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[Deepwater]

I understand the cultural nuances. To be clear, I think you're totally on point about how he'd be perceived. My issue is cheering that on and blowing it off as "Eh, it's a cultural thing" which isn't wrong but damn. If Obama was the exact same Obama with a white wife and you think less of him or more negatively for it, that's bigotry.

If he was the same person, but he wouldn't have been. The fact is a large reason we have the Obama we have today is because of his black ass wife.

Let's say he DOES make it to the presidency with a white woman. I don't think he would have been the same president.

 

[RDreamer]

Again, love who you love, but CULTURALLY amongst black people I would be less inclined to trust a (biracial) black male politician with a white wife to do work for the black community.

Less than you'd trust a white dude with a white wife? Or a white lady with a white husband?

Not knocking what you're saying. I actually completely understand it. Just wondering about that perspective too. I can see culturally that hurting him, but there's still a comparison factor in politics.

She's come up before, with general details that line up with this version.

Re: Dreams From My Father:

And that quote is precisely what Deepwater is trying to tell us here.

 

[Zaraki_Kenpachi]

Where did I say the group holds statistical significance and was not merely asking another poster's question? Please stop telling me how wrong I am about things that I never said.

You're getting aggressive for whatever weird reason while apparently not following a conversation that you decided to insert yourself into without reading. It was with the presumption that he woulds have had political failure for having a white wife with that being one of the reasons why. Thanks.

 

[Deepwater]

Less than you'd trust a white dude with a white wife? Or a white lady with a white husband?

Not knocking what you're saying. I actually completely understand it. Just wondering about that perspective too. I can see culturally that hurting him, but there's still a comparison factor in politics.



And that quote is precisely what Deepwater is trying to tell us here.

Nah not less than the white on whites. But the authenticity is an issue that would come up. Especially if I'm not from Chicago/Illinois and I discover Obama for the first time in 2007 and I know next to nothing about him.

And that's not to say that a black man with a white wife can't be for the black community, but based on history, I would be wary. Nor to say that a black man with a black wife is automatically "good".

Edit: And just for emphasis. The Obama Family Portrait is framed somewhere in 1 out of 3 black family households (assume that's how it's split for the sake of it). With a white woman? I dunno I dunno them numbers would look shaky.

 

[numble]

Ok? Your data isn't supporting your assertion that the higher voter turnout was all racists that would have only come out if he would have done the unforgivable action of marrying a white wife. I'd argue to the average person who's not racist that him being less "really black" (mixed race and a white wife) that it would likely helped him if there was any change. No one is saying there's not racists but extreme racists thinking back to the good old times of lynching black men for holding hands let alone marrying white women isn't a large voter base that could have swung the election in 08/12.

You are asserting that you could not get more racist than 08/12, but there is a common understanding that there was a higher turnout amongst voters that were racist in 2016.

Why would your example of a ”average person who's not racist" think it is helpful that he is less "really black?"

The antimiscegenation laws were not that long ago. Even after they were declared unconstitutional it was still a taboo in certain areas (including bans on interracial dating at some schools even into the 90s).

 

[Zaraki_Kenpachi]

You are asserting that you could not get more racist than 08/12, but there is a common understanding that there was a higher turnout amongst voters that were racist in 2016.

Why would your example of a ”average person who's not racist" think it is helpful that he is less "really black?"

The antimiscegenation laws were not that long ago. Even after they were declared unconstitutional it was still a taboo in certain areas (including bans on interracial dating at some schools even into the 90s).

The assertion posed was that it would have harmed his political career and that was one of the reasons why. I'm not saying there were no more racists, I have plainly said multiple times that it's not statistically important (aka 80% of racists didn't sit out the elections of the first ever black president). The rest are just strawmen and made up arguments that people are pointing to. My contention was very simple.

 

[numble]

The assertion posed was that it would have harmed his political career and that was one of the reasons why. I'm not saying there were no more racists, I have plainly said multiple times that it's not statistically important (aka 80% of racists didn't sit out the elections of the first ever black president). The rest are just strawmen and made up arguments that people are pointing to. My contention was very simple.

Why did you raise straw man arguments?

You need to prove it is not statistically significant when turnout increased in 2016 and shifted the election in certain swing states from blue to red. If that is not statistically significant, what is?

