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Jamelle Bouie has a few very interesting recent posts about the state of democracy in American today that also touch on Obama’s legacy. Here he writes about the limits of Obama’s legacy. 

The Limits of Obama’s Legacy

“The former president’s message still has power. But his ideas are no longer sufficient.”

Obama’s message certainly still has power. But which ideas does Bouie think are no longer sufficient?

“Obama’s solution for opponents of the administration and its enablers is to vote. “This whole project of self-government only works if everybody’s doing their part,” he said. “Don’t tell me your vote doesn’t matter.” But this moralistic appeal to civic engagement ignores the real structural obstacles to political participation: not just perennial problems of inequality and access, but escalated voter suppression. Those obstacles are one reason his legacy is in danger and why Democrats may fail to translate discontent into a congressional majority. But while Obama might downplay their significance, his political successors—especially those black lawmakers vying for higher office—are not.”

As such, the former president urged his audience—and anyone listening—to vote in November against the Republican majority: “If you don’t like what’s going on right now, and you shouldn’t, do not complain, don’t hashtag, don’t get anxious, don’t retreat, don’t binge on whatever it is you’re bingeing on, don’t lose yourself in ironic detachment, don’t put your head in the sand, don’t boo. Vote. Vote.”

Don’t boo. Vote.

A great Obama line, but one that Bouie seems critical of.

“Don’t boo, vote” is a frequent Obama-ism, used frequently when he was on the campaign trail, from his first presidential race in 2008 to his speeches on behalf of Hillary Clinton in 2016. It’s part of his broader pitch for political engagement, drawn from the same moralistic impulses behind his “respectability” talks to predominantly black audiences, where he invoked “Cousin Pookie” and advocated voting on the basis of civic and personal responsibility. “If Cousin Pookie would vote, if Uncle Jethro would get off the couch and stop watching SportsCenter and go register some folks and go to the polls, we might have a different kind of politics,” he said in a 2007 address in Selma, Alabama, on the 42^nd anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march.”

“As part of this pitch, Obama has rejected arguments about actual constraints on the ability of voters to participate. “We disempower ourselves all the time,” he said in an interview with Al Sharpton just before the last presidential election. “You can’t tell me that all those folks who don’t vote are doing so because somebody’s turned them away or somebody’s intimidated them, no. It’s because they decided they had something better to do.”

This is not to say Obama is indifferent to voter suppression. “Republicans have led efforts to pass laws making it harder, not easier, for people to vote,” he said in a 2014 speech to Sharpton’s National Action Network, pledging to stop the push for new restrictions. “As president, I’m not going to let attacks on these rights go unchallenged. We’re not going to let voter suppression go unchallenged.” Under Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, his Department of Justice acted accordingly, challenging and blocking onerous voting requirements like the ones in Texas and Wisconsin.”

But Obama does believe that these restrictions aren’t onerous enough to stop those who truly want to participate. “The notion that somehow voter suppression is keeping you from voting, as systemic as Republicans have tried to make voting more difficult for minorities, for Democrats, for young people, the truth of the matter is, if you actually want to vote, then you can vote,” he said in that 2016 interview. He echoed that sentiment in his Illinois address, when he told students that “the biggest threat to our democracy is indifference. The biggest threat to our democracy is cynicism.”

“It’s a sentiment that many progressive candidates today—a “younger and more diverse” crop, as Obama said in his speech—might not agree with. They, and progressive activists across the country, are sharply aware of the onerous barriers to voting erected in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder. For them, racial gerrymandering, strict voter identification, burdens on registration, and broad voter purges are the most pressing threats to political participation and democracy.”

Yes, although it’s kind of a never ending cycle as refusing to vote leads to an even more conservative court-now we’ve added Gorsuch and are in danger of seeing Kavanaugh on the Court that will be even more sympathetic to voter suppression.

I think there are two different things very important to disentangle: voter suppression and voter apathy. Suppression remains a huge problem and it must be remembered that 2016 was the first essentially post Voting Rights election since 1964. But apathy isn’t people are unable to vote but choose not to.

I don’t think that Obama would want to downplay the importance of voter suppression. But it’s hard not to have some sympathy regarding his criticism of those who can vote but choose not to do so.

I always remember this conversation I had with a young, Black millennia trainer I used to have at my gym during the 2016 election. I first spoke to him the Thursday before that fateful November 8, 2016. I asked him if he planned to vote and his response was ‘Hell no, our vote doesn’t matter.’

It turned out that while he voted for Obama in 2008, he’d sat home in 2012. Although I tried to reason with him about the stakes he wasn’t hearing it. Fast forward to the next Thursday, two days after the election. The tv was on in the lockeroom and he was furious. He was decrying what was on the tv screen-Obama being forced to shake hands with so-called ‘President Trump’ the-so-called-man who ran on the despicable slander Obama wasn’t an American citizen. As some have said, after electing the first Black President in 2008, we elected the first White President in 2016.

