Tell Me Again How They're All the Same, #AltLeft Activist...

I was in Chicago on the 10th of this month to watch President Obama's farewell. I'm in a unique group of people in America who can say I approve of him more now than I did in 2008. I've worked against Barack Obama several times. I worked for him a couple of times too. Today I can say with great confidence that he is one of the most extraordinary human beings with whom my life has even briefly overlapped. I can offer no greater compliment than to say I respect him.

Of course, not everyone who calls themselves a progressive, liberal, moderate, or Democrat shares my affinity for the 44th President of the United States. Maybe they've read too much Glenn Greenwald and the Intercept, maybe they've convinced themselves that the country is much further left than it is, or maybe they just need to be angry, but there is a left-wing that has re-written the Presidency of Barack Obama as some sort of progressive failure. Despite his pushing a historic health care law through that Presidents failed to pass for close to a century, they see his gaining health insurance for 21 million people as a failure. Despite record investments in alternative and green energy, as well as a multi-national agreement in Paris and a bilateral agreement with China to fight climate change, they blame him for the inability of Congress to pass greater legislation on the matter. Despite a historic nuclear agreement with Iran, normalizing relations with Cuba, and greatly winding down the eye-sore that is Guantanamo Bay, they call him a "warmonger" and other derogatory terms, because we are not completely out of the Middle East, and we used drones. Of course, the man who lead us back from the Great Depression and created a Consumer Protection Bureau is also an enemy to the Middle Class because he didn't oppose free trade, in all forms.

Well, now you have Donald Trump. You have his Muslim ban. You have his efforts to silence scientists at the Department of Agriculture, the EPA, the energy department, and across the government. You have his Education Secretary who wants to end public education. You have his plan to build a wall on our Southern border. You have his empowering of a "white nationalist" on his National Security Council, one who told the media to shut up this past week. You have a President who basically ran all the senior management career servants of the Department of State out of town. You have a man that is being condemned the world over for potentially causing both military and trade wars. You have a man at war on Twitter with the press, agents of the National Park Service, and SNL.

So, tell me again, how disappointed were you with President Obama?

Trump America, Part 2- Obama, Economics, and Statistics

Sometimes you can be right, but not be right. You can be factually correct, but no one believes you. You can tell people how something has improved, but if it hasn't where they are, and they know no one seeing the benefits, they deny it's true. We just lived through that. President Obama's Administration is statistically one of the best we've ever seen. He brought us back from the brink of economic collapse, and leaves his successor with a booming job market, shrinking deficit, growing green energy economy, and falling uninsured rate. Markets boomed. Industries were saved. We prospered.

Of course, that's not true in every community in America. Also of course, that's not President Obama's fault. Decades ago, America stopped fighting the push for a global market, one that consolidates good-paying, high-skilled labor into "clusters," which of course end up being the big cities. As America has recovered over the past eight years since the market crash, much of the benefits have gone towards America's wealthiest urban areas- New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, Dallas, Boston, and others- and not much has gone to rural regions who continue to decline. People in rural Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio legitimately complain that they aren't feeling the benefits. They aren't. That's not because they are right and they don't exist though.

President Obama's America is real, and it's doing very well. It's a nation with a rising stock market and falling unemployment, with rising renewable energies and falling deficits. It's a place where 20 million people are getting health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. It's a place where the economic recovery sees building, innovation, and progress, where social progress is moving at an unprecedented rate. More and more students are going to college, and the question is really mostly one of how to make that more affordable. President Obama's America is progressing towards better days ahead.

This is where Donald Trump's America differentiates. In his America, the overwhelming majority of the land mass of America, but a minority of the people, things are not getting better. Heroin addiction is up, but the coal mine is gone. The factory in town is still abandoned, and the rust is overtaking it. The school system is failing. The bills keep going up, but the paychecks don't get bigger. While this sounds like a very rural description, it's important you realize that a lot of this is suburban even. Sometimes you can see the down towns of major cities, but even there the conditions are feeling hopeless.

No statistic makes Northwest Ohio feel like the benefits of recovery are their's, or the same in suburban Detroit, or in Northwest Wisconsin. No statistic makes Johnstown, PA feel like they aren't forgotten. Of course you govern by statistics, and the reality of the economy you have. To not do so would be stupid. It also seems ridiculous when you tell people not reaping the benefits that they are actually in a good situation. They won't and can't believe you.

Hence, Make America Great Again. Trump promised the return of the mines, the factories, and the jobs of the past, or basically the glory day. He promised that he understood that the economy was bad, not like those "out of touch elites" in the big cities. He promised to attend to their needs, and their problems, and stop attending to those other folks, like President Obama was. It was a pure reaction, and one that is incredibly divisive. It is a movement of resources towards a minority of the public that isn't doing well, while more are doing well. That causes deep divisions that go well beyond even the personality of Trump.