 

[Zaraki_Kenpachi]

Nah not less than the white on whites. But the authenticity is an issue that would come up. Especially if I'm not from Chicago/Illinois and I discover Obama for the first time in 2007 and I know next to nothing about him.

And that's not to say that a black man with a white wife can't be for the black community, but based on history, I would be wary. Nor to say that a black man with a black wife is automatically "good".

Edit: And just for emphasis. The Obama Family Portrait is framed somewhere in 1 out of 3 black family households (assume that's how it's split for the sake of it). With a white woman? I dunno I dunno them numbers would look shaky.

So what rectifies the beliefs of black women aren't good enough for successful black men but a black man not marrying a black woman means he's not black enough?

Why did you raise straw man arguments?

You need to prove it is not statistically significant when turnout increased in 2016 and shifted the election in certain swing states from blue to red. If that is not statistically significant, what is?

Please point out the strawmen and I already responded to your second sentence so please reread my posts. You didn't prove your assertion with that stat still.

 

[Angelus Errare]

I'm confident in saying black people would have treated him differently with a white wife

Explains why we don't see black male celebrities and politicians with white wives...oh...

Black women (the main voting base of Black America) wouldn't really give a damn. They're mostly tired of niggas dogging black women as their reasoning for dating white women.

I can't say for sure how it would have affected him, but one of racist white people's biggest fears is black men taking white women.

They were just as scared of a black man ever becoming President. My nigga still ended up becoming President.

And you think the racists would need that reason to be against him? Do you guys remember 08? 80% of racists didn't sit on the sideline and keep quiet because "at least he ain't got a white wife!". You can argue if they would have been more violent, etc. but I don't see how you can say they were cool with him because he had a black wife.

Pretty much.

 

[SlimySnake]

At 25 he had set out that goal to be president... At 25 my top priority was getting to e3.

this made me LOL because its true for me too.

 

[Deepwater]

Explains why we don't see black male celebrities and politicians with white wives...oh...

Black women (the main voting base of Black America) wouldn't really give a damn. They're mostly tired of niggas dogging black women as their reasoning for dating white women.

Is it that hard to believe that the image of Obama (and not just him as an individual, but the whole package, wife+kids) and it's proximity to blackness is diluted when you have a white wife?

So what rectifies the beliefs of black women aren't good enough for successful black men but a black man not marrying a black woman means he's not black enough?

I'm not really sure what you're asking.

 

[Goodstyle]

The most shocking thing about this to me is how ambitious Obama was even then.

 

[smokeymicpot]

Obama had considered Donald Trump long before either man won the presidency, and brushed off his existence as a misguided national fantasy. Americans have a “continuing normative commitment to the ideals of individual freedom and mobility,” Obama wrote in the old Harvard book manuscript, now more than 25 years old. “The depth of this commitment may be summarily dismissed as the unfounded optimism of the average American — I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait; if I don’t make it, my children will.”

Fucking crazy.

 

[Deepwater]

I am trying to understand why people think this is an attempt to muddy his legacy or image or whatever. That's not really processing for me.

 

[numble]

So what rectifies the beliefs of black women aren't good enough for successful black men but a black man not marrying a black woman means he's not black enough?



Please point out the strawmen and I already responded to your second sentence so please reread my posts. You didn't prove your assertion with that stat still.

Nobody ever raised the argument that they were "cool with him because he had a black wife" or "at least he doesn't have a white wife". The argument is that there can be certain issues that do raise racist passions more, and that is certainly provable. I disagree that racists didn't sit out 2008 and 2012, it seems very likely that a significant number did sit out, and it could be as simple as not liking McCain or Romney. I don't think being racist always drives you to constantly commit racist actions, including voting. If there is a history of heightened racist action towards black men that mingle with white women, including laws that existed in the modern age, I do not know why you would question a claim that this could create issues.

I still don't understand your argument about how an "average person who's not racist" would think that him being less "really black" (mixed race and a white wife) is a positive fact.

 

[Barzul]

I am trying to understand why people think this is an attempt to muddy his legacy or image or whatever. That's not really processing for me.

Reading the entire article? Of course it is an attempt. It tries to hold Obama to impossible to meet standards of perfection.

 

[Deepwater]

Reading the entire article? Of course it is an attempt. It tries to hold Obama to impossible to meet standards of perfection.

You might have to point out some specific examples. If anything it makes him more human in my eyes. I never saw anybody regard the article as an attack on him until I came here to discuss it.