Those who know American history well were not surprised-US history has always been two steps forward and one step back on racial progress.

But I couldn’t resist: ‘Sean,’ I pointed out to him.’You didn’t even vote.’

‘I didn’t vote but this is a blue state, she won anyway.’

But I wasn’t persuaded this was a classic excuse not a reason. Witt his attitude I suspect he’d have sat home even if he lived in Michigan or Pennsylvania. And many Black millennials in swing states indeed did sit home.

By the way, for what it’s worth, that same Thursday after the election I also spoke to a young White, millennial trainer and he was also shellshocked by Trump’s win, but then he admitted he wrote in Bernie.

And this points to what has been a big concern-millennials apathy and willingness not to vote. It’s particularly pronounced among Black millennials though its present in White millennials too. This has been a major source of concern as it shows the ways in which this generation of young Blacks differs from their parents-the civil rights generation who came of age in the age of Selma, MLK, etc. For this older generation the right to vote is sacred. The younger generation seems to see the power of the vote differently: more in the power of withholding it than in exercising it.

However, much of this is now in the rear view-pre 2016-mirror. The ‘election’ of Trump has scared many straight who now see firsthand that their vote does matter, that every vote counts-we’ve seen a few special elections where this is almost literally true.

So I don’t completely follow Bouie in this post. I agree that no one should downplay the scope of the problem of voter suppression.-and there need to be solutions proposed.  On the other hand, with apathy, I’m a little less sympathetic. Sitting back and complaining in what Obama calls ‘ironic detachment’ only makes things worse. I don’t totally let the apathetic off the hook, though, many people who were previously apathetic are now very engaged.

UPDATE: Speaking of solutions Stacy Abrams has some ideas. 

I large piece of it is that the Senate needs to heed Harry Reid’s call for ending the filibuster-see Chapter A.

Ironically, in finding a limit in Obama’s ideas, it’s actually another recent post of Bouie’s that truly does touch on a limit-without mentioning his name.

This post is about the recent anonymous Trump resister from inside the Russia House-the (in)famous DeepThroat State. As many are arguing, the true threat to American democracy today is the GOP Congress-as I point out in a previous chapter. Bouie, points out that they alone are capable of checking and restraining Trump and they choose not to do it. The Incapacitated President.

FN: For this reason the tone of my criticism has changed in 2019: Today the Democratic House has the power to check and restrain Trump and they aren’t doing anywhere near what they could and should be doing-Chapter B. Some Pelosi defenders on Twitter argue we should ‘yell at Mitch McConnell not Speaker Pelosi’-but what purpose would that serve? We’re not McConnell’s constituency the depth of his partisan cynicism should be abundantly clear by now-demanding that McConnell hold Trump accountable when the House itself won’t-makes little sense.

The notion that the Democratic House can’t move without the endorsement of the GOP co-conspirators in the Senate begs the question as to why we worked so hard to elect a Democratic House in the first place as only the GOP co-conspirators have agency according to this premise.

End of FN

“Trump’s own aides don’t trust him to lead the country. Meanwhile, the only people who can stop this crisis pretend it doesn’t exist.”

Yes and history should judge them very harshly. As I argued in the previous chapter, the GOP resisters inside the Russia House and the GOP Congress are really two sides of the same coin-they both recognize how unfit and dangerous Trump is yet they choose not to do anything because of tax cuts for the rich and some conservative judges. Trump said he could get away with shooting someone on 5th Avenue-Giuliani raised him by saying that he could assassinate Comey and not be convicted-and if the jury were Congressional Republicans I believe it.

FN: And now we must add perhaps a jury of Dem House leaders wouldn’t convict him either-Pelosi might declare that ‘he’s self convicting. yes he’s guilty of murder but convicting him and sending him to prison plays into his hands.’ 

What Jeff Flake calls the GOP’s Faustian bargain-one that Flake despite his big talk has also made, making him in a sense even more complicit as he knows the scope of the problem and still went along with Trump in deed, which is more important than weasel words-is where the GOP Congress abdicates its oversight role and outsources it to the GOPers in the Russia House. But, of course, these GOP Trump staffers aren’t equipped with the necessary tools-starting with Constitutional authority-to do much about Trump.

Bouie goes on to have a very interesting discussion regarding the current debate over the 25th. In reality, to be sure, the 25th is a pipe dream as it requires an even larger super majority to sign off on it than impeachment then removal requires. It aint going to happen. And, arguably, it shouldn’t as it lacks the clear moral authority of impeachment which is where this must go if that’s where the facts lead.

FN:  Similarly Pelosi’s evoking Trump going to prison is also empty-she has no control over that. It’s as if everyone among the elite class thinks Trump is this great threat-the GOP leaders, the MSM, the Dem leaders-but no one is ever willing to use what’s within their own power to do something about it. They instead evoke a fantasy accountability for Trump which is unlikely to ever happen and in any case they have no ability to make happen. They only seem interested in consequences for Trump that they don’t control.

