Joe Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, offered some criticism of his fellow Democrats this week, labeling some of them “buzzkills” for embracing “cancel culture.”
Obama made the comments on Friday during an appearance on Pod Save America, a podcast created and hosted by Obama administration alumni.
“My family, my kids, work that gives me satisfaction, having fun,” Obama claimed. “Hell, not being a buzzkill. And sometimes Democrats are.”
He continued, “Sometimes people just want to not feel as if they are walking on eggshells, and they want some acknowledgment that life is messy and that all of us, at any given moment, can say things the wrong way, make mistakes.”
Obama claims to understand the appeal of cancel culture within his party but argued that if Democrats want to win elections, they have to put it behind them.
“I think where we get into trouble sometimes is where we try to suggest that some groups are more — because they historically have been victimized more — that somehow they have a status that’s different than other people and we’re going around scolding folks if they don’t use exactly the right phrase,” he said. “Or that identity politics becomes the principal lens through which we view our various political challenges.”
When you take it at face value, Obama is not wrong, but the unfortunate truth about his cautionary tale is that it was mere lip service. He spent eight years in the White House stoking racial divisions, exploiting identity politics, and blaming racism for opposition against him.
“There’s no doubt that there’s [sic] some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President,” Obama said in 2014. It’s a theme he repeated throughout his presidency, which led to many on the right mocking him for his repeated playing of the “race card.”
I always appreciate Democrats who speak out against cancel culture, but there’s something particularly disingenuous about Barack Obama doing it.
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