 

[besada]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/...making-of-barack-obama-david-garrow.html?_r=0

“Rising Star,” the voluminous 1,460-page biography of Barack Obama by David J. Garrow, is a dreary slog of a read: a bloated, tedious and — given its highly intemperate epilogue — ill-considered book that is in desperate need of editing, and way more exhausting than exhaustive.

Instead, Garrow’s epilogue delivers a crude screed against Obama the president and Obama the man, filled with bald assertions and coy half-truths. He suggests that Obama’s presidency was a long string of failures and disappointments and that “behind the scenes, many Democrats were just as eager for Barack to exit the White House as he himself now seemed,” when, in fact, he left office as one of the most popular presidents in recent decades.

It’s odd that Garrow should seize on one former lover’s anger and hurt, and try to turn them into a Rosebud-like key to the former president’s life, referring to her repeatedly in his epilogue. He even tries to turn her perception — about Obama’s having willed himself into being — into a pejorative, when the act of self-invention, as other biographers have noted, was the enterprising and existential act of a young man who essentially had been abandoned by both his black father and white mother, and who found himself caught between cultures and trying, as he wrote in “Dreams,” “to raise myself to be a black man in America.”

 

[Cesare Borgia]

Because his commitment to the black community would have been challenged (moreso than it already was) with a white wife.

There's already a lot of "not black enough" for biracial black folk. With a white wife that's a whole other debacle.

Again, love who you love, but CULTURALLY amongst black people I would be less inclined to trust a (biracial) black male politician with a white wife to do work for the black community.

 

[Deepwater]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/...making-of-barack-obama-david-garrow.html?_r=0

see now, this is interesting. I think if you take all of Obama's biographical pieces you can probably come up with a wholesome view of his legacy. Some inspection of Obama need to be scathing, when held in totality with his glowing praises.

 

[Shadowhelper]

I always found it funny that people actually believed his memoirs were authentic. Some interesting stuff in it, but an obvious advertisement and PR stunt, nor baring his soul or any of that shit.

This is really interesting, and a bit disillusioning, but it also explains so much.

I've said it before, he's been too concerned with his legacy, and it explains how he abandoned his racial justice warrior attitude, explains why he was so willing to be such a hawk, he was always much more conservative than he pretended, as his Harvard days prove.

This is amazing stuff. To be president, I guess, you have to be a ruthless ambitious fraud. Or just a dim witted and lucky like Dubya, but mostly just an ambitious conman.

 

[sc0la]

Oh yeah well Trump asked at least 2 women before Melania, and they both said yes! check mate Barack

 

[Massive Duck. C.M.]

What's with this recent rise in hotepery

 

[Deepwater]

Let's talk about it.

Douglass treated his black wife like shit and consistently kept his white mistresses circulating in and out of his house.

What's with this recent rise in hotepery

Explain to me how this is hotepery.

 

[BlazinSkatinAxel]

His ex was in the Netflix movie, "Barry".

 

[LilWayneSuckz]

Reverse the races in that sentence. Is that not bigotry? I'm half black. I understand what you're saying. But that's totally a form of bigotry.

In the black community its a stereotype seeing a black man with a white women (romantically).

I don't have statistics to pull from but, at least in my family, its more socially acceptable for a white man to date a black woman than it is for a black man to date a white woman.

And I feel that sentiment stems from Hollywood's adoration of European beauty in movies, television and commercials, and also stems from Hollywood's "disgust" of black women who aren't lightskinned (or mixed).

 

[Massive Duck. C.M.]

Let's talk about it.

Douglass treated his black wife like shit and consistently kept his white mistresses circulating in and out of his house.



Explain to me how this is hotepery.

Well, there's no pseudoscience involved so you may have a point, put putting forth your feelings as some absolute truth is close enough

 

[Deepwater]

His ex was in the Netflix movie, "Barry".

that was another girl from his Columbia days, this is when he moved to Chicago.

And the girl depicted in "Barry" didn't actually exist, it was an amalgamation of a few different girlfriends IIRC

Well, there's no pseudoscience involved so you may have a point, put putting forth your feelings as some absolute truth is close enough

When did I put forth my feelings as absolute truth?

 

[OG Shaka Zulu]

Obama would have lost half the Black vote if he married that woman.

