A Hard Rains a-Gonna Fall: Obama Exits and Trump Takes Center Stage

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A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall: Obama Exits and Trump Takes Center Stage
Derek Shearer
Huffington Post

Unlike 1992 when Bill Clinton campaigned on a program of Putting People First focusing on the economy, there was no overarching economic message from Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Her team produced a detailed program book, Stronger Together; her economic platform was endorsed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and a host of progressive economists. The problem wasn’t the program, but that it got lost in the flack over Benghazi, the State Department emails, and the activities of the Clinton Foundation. Russian hackers contributed to the cacophony, providing Wikileaks with emails from the Democratic National Committee and the account of John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman. The Trump campaign aggressively exploited these issues to drown out Mrs. Clinton’s programmatic message. Mass media coverage focused on both candidates’ negatives, but this reporting hurt Hillary more because Trump voters were ready to excuse his boorish behavior. In addition, serious reporting was overrun by fake news, wild rumors, and conspiracy charges. The Boy Scouts and millions of others were not immune to this degraded campaign coverage.

Still, it was a close election. Had not FBI Director James Comey intervened in the final ten days, Hillary might have won both the electoral and the popular vote. Another reason it was a close election is that President Obama missed an historic opportunity to revive the Democratic Party’s New Deal tradition and rebuild support among the working class. Obama deserves credit for pulling the country out of the worse economic downtown since the Depression, but he could have done much more than stabilize the economy. Instead of following James Carville’s advice to “jail a few bankers”, he appointed Wall Street veterans to key economic posts and steered a centrist course; few progressive economic thinkers were included in his administration.

Given Trump’s hard right conservative team, his world wide business interests, and the influence that lobbyists and Wall Street billionaires will exert, it is a safe bet that there will be scandals. There will also be push back from communities and groups affected by the Trump administration’s policies. Democratic politicians on both coasts and in major cities will defend minorities and immigrants. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Kamala Harris and others will call out Trump’s hypocrisy. It will not be a peaceful time.

President Obama should not go quietly into post presidency memoir writing and speech giving. He is still President for more than a month, and he should speak out much as departing President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex. He should preserve the Senate’s full report on torture, and discuss at a press conference the findings of the White House study on Russia hacking. As former president, I hope that he will remain engaged in issues of race. An important book—The Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein—on how the US made segregation a legal reality will be out in the spring and cause a stir. Next year is the fiftieth anniversary of the Kerner Commission which recognized the separate and unequal realities of black and white America. Foundations or wealthy individuals might fund the Obama Commission on Racial Equality, if he is willing to devote time to the task.