If you want to understand how we got Trump in the first place the utter failure of the elite class to effectively confront him gives us a good idea.

End of FN

But wether we’re talking about the 25th, impeachment, or even just normal Congressional oversight, we continue to hit the same Red Wall.

“Jeff Flake (and fellow Trump critic Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska) may see the president as a danger to the very stability of American constitutional government, but their commitment to conservative ideology means they will likely confirm the president’s second nominee for the Supreme Court, even if that nominee rejects legal accountability for presidential lawbreaking, thus jeopardizing their own efforts to defend the Constitution.”

“More than the public nature of President Trump’s deterioration, it’s the inaction and complicity of the majority party that truly differentiates the present situation from those of Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon. Like them, Trump has a cadre of aides and advisers essentially acting in his stead as president, working around him and circumventing his worst impulses. But unlike those presidents, Trump is also insulated by a political movement that ranks pursuit of its ideological goals above all else, including the integrity of the presidency.”

“Beneath the text of the 25^th Amendment—or the Constitution’s impeachment clause, for that matter—is an assumption about the behavior of key institutional actors. Both assume that in the event of presidential incapacitation or wrongdoing, the independent Congress or quasi-independent executive branch officers will act to end the crisis, understood as a threat to the system itself. They assume that most of these actors possess a basic allegiance to the preservation of the political order.”

And this is the problem and this is what Obama during his time in office never quit got his head around: partisanship.

“You see this assumption in Federalist 65, where Alexander Hamilton gives the rationale for making impeachment proceedings a duty of the Senate. Hamilton acknowledges that the prosecution of “high crimes and misdemeanors” may divide the community into parties determined by loyalty and political sympathies, who “will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other.” But, Hamilton argues, the Senate is separate enough from the day to day of politics and committed enough to the integrity of the government itself to “preserve, unawed and uninfluenced, the necessary impartiality between an individual accused, and the representatives of the people, his accusers.”

FN: For more on the Federalist Papers regarding the impeachment power-Elizabeth Holtzman has a very important book on it-see Chapter A.

“Trapped in an unprecedented situation of a crisis that’s broadly known but presently unresolvable, we’re experiencing the extent to which Hamilton was simply too optimistic. The ability to deal with wrongdoing and complete dysfunction in the executive branch is, as he feared, entirely “regulated … by the comparative strength of the parties.” And one of those parties is unconcerned with the potential consequences of a dysfunctional White House and a seemingly unhinged president. Donald Trump cannot do his job, and as long as the Republican Party holds power in Washington, there’s nothing to be done about it.”

The relative strength of the parties. This is why while progressives argue that what matters are candidates not parties, I completely disagree. Tell me a candidate’s party and I can tell you where s/he will vote 90% of the time-maybe factoring their district or state.

Every question in America ends up being a partisan question. And this is why the future of Trump-and our rule of law-hangs on the Democrats taking the House. True, the third branch of government-the judiciary has held up quite well under Trump’s authoritarian assault, Congress remains the weak link.

And in truth, politics has seeped through to the Court in the past and could do so even more if Kavanaugh despite all that we know of him-a perjurer, someone who pretends Roe is settled law while he doesn’t really believe that-and now accused of sexual assault-is rammed through yet again through the partisan GOP power of Mitch McConnell.

As we saw in a previous chapter even the alleged era of Watergate bipartisanship is largely a myth-the GOP stayed with Nixon until the late minute-after the tapes showed he did obstruct.

Our Presidential system leaves us in a situation where partisanship gets the last word. In a parliamentary system the GOP could very easily demote Trump and elevate Mike Pence.

FN: Having said that the British system looks pretty dysfunctional itself about now.

This is the one area Obama was mistaken-that a post partisan America exists or has ever existed. To the extent that the post war era might have seemed less partisan was because the parties were less ideologically consistent.

And it’s clear that after eight years of Mitch McConnell, Obama has started to learn. 

“Compared with his optimistic farewell address, Obama’s speech to students was strikingly partisan. He hit Trump for capitulating to “Nazi sympathizers” and slammed congressional Republicans for “cozying up to Russia,” “cutting taxes on the wealthiest,” and “abdicating [their] responsibilities” in the face of presidential misbehavior.”

But Hamilton was once again prescient as partisan power is and will be the decisive factor for a long time to come.

P.S, I always feel some affinity for Hamilton as he’s the reason I personally can’t run for President-I’m a dual citizen who was born in England. The country would have been better off if he could have run with the added bonus that I could run in 2020: it’s going to be a crowded field!

UPDATE:

Krugman makes a point in this same vein

In the midterms, voters basically voted for the party, not the person 1/ https://t.co/bq7v592nAS

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 20, 2018