Fuck, we may not have even known who Obama is if they stayed together. They would have to have played up her Asian side because a good amount of liberal males are still intimidated by black men dating/marrying white women.

 

[LilWayneSuckz]

What's with this recent rise in hotepery

Deepwater's arguments are actually the opposite of "hotepery."

A hotep would criticize Michelle for not supporting Barack enough and imply that a white woman would support him more.

Obama would have lost half the Black vote if he married that woman.

I doubt he would have won the primary.

My parents voted for Obama in the 2008 democratic primaries, but I feel they would not have been so adamant about voting for Obama if he were married to a white (or half-white) woman, as they had to grow up in an era where black women were shunned and demonized and also saw a generation of black men favoring white/hispanic/asian women over black women.

I don't condone the way they think, however, it is a sentiment that is felt with many black people and families.

 

[Dan]

I always found it funny that people actually believed his memoirs were authentic. Some interesting stuff in it, but an obvious advertisement and PR stunt, nor baring his soul or any of that shit.

This is really interesting, and a bit disillusioning, but it also explains so much.

I've said it before, he's been too concerned with his legacy, and it explains how he abandoned his racial justice warrior attitude, explains why he was so willing to be such a hawk, he was always much more conservative than he pretended, as his Harvard days prove.

This is amazing stuff. To be president, I guess, you have to be a ruthless ambitious fraud. Or just a dim witted and lucky like Dubya, but mostly just an ambitious conman.

Right. So the memoir is an "advertisement and PR stunt" but this biography designed to sell units is inherently a bastion of objective truth and insight?

Indeed, this entire book suffers from a poor sense of proportion. Garrow adds nothing to our understanding of Obama’s intellectual evolution during his years at Columbia, or the role that the civil rights movement played in shaping his political consciousness and ideals. (Curious, given that Garrow, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for his book on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Bearing the Cross.”) And yet Garrow prattles on for pages about legislation Obama worked on in the Illinois State Senate, and about discussions in law school classes he attended or taught. The entire first chapter of the book is devoted to examining the social and political landscape of Chicago’s South Side in the early 1980s before Obama arrived to work there, but Obama’s 2008 campaign and two terms in the White House are compressed into a 50-odd-page epilogue.

Perhaps, as the title “Rising Star” indicates, this book is meant to focus only on Obama’s early years, but in that case, the epilogue — with the snarky title of “The President Did Not Attend, as He Was Golfing” — seems even more inexplicable.

Whereas the rest of the book is written in dry, largely uninflected prose, the epilogue — which almost reads like a Republican attack ad — devolves into a condescending diatribe unworthy of a serious historian. It consists mainly of a string of negative quotations about Obama’s presidency and temperament, many plucked out of context from articles and books by journalists and commentators, or extracted from disillusioned former friends or supporters. There is no considered weighing of the record, no real recognition of the achievements of Obama’s two terms in office (including his handling of the financial crisis that he inherited and passing Obamacare). Nor is there any useful explication of the policy decisions (like flip-flopping on Syria, and failing to close a deal enabling a sizable number of American forces to remain in Iraq beyond 2011) that have elicited sustained criticism from both government insiders and outside experts.

Garrow takes Obama to task for his lack of “bipartisan outreach” with Republican members of Congress, but doesn’t tell the other side of the story — namely, the Republicans’ deliberate strategy of obstructionism throughout Obama’s tenure in office.

This is laughably stupid.

It’s odd that Garrow should seize on one former lover’s anger and hurt, and try to turn them into a Rosebud-like key to the former president’s life, referring to her repeatedly in his epilogue. He even tries to turn her perception — about Obama’s having willed himself into being — into a pejorative, when the act of self-invention, as other biographers have noted, was the enterprising and existential act of a young man who essentially had been abandoned by both his black father and white mother, and who found himself caught between cultures and trying, as he wrote in “Dreams,” “to raise myself to be a black man in America.”

This is such an obviously flawed approach, taking a bitter ex's perceptions and projecting them all over the rest of Obama's life.

 

[Deepwater]

Obama would have lost half the Black vote if he married that woman.

Fuck, we may not have even known who Obama is if they stayed together. They would have to have played up her Asian side because a good amount of liberal males are still intimidated by black men dating/marrying white women.

I looked her up on google. Depending on how she styles her hair and the angle she's very white passing but there are cases where the korean side shows.

