When This Blows Over

Obama divided the country with the apology tour, the
Cairo Speech, the beer summit, the rhetoric of
disparagement (“you didn’t build that,” “punish our
enemies,” etc.), the encouragement of the Black Lives
Matter movement, and a series of anti-Constitutional
executive orders.
In other words, even as Obama left the Democrats
with ideological and political detritus, he also
had established an electoral calculus built on his
own transformative identity that neither had
coattails nor was transferrable to other
candidates. Indeed, his hard-left positions on
redistribution, social issues, sanctuary cities,
amnesty, foreign policy, and spending would
likely doom candidates other than himself who
embraced them.
The Bernie Sanders candidacy was the natural response,
on the left, to Obama’s ideological presidency. But the
cranky socialist septuagenarian mesmerized primary
voters on platitudes that would have proven disastrous in
a general election—before meekly whining about Clinton
sabotage and then endorsing the ticket. What then has the
Democratic Party become other than a hard left and elite
progressive force, which without Obama’s personal
appeal to bloc-voting minorities, resonates with only
about 40 percent of the country?