The sainted ex-President Barack Obama went to Detroit Saturday to give a speech for far-Left Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and provided a textbook example of the Democrat playbook for 2022 and likely 2024 as well: vilify and demonize the opposition by warning that they’re vilifying and demonizing the opposition.
And so while Obama meant to hit Donald Trump and his supporters, and the hapless marks who showed up to hear him speak likely went away thinking he gave it to Trump, his words apply far more precisely to his old pal (and I do mean old), Joe Biden. For it is actually Obama, Biden, and the Democrats in general who are placing their political opponents beyond the bounds of acceptable public discourse and, in so doing, risking polarizing the political situation beyond repair.
Obama, according to a Sunday report in the Post Millennial, actually warned: “When we don’t just disagree with people but we start demonizing them, making wild crazy allegations about them, that creates a dangerous climate.”
Is that right, Barack? Hey, that’s really bad. You mean like back on Sept. 1, the 83rd anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II, when Old Joe stood before an ominous red and black backdrop and declared that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” right?
Of course, Obama doesn’t mean that at all. He means criticism from Trump and other Republicans of Biden’s spectacularly failed regime, and that’s all he means. For Obama and the Democrats, demonizing, polarizing rhetoric only comes, and only can come, from patriots. It doesn’t even have to be fiery and unhinged to qualify as demonizing, polarizing rhetoric. Even the mildest criticism of the Biden regime is hysterical rabble-rousing and red meat for the rednecks, and it’s liable to get decent people killed. On the other hand, when Leftists traffic in such rhetoric, which is only 100% of the time, that’s not really demonizing, polarizing rhetoric at all; it’s a sober, accurate, and wise analysis. See how the game works? Barack Obama certainly does. He’s been playing it for years.
Related: Hypocrite Obama Rails Against Identity Politics and Cancel Culture
Obama added: “And if elected officials don’t do more to explicitly reject that kind of rhetoric, if they tacitly support it, or encourage their supporters to stand outside voting places armed with guns, dressed in tactical gear, more people can get hurt.”
Yeah, hey, that’s bad. Wow. Guys dressed in tactical gear and holding guns outside polling places? Obama may have had Clean Elections USA in mind. Clean Elections USA, according to Reuters, is carrying out a “campaign for ‘dropbox watches,’ which encourages individuals to monitor drop boxes for alleged suspicious behavior.” That’s all. No guns, no tactical gear. They’re just watching mail-in ballot dropboxes to ensure that people don’t drop twenty or fifty or a hundred ballots in them at a time.
This is markedly different from the notorious New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case. Back in January 2009, the Justice Department, according to a DOJ press release, “filed a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act against the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and three of its members alleging that the defendants intimidated voters and those aiding them during the Nov. 4, 2008, general election. The complaint, filed in the United States District Court in Philadelphia, alleges that, during the election, Minister King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson were deployed at the entrance to a Philadelphia polling location wearing the uniform of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, and that Samir Shabazz repeatedly brandished a police-style baton weapon.”
That’s not voter intimidation! Obama’s Justice Department later dropped the whole thing; J. Christian Adams, who has written a great deal at PJM, resigned from the DOJ over its mishandling of the case and gives the details here.
In his Detroit speech, Obama was engaging in a big way in that tested and true Leftist tactic: accuse your opponent of what you’re guilty of doing. The polarizing force in American politics today is the Left. The integrity of our elections is in question because of the Left. The demonizing rhetoric, calling Trump supporters threats to the very existence of the republic, is Old Joe Biden’s. Did Barack Obama think that his audience of Gretchen Whitmer supporters was so ill-informed, unintelligent, and easily led that it would fall for his flagrant falsehoods? Why almost certainly yes. That’s where the destruction of the educational system (send in the drag queens) comes in so very handy.