 

[Lil'DigiOp]

do you think Obama would have became president with a white wife?

.

Tht last one is rare. lol

 

[Into the Light]

At 25 he had set out that goal to be president... At 25 my top priority was getting to e3.

Hahah so true.

 

[SoRuffShoNuff]

People really think Obama would have become president with a white wife? Like hell he would. Right off the bat he loses significant support in the black community. Did Taye Diggs career ever get back on track after he got with a white woman? Next he loses a portion of the white vote, you know, the portion that kept Hollywood from casting black male leads with a white love interest. A white male lead with a black female love interest is fine, hell a show with a black female lead with white love interests is a huge hit (Scandal) but you will rarely a black male with a white female because the male represents power and a lot of white people are not comfortable with a black male holding power over a white female. Do you think Disney will ever make a movie with a black prince?

 

[theclosetfan]

I always found it funny that people actually believed his memoirs were authentic. Some interesting stuff in it, but an obvious advertisement and PR stunt, nor baring his soul or any of that shit.

This is really interesting, and a bit disillusioning, but it also explains so much.

I've said it before, he's been too concerned with his legacy, and it explains how he abandoned his racial justice warrior attitude, explains why he was so willing to be such a hawk, he was always much more conservative than he pretended, as his Harvard days prove.

This is amazing stuff. To be president, I guess, you have to be a ruthless ambitious fraud. Or just a dim witted and lucky like Dubya, but mostly just an ambitious conman.

You sound like the guy who wrote the book. You have unrealistic expectations of Barack Obama the human being, and, seemingly, just people in general.

Is it wrong to be moderate? How much soul has to be beared in a memoir for it to not be an advertisement? Is promoting yourself and then running for a state senate seat a bad thing?

Obama was the president he campaigned as, and certain liberals projected a bunch of things on him that he never said or even implied.

You're seeing a similar thing now with Trump, except it's even crazier because Trump is *deliberately* vague about everything.

 

[Deepwater]

You sound like the guy who wrote the book. You have unrealistic expectations of Barack Obama the human being, and, seemingly, just people in general.

Is it wrong to be moderate? How much soul has to be beared in a memoir for it to not be an advertisement? Is promoting yourself and then running for a state senate seat a bad thing?

Obama was the president he campaigned as, and certain liberals projected a bunch of things on him that he never said or even implied.

You're seeing a similar thing now with Trump, except it's even crazier because Trump is *deliberately* vague about everything.

I think it's valid to say liberals project themselves onto Obama much too often but it's certainly valid to critique his obsession with his middle of the road approach when it comes to his policy.

 

[GuitarAtomik]

In the black community its a stereotype seeing a black man with a white women (romantically).

I don't have statistics to pull from but, at least in my family, its more socially acceptable for a white man to date a black woman than it is for a black man to date a white woman.

And I feel that sentiment stems from Hollywood's adoration of European beauty in movies, television and commercials, and also stems from Hollywood's "disgust" of black women who aren't lightskinned (or mixed).

Again, as a half black/white guy I am most definitely well aware of all this.

I don't condone the way they think, however, it is a sentiment that is felt with many black people and families.

Ultimately this is all I'm trying to say. I know it's the way it is, but cheering it on (even if it's in service of the desired result) doesn't sit right with me.

 

[old manatee]

Whatever. Michelle is still the GOAT Barack love interest. Southside With You is on Netflix btw.

 

[Kreed]

Obama would have lost half the Black vote if he married that woman.

Fuck, we may not have even known who Obama is if they stayed together. They would have to have played up her Asian side because a good amount of liberal males are still intimidated by black men dating/marrying white women.

While there would have definitely been negative opinions in the US Black community towards Barack if he was married to this woman and not Michelle, it's silly IMO to think the importance of the first Black President would have lost all of it's meaning to half of Barack's 08 Black voters because of who he married, especially coming after George Bush.

 

[Alpha Centauri]

For those who think Obama becomes President with a white woman, take a look at this ad from the 2006 senate race between Harold Ford and Bob Corker. Make sure to watch the very end.

Ford was up by 3-4 points before this. All it took was the knowledge that Ford's girlfriend (and now wife) was a pretty white woman to tank his chances. For the Presidency? It would be 10x worse.

 

[LilWayneSuckz]

Again, as a half black/white guy I am most definitely well aware of all this.


