Posted by
Rude One
We talk all the time about What Donald Trump Wants as
resident because
it's plainly obvious that "improving life for all Americans" is not
really on his radar, and "keeping the nation safe" is pretty low down
the list. There is the obvious greed - from the access his children have
to overseas investors to the open graft of the government paying tax
money to his properties. There is the ego burnishing, which you'd expect
from someone whose grievances include not getting an Emmy for his
reality show and not being praised enough for being
resident. There is
very likely the wholesale paying off debts owed to various Russians,
Saudis,
Azerbaijanis, Iranians, and who knows who else. And much, much more.
But one of his primary goals has been simple: Donald Trump wants to
erase Barack Obama from the recent history of the country. He has been
insidiously resetting the clock and rewriting history since he first
gaslit his way to the national political stage by embracing the whole
birther lie. Most other Republicans want to wipe out the New Deal and
the Great Society and other progressive accomplishments, and Trump is
fine doing that as long as it achieves this central objective of
eliminating the black president and all his black deeds.
Trump regularly brags about all the Obama-era regulations and
initiatives that he's tossed in the garbage can, some that have even
left the industries affected scratching their heads at why. Just look at
the
environmental
regulations Trump has reversed or wiped out. In one case, Trump had his
EPA roll back "limits on carbon emissions from coal- and gas-fired
power plants," which has led states from California to North Carolina to
sue because it will lead to more air pollution in general. When Trump
rolled back rules on auto emissions from the Obama administration,
automakers were not overjoyed at the change because of the confusion it put into the marketplace.
In each case, Trump or some lackey from his administration crowed about
how they were getting rid of "burdensome" regulations that Obama put in
place that were preventing the economy from growing. Except here's the
problem with that: Those regulations weren't preventing the economy from
expanding. It was expanding just fine under Obama post-2010 while the
nation was still doing at least something minimal to slow down climate
change.
And that leads to the biggest lie that Trump tells constantly. Trump has
essentially colonized Barack Obama's economy and claimed it as his own.
It's oldest, whitest trick in the book. "Oh, hey," Christopher Columbus
said, "I've discovered a New World" as he looked at all the people who
had been there long before he ever bumbled his way to the Bahamas (and
then he enslaved and tortured those people because Columbus was a
monster).
Every chance he has, Trump decries Obama's presidency as a time of great
economic tribulation that he alone came along to fix. In the State of
the
Union speech
last week, he said, "The years of economic decay are over...Gone are
the broken promises, jobless recoveries, tired platitudes, and constant
excuses for the depletion of American wealth, power, and prestige. In
just three short years, we have shattered the mentality of American
decline, and we have rejected the downsizing of America’s
destiny....From the instant I took office, I moved rapidly to revive the
U.S. economy."
That's absolutely false. Like factually false by nearly every
measure.
All that's mostly happened to the economy overall since Trump came to
office has been a continuation of the trends that started several years
before Trump ever rode his golden escalator to the nomination. He was
handed a growing economy by Barack Obama and the only thing that he did
was exploit it for his own gain while completely, willfully, cruelly
erasing Obama from the narrative of why things are going pretty well.
It's mind-blowing that anyone can hear Trump brag about the low
unemployment rate as if he's responsible for more than a point or two of
its decline, as if Obama's policies didn't take care of 80% or more of
the improvement since 2010-11. Trump can say that the recent job numbers
are
incredible, but it's not better than many, many months under Obama.
In fact, Trump could have taken Obama's economy and said, "Yeah, that
was all well and good, but we need to get people better jobs and better
pay." He could have built on it and crowed about any improvements he
made. But he couldn't because if he did, he'd have to admit that he's
just the guy who didn't screw up Obama's achievements yet. He'd have to
admit that Obama did something right. Instead, Trump has made it so that
his voters believe as an article of absolute faith that Obama did
nothing but damage the country and Trump came along to rescue us, the
white savior riding in to save the nation from the savage Negro. And all
those white people at Trump's rallies are eager to believe it's true.
Of course, these are the same people who believe that the Affordable
Care Act is a "disaster," as Trump says repeatedly. Even if they have
benefited from it, they act like they despise it because they themselves
would have to admit Obama did something to help them. The Supreme
Court, with its Trump-installed, McConnell-enabled conservative
majority, could come close to finishing the erasure of Barack Obama if
it overturns the ACA and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
policy
(you know, DACA). If those two unabashedly positive steps towards a
saner nation are gone, Trump will have finally gotten back at Obama for
insulting him at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2011 and for
daring to president while black.
Some Democrats are defending Obama's legacy, like Nancy Pelosi did in
her press conference after the State of the Union and, obviously, like
Joe Biden is on the campaign trail. But it seems like Trump's lies about
Obama ought to be front and center, at least as a reminder that a
Democratic president didn't screw things up. In fact, the job of a
Democratic president since Clinton has been to clean up the wreckage
left by the Republicans.
Trump's making a hell of a mess. Let's not allow him to throw President Obama into the trash heap of history.
(Note 1: I know that Columbus never said the phrase "New World" as far
as we know. That was Amerigo Vespucci, which is also a great porn name
if you pronounce the last name a little differently.)
(Note 2: You're right. There's more Obama could have done. But
considering he had a Congress that wouldn't work with him, well, we're
lucky we got as far as we did.)
(Note 3: Yes, you're very smart to bring up drone missile murders and
the expansion of fracking under Obama, but if you don't think an Obama
presidency is better than a Trump presidency, you're an idiot.)
(Note 4: White supremacists are emboldened by this effort to erase the
first black president's accomplishments. Debasing him justifies their
existence. It's one way Trump enables those groups.)