It's important to understand the Trump era as a "Two Americas" tale, one where those not benefiting from the nation's prosperity have essentially ripped power from the hands of those who have prospered. Politics has become a hunger-games style battle for resources, and the advantage has shifted. That has consequences that we are all just now understanding.

The Hero We Never Deserved

And just like that, it's over. President Barack Obama is on his way to the history books now. His farewell address is over, and his Presidency will be over at the end of next week, replaced by one of the least popular President-elect's ever. President Obama will move out to a quiet Northwest DC home for another year or two, then move on in life to whatever is next.

I was in McCormick Convention Center in Chicago last night, and it was one of the more emotional political events I've been at. The good-will towards the President, First Lady, and Vice-President were very apparent. The President's speech was as amazing as I expected. The crowd was very into it. The President made a passionate argument for his Presidency and decisions, and that room agreed with him. Even so, I felt sad at the end. We can argue the President's legacy all day, and I think it's mostly a good one, but we cannot argue about the character of the man.

I've worked against President Obama several times. I've worked for him a couple too. As he leaves office, I can only pay him the highest compliment I have- I respect and admire him as a person. Amidst negativity and polarization never seen before, against a party that set new standards for obstruction, and facing the weight of being the first African-American President, Barack Obama and his family stood firm with grace. He rarely showed frustration, almost never showed true animus, and held himself to a higher standard. He is one of the most incredibly gifted politicians I've seen in my life (right next to Bill and Ron), but an even better person. The Obama family never once embarrassed us, never once gave in to the allure of scandal, and never once behaved as a family under siege- which they were at all points.

Our politics are nasty and ugly, but the Obamas were not. Our population is cynical and conspiratorial, and the Obamas were not. Our media treated his opponents' behavior as somehow normal, yet the Obamas never complained. They maintained. They endured. In the long run, they won.

I'm going to miss the Obamas as a family, particularly as the new circus comes to town. They were everything the nation around them wasn't, at a time when it was tough to be so. The Obama family were the heroes we didn't deserve these last eight years- but they were the heroes we had.

Judging President Obama

Tomorrow I'm getting on an airplane in Washington, DC and flying to Chicago to see President Obama's farewell address. As an OFA alum, i'm sad to see him go, and as a Democrat I'm sad to see him go, but more than anything, I'm sad to see him go as an American. President Obama has been an excellent leader, inspired millions, and never embarrassed us as a country with the taint of scandal or war. Compared to what is coming into office, I'll miss him.

Still, there are legitimate questions on whether or not the Obama era was good for the Democratic Party. Democrats end the President's term exiting the White House, down 12 Senate seats from their 2009 high, down some 70 seats in the U.S. House, having lost over 900 state legislative seats, and down to just over a dozen governors. States like Illinois, Maryland, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan, states the President won twice, have Republican governors. State legislative chambers in Washington, Delaware, and Virginia, all twice going to the President, are teetering on the results of special elections in the coming weeks that will decide their majorities. Hillary Clinton carried a record low number of counties, and lost Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, becoming the first Democrat to lose any of those since 1988. The famous pollsters Stanley and Anna Greenberg sum it up nicely:

His legacy regrettably includes the more than 1,000 Democrats who lost their elections during his two terms. Republicans now have total control in half of America’s states.

I pin a large chunk of this on the operative class from the Obama-era. We took all the wrong lessons away from his electoral victories in both 2008 and 2012. The idea that demographics were destiny, that we only needed to talk to our base, that we won solely because of "big data" and great modeling of the electorate, and that we mostly won on the "emerging electorate," and not because of the collapsing economy in 2008, and beating Mitt Romney into the dirt with white working class voters in 2012. While I mostly blame the operatives, the President does have to share some of that blame.

Of course, politics are not how I or anyone else should judge President Obama alone. His record is extensive eight years later. 75 straight months of job growth after taking over an economy bleeding hundreds of thousands of jobs a month. The Iraq War is over. The Affordable Care Act is law. Relations are normalized with Cuba. The Paris Climate Change agreement. The Dodd-Frank stopped some of Wall Street's worst abuses. The Iran Agreement has stopped them from pursuing a nuclear bomb. The bi-lateral climate change agreement with China. Osama Bin Laden is dead. The Stimulus Bill created consistent growth in the economy and job markets. The American car makers in Detroit not only survived, they are thriving. Two Supreme Court Judges. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is law. Wages are finally back on the rise. Marriage Equality is the law of the land, while "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is dead. A record number of pardons and commutations for non-violent drug offenders. This is just a small part of the President's numerous achievements in office. He leaves office with a growing economy, and a nation that is more secure than eight years ago.

You can't judge the President without both of these arguments being present. He is turning the country over to Donald Trump and unified Republican control of most of the American government. He also did a lot of amazing stuff along the way that made American life better. It's also worth noting the obvious, President Obama broke a major barrier in America- being the first non-white guy President. Donald Trump will undo a lot of his legacy, but President Obama will leave a long, long shadow over the capitol after him. He is as complicated to judge as any President before him, and is probably more likable than almost all of them.