In today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Sami Winc talk about former President Barack Obama, including his unlikability and growing irrelevance.
This interview has been slightly edited for clarity.
Sami Winc: Barack Obama this week has been in all sorts of news, not only in the news, but also commercials, since you’re speaking of it. And the “Yes on Proposition 50” in California commercial, which would allow redistricting in California so that they could get more Democrats in. Everybody knows that.
But I thought, in addition to that, what was interesting is there’s a new book out by Jonathan Karl called “Retribution,” and he writes in it that Obama was angry at [Rep. Nancy] Pelosi for immediately jumping on [then-Vice President] Kamala Harris as the candidate because he, in fact, wanted to see more of a choice process gone through with the Democrats after [President] Joe Biden stepped out. I was wondering what your thoughts were on that.
Victor Davis Hanson: He didn’t get the message in 2016. He had come out of the tea party imbroglio, the big midterm defeat of 2010. He had that reelection in 2012, but people didn’t like his border policies, they didn’t like Obamacare, and he was polling where [President Donald] Trump is, or even a little bit lower.
And then a big, bright light bulb went off in his head once Hillary [Clinton] started to square off against Trump, and it said, “You know, people don’t like me. I am a phony. They’re sick of me. But Donald Trump and Hillary are polarizing people. So, my last year in office, I’m just going to phone it in. Like I once said that I wanted a third term if I could just phone it in from the basement. So, I’m just gonna do that. I’m gonna go play golf. You’re not gonna see me, you’re not gonna hear me.”
And the more people do not see or hear Barack Obama, the more they’d like him. They like the idea of a suave, charismatic, first African American president. But they don’t like to be lectured, hectored, sermonized by him, and they’re sick of his stupid voice, his modulating it. When he talks to an African American class, “Oh, what you be doing?”
He’s like Hillary, modulating the accent. [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], by the way, does the same thing. He should have known that. So, as long as he was either in his Martha Vineyard estate or visited every once in a while his Chicago digs, or went to Martha’s Vineyard, which should, according to him, been washed away because of global warming on the coast, or his new multi, multimillion-dollar Hawaii palace, people liked him.
If he just popped up on David Geffen’s yacht or something, and Michelle [Obama] did her podcast and kind of trashed him and said he was messy, but he can’t do that. He can’t be like George W. Bush. People like George W. Bush now. He paints, he doesn’t weigh in. He doesn’t trash Trump. They liked [Jimmy] Carter to the extent … but when Carter started weighing in, they didn’t like him.
So, he should have known that because every time he weighs in, it has the opposite effect. Because he’s condescending. He goes and tells young black activists that were working, “Don’t make the mistake. You don’t know what’s good for you. Don’t suffer from Marxist false consciousness and vote for Donald Trump.” And then he tells the Hispanic community, “Well, a lot of you guys, you know, worried about price of gas and your business, maybe a crisis of energy or a new car. That’s not what you should be doing voting for Trump.”
Well, yeah, they worry about gas and the price of a truck, but you don’t because you cashed in with your Netflix [deal] and you’re worth $150 billion. Don’t tell people what they should be doing as if they’re stupid just because they’re minorities.
So now he’s doing it again. He’s telling people in California, every night I turn on television, he says, “Well, stop Donald Trump. Vote ‘yes’ on 50 and don’t let him take over democracy.” In other words, we are redistricting the California congressional districts because right now 17%, nine seats go to Republicans, even though they had 40% of the national vote. And we wanna eliminate that to four seats, or 9%, and that’s democracy and opposing that is not.”
And then he’s weighed in on the Virginia race and said, “You know, we were told that if you were black, you had to vote for Kamala Harris and not to be fooled and voted for Trump.” That’s what Obama said. Now he’s in Virginia saying, “Don’t be fooled and vote for a black woman over a white woman.” So, what is it, Barack?
Some ways I’m happy because he’s relegating race, and he is voting apparently on the person who’s the most left-wing, regardless of race. That’s admirable, but I’m not sure that it’s consistent. His view of black conservatives is, they haven’t sufficiently appreciated all the wonderful things that white liberals and black professional DEI people have done for them, and therefore they owe them.