Ultimately this is all I'm trying to say. I know it's the way it is, but cheering it on (even if it's in service of the desired result) doesn't sit right with me.

No one is implying black people, like yourself, should not exist (through "cheering it on").

It's simply a matter of optics that bring about a negative feeling to a lot of black men and women who do not live in a mixed race household.

IMO (like I stated earlier), its a problem with media representation of black women. Black women do not get the Denzel Washington/Morgan Freeman/Idris Elba type roles and therefore they are treated as the non-ideal standard of beauty. Whereas black men majorly see European features as the standard of beauty due to the fact that Hollywood is blatantly racist and can only cast white women in leading Hollywood roles.

While there would have definitely been negative opinions in the US Black community towards Barack if he was married to this woman and not Michelle, it's silly IMO to think the importance of the first Black President would have lost all of it's meaning to half of Barack's 08 Black voters because of who he married, especially coming after George Bush.

The negative opinion of the black community would have affected him in the primaries where the black vote is essential.

 

[shawnbuddy]

Seems like an intended spin is that he chose a black wife over her to help his career, but he proposed twice and she turned him down twice. A fellow doesn't have to go for three strikes to get the message.

 

[Deepwater]

Seems like an intended spin is that he chose a black wife over her to help his career, but he proposed twice and she turned him down twice. A fellow doesn't have to go for three strikes to get the message.

it seems like the first time it would have happened, but her parents were against it, citing she was too young.

The second time, as described, was an attempt by Obama to save the failing relationship.

 

[shawnbuddy]

it seems like the first time it would have happened, but her parents were against it, citing she was too young.

The second time, as described, was an attempt by Obama to save the failing relationship.

Yeah, I'm just saying he didn't dump her out of cold-blooded ambition.

 

[Fury451]

That woman's name? Hillary Clinton.

 

[Deepwater]

Yeah, I'm just saying he didn't dump her out of cold-blooded ambition.

oh yeah. Considering she only got a passing mention in his memoirs it's clearly not something he's keen on opening up about. I think they were just going in two different directions in life. It's very relatable, honestly.

 

[Davilmar]

I can only speak from my only experience as a Black American (technically, Haitian American), but bigotry is nothing new with Black people. Both of my parents are native Haitian, but I have Mexican relatives on my father's side. I was born and grew up in Brooklyn, but moved to Long Island when I was young. There was a lot of insults said my way from Black kids growing up for hanging out or going to school with white kids. Compared to Brooklyn, Long Island is the wealthy, white-picket fence community. I started dating Latino and White women during high school, and got a lot of flack from Black men and women for "selling out." Doubly so for being a Haitian, since we were colonized by the French.

As some people have mentioned here already, a lot of people tend to project liberal values onto the Black community. In my own experiences, I have seen Black Americans hold more bigoted and homophobic views than one might think. Even going to two universities in Florida (USF and UF), a lot of Black women held distrust toward men who dated White. As if they weren't good enough, or that they sold out, or didn't acknowledge their own race and history.

As for Obama, I personally in part believe that he couldn't have gotten elected in Chicago had he married a White woman. People might have looked at him as a "well-to-do" Black American that didn't have roots in the community, and marrying a White woman would have further complicated Obama trying to identify as Black even though he has a beautiful mixed legacy. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel personally resentful toward lighter-skinned Black Americans like Obama compared to darker-skinned ones like myself, since I found they were treated much more favorably by women, law enforcement, teachers, employment, etc. That's just my two cents, though. Obama and Michelle are an amazing couple, race or not.

 

[Astral Dog]

At 25 he had set out that goal to be president... At 25 my top priority was getting to e3.

Well did you made it

 

[Byakuya769]

I always found it funny that people actually believed his memoirs were authentic. Some interesting stuff in it, but an obvious advertisement and PR stunt, nor baring his soul or any of that shit.

This is really interesting, and a bit disillusioning, but it also explains so much.

I've said it before, he's been too concerned with his legacy, and it explains how he abandoned his racial justice warrior attitude, explains why he was so willing to be such a hawk, he was always much more conservative than he pretended, as his Harvard days prove.

This is amazing stuff. To be president, I guess, you have to be a ruthless ambitious fraud. Or just a dim witted and lucky like Dubya, but mostly just an ambitious conman.

Yep! Those people who immediately lap up the narrative that fits their already arrived at conclusions are pretty ridiculous...