of thought. He has lost all self-awareness. He's become arrogant, conceited and out-of-touch, and the historic landslide election results reflect this.

This all might sound rather divisive, but it’s worth noting that – unlike Obama – the president elect Trump is one of the very few Presidents in US history not to engage America in a military conflict.

That can only be a good thing.

And in terms of voter numbers, both the popular vote and the electoral college, America has not been THIS united in decades.

That too, can only be a good thing.

Barack Obama’s official biographer now believes that the 44th Presidents political relevance could be reduced to “Bill Clinton levels”, stating that Obama, “...has been and remains extremely concerned and nervous about his historical legacy", adding, “That has certainly taken a big hit with Trump once again triumphing”.

So, after supporting two losing election campaigns and alienating voters from across all demographics, will the next Democratic hopeful even want the Obamas campaigning for them in 2028?

Is it time for the Obamas to finally retire from politics?

-- Jace T. Adams