Winc: Can I ask something, though? He is being asked to come on these advertisements by people who must think he has some ability to influence people. So they must be on the Left, at least out there. He is very influential on the Left.
Hanson: And what he does, he always does one thing. He endorses someone and comes out late. Everybody says he comes out when they’re in trouble. No, he comes out when they’re still ahead. He came out when Kamala Harris was still polling. The night of the election, the NPR poll had her up four points, beyond the [margin of error]. So, he thought she was going win, then he was going to come out and push a little bit and take credit for it.
He didn’t come out for Prop 50 a month ago. He’s coming out now because it’s ahead and he is afraid that the margin’s going down. But he would not come out if it was behind. He’s coming out against [Virginia Lt. Gov.] Winsome [Earle-]Sears because she’s coming up a little bit, but she’s still behind. He always picks what he thinks is a sure winner.
Sometimes he’s wrong because the polls are biased. We will see, but it’s not some brave guy, and I don’t think he has much clout anymore. Everybody’s sick of him.
Winc: Yes, I agree.
Hanson: I mean, he gave everybody these lectures about being civic-minded and, at some point, “Why do you need money? What are you gonna buy, two houses?”
No, you’re gonna buy four, Barack. So, he was just a contradiction, walking contradiction. And they’re just tired. They’re just so tired of Al Gore and “The View” and Barack Obama lecturing people, “You’ve gotta think this, you’ve gotta do this.” Donald Trump took their little balloon, and he blew it all up.
Bill Gates says, “The world is not gonna overheat. We’re spending all this money. We don’t need to do it. We don’t end up like Europe. We gotta do AI! AI! AI! I gotta make another hundred billion. How can I do that when I’m advocating wind and solar? We need nuclear. I want more money.” That’s what Bill Gates is saying.
And you know, the same thing with DEI. It’s a dirty word now. D-E-I, D-E-I. It’s just a synonym of non-meritocratic. And nobody’s saying, “We need to let in 10,000 people illegally.” So, he just gloms on what he thinks are popular issues. I don’t see him going out there and saying, “We need to open the border.” I don’t see him thinking, “I said right after George Floyd, we might have to think about defunding the police. Gotta think about that.” No, you don’t say that now, do you?
Winc: I agree with you, but I’m still concerned that there are people on the Left that see that he has great influence and they’re willing to pay him to do these advertisements because they think that that influence is going to help their position.
Hanson: They think that, but empirically, I don’t think there’s any evidence that when he comes in to endorse—I can’t think of any losing candidate that called him in who was way behind in the polls or behind that he saved. Every single cause he came in, his person or cause or issue was either ahead of the polls or dead even, and gaining, and his job was to ensure that a sure winner didn’t blow it. And he didn’t work with Harris. It did not work.
Winc: No, it sure didn’t.
Hanson: And I don’t think it worked with Hillary Clinton in 2016. And I don’t think it’s gonna work necessarily with, we’ll see.
Winc: Well, the governor’s office must feel like they are winning the battle on Prop 50 because there was a California secretary of state ad run on the World Series, and I thought that was interesting that, “Everybody needs to get out to vote.” And for all of you who are not in California, the only thing on the voting ballot is Proposition 50. So, they want to make sure everybody gets out and votes “Yes,” although they didn’t say that on Proposition 50 and spent millions of dollars in ads.
Hanson: The argument is so weird. This was the party that said democracy dies in darkness. Trump is going to destroy democracy, and we are going to rig congressional districts to look like jigsaw puzzle pieces.
And we have already done that. We have ensured that only nine of 52 seats will be Republican. But that’s not enough for us. If they had voted 40% of the seats, you would have 17, 18 seats that were Republican. So, they all gerrymandered him down to nine, and now they’re saying, “That’s not enough. We gotta destroy our opposition and get it down to four or five, and that’s called democracy.” And that’s a hard sell even for people. But they’re going to vote for it. Maybe, maybe not, but we’ll see.
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