Let Nothing Stand In Your Way

Barack Obama says he doesn’t “understand how we got so toxic and just so divided and so bitter.” He was speaking at a campaign rally in Madison, WI to drum up support for the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate. Polls suggest she may need the help in key battleground states like Wisconsin, but it’s not normal for former commanders-in-chief to play such an active role in our political system. But then, as Obama’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning biographer says, Obama is “not normal.” Maybe his character has something to do with how the country he was elected to lead twice became so toxic, divided, and bitter: it’s part of his legacy.

It’s not normal that Obama legalized the nuclear weapons program of a terror state, Iran, that kills Americans and our allies. Nor is it normal that Obama repeatedly divided America between his supporters and others by chiming in with his trademark phrase, “that’s not who we are as Americans.”

It’s not normal that Obama stayed in Washington after his term ended in 2016. Ex-presidents leave the capital to demonstrate that executive authority has been transferred from the outgoing president to the new one, in accordance with the will of the American people that is articulated through our vote. Obama is the first president to stick around since Woodrow Wilson did a century ago. But Wilson suffered a stroke during his presidency. When it was over, Wilson stayed in Washington because he couldn’t be moved. Obama didn’t have a stroke. He just stayed around setting up a shadow White House a mile away from the actual White House. The press rarely mentions that Obama’s decision to stay in Washington is unusual because they don’t want to bring attention to the fact that it’s not normal.

According to former CIA Director John Brennan, Obama ok’d efforts to spy on the 2016 Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump. That’s normal in the third world where totalitarian regimes like Venezuela and Syria put their adversaries under surveillance and charge them with phony crimes to put them in jail. But it’s not normal in America, the oldest democracy in the world.

It wasn’t normal when Obama told Brennan to produce an intelligence finding that Vladimir Putin helped Trump win the 2016 election. That assessment not only undermined his successor’s presidency but also poisoned the country. After all, the apparent purpose of the CIA assessment was to show that Trump was a foreign agent and everyone who voted for him was in thrall to a traitor. It’s not normal for an American president to set Americans against each other and divide the country, but Obama isn’t normal.

It wasn’t normal to signal instructions to a judge to target General Mike Flynn, Board Chair of America’s Future, after the Justice Department dropped all its charges against Trump’s former national security advisor. It wasn’t normal when Obama pushed Democratic governors and mayors to keep their states and cities locked down during the COVID panic of 2020, destroying the economy.

Installing Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020 wasn’t normal since Harris hadn’t won a single primary vote. And neither was pushing out Biden four years later to replace him with Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate since Harris still hadn’t won a single primary vote. But after all the laws and norms already broken, it doesn’t matter to Obama that the presidency has turned into a ceremonial position. He holds the real power.

In less than two weeks, America has the opportunity to bring the age of toxicity, bitterness, and division to an end. Let nothing stand in your way to cast your vote. It’s time for America to return to normal. (For more from the author of “Let Nothing Stand In Your Way” please click HERE)

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