Obama: Trump Is Exploiting Working-Class Fears

Obama's eternal political algorithm runs like this: He ruthlessly exploits the fears and paranoias that animate his own voters -- Muslim "backlash," cop shootings which occur something like one in one thousand arrests, global warming that hasn't been happening for 17 years, mass shootings in an age when gun violence and murder is down substantially.

But when someone else talks about issues -- terrorism, Iran, declining wages, society becoming more hostile to conventional religion, the uncontrolled border and the implications of that for our economy, security, and political equilibrium -- those are just some phantasmal "fears" which are being cynically "exploited" by crafty politicians who know how to stoke the lizard brain bigotries of dumb people.

He is ghastly. He is also stupid and unselfreflecting, because I bet you what I've said has never even occurred to him as something he needs to justify to himself.

President Obama said in a radio interview airing on Monday that Donald J. Trump, a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, is exploiting the resentment and anxieties of working-class men to boost his campaign. Mr. Obama also argued that some of the scorn directed at him personally stems from the fact that he is the first African-American to hold the White House.

Demographic changes and economic stresses, including "flatlining" wages and incomes, have meant that"“particularly blue-collar men have had a lot of trouble in this new economy, where they are no longer getting the same bargain that they got when they were going to a factory and able to support their families on a single paycheck," Mr. Obama said in the interview with National Public Radio.

"You combine those things, and it means that there is going to be potential anger, frustration, fear -- some of it justified, but just misdirected," the president added. "I think somebody like Mr. Trump is taking advantage of that. That's what he’s exploiting during the course of his campaign."

...

In the wide-ranging interview, conducted the day before he left Washington on Friday for a two-week holiday vacation with his family in Hawaii, Mr. Obama defended his approach to taking on the Islamic State. He dismissed the notion that the militant group is an existential threat to the United States even as he conceded that he had received "legitimate criticism" for failing to adequately explain his strategy for confronting it.

He "even" conceded he hadn't adequately explained his strategy? That's the only thing he's comfortable conceding -- every failure he's had, and there's been quite a few, has been later "admitted" to have been a failure to explain how awesome he's actually doing.

He also described his view of the anxiety on which Mr. Trump has capitalized, arguing that some voters who voice fears about his presidency and doubts about where Mr. Obama’s loyalties lie are reacting to the fact that he is the first black president.

"If you are referring to specific strains in the Republican Party that suggest that somehow I'm different, I'm Muslim, I'm disloyal to the country, etc. -- which unfortunately is pretty far out there, and gets some traction in certain pockets of the Republican Party, and that have been articulated by some of their elected officials -- what I'd say there is that that’s probably pretty specific to me, and who I am and my background," Mr. Obama told Steve Inskeep, the host of "Morning Edition" on NPR. "In some ways, I may represent change that worries them."

As Drudge notes, this is Obama playing -- get this -- the race card himself. Again.

"That's not to suggest that everybody who objects to my policies may not have perfectly good reasons for it," the president added. He noted, as an example, that voters living in coal-dependent areas may blame him for the loss of their jobs.

Yes you are trying to suggest just that -- which is why you go this wooby every single time you fail and get large doses of public criticism, which is, again, frequently.

posted by Ace at 01:54 PM

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