{"id":4104,"date":"2017-01-31T14:16:56","date_gmt":"2017-01-31T13:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4104"},"modified":"2017-01-31T14:32:03","modified_gmt":"2017-01-31T13:32:03","slug":"the-messiah-speaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/4104\/","title":{"rendered":"The Messiah Speaks!"},"content":{"rendered":"

He just couldn’t help himself<\/a>, could he:<\/p>\n

Barack Obama has re-entered the political fray just ten days after he handed power over to Mr Trump, stating\u00a0that he supports\u00a0mass protests against the “extreme vetting” orders.<\/p>\n

“The President fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion,” Mr Obama’s spokesman said in a statement that was the former president’s first since leaving office.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

I<\/span>t is rare for former presidents to criticise their successors – and certainly not just a week and a half after they are sworn in.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s hard to believe anyone expected him to do anything else: he seemed to treat the Office of President with disdain when he occupied it, so it’s hardly surprising he’s not following convention now he’s out of it.\u00a0Of course, a lot of people will be happy about this, mostly his supporters. They believe his words carry moral weight and he should use his popularity as a force for good. But probably the one person who is happier than anyone is Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

One of the criticisms leveled at Obama even by those on the liberal side of American politics is that he made everything about him, and under him the Democratic Party itself became\u00a0considerably diminished in his shadow. This is one of the reasons why when Hillary ran she did so more as an individual than as a Democrat, and lost badly. For the Democrats to move on and rebuild themselves into a credible party of opposition they need to distance themselves from the Obama era and his many of his policies, and carry along as many of his supporters as they can in the process. For as long\u00a0as Obama is spouting off from the sidelines this will be very difficult to achieve, mainly because his supporters will listen to him rather than the Democrat Party. The other reason is that the electorate have roundly rejected Obama’s laughably-named “legacy” and the more he condemns Trump for undoing his brilliant achievements the more they will be inclined to think they made the right choice.<\/p>\n

It is bewildering that people think countering President\u00a0Trump is best\u00a0achieved by endless protests, dressing up as vaginas, calling everyone a Nazi or a racist, and peddling fake news as they will surely have the precise opposite effect. You can now add Obama’s unsolicited commentary to that list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He just couldn’t help himself, could he: Barack Obama has re-entered the political fray just ten days after he handed power over to Mr Trump, stating\u00a0that he supports\u00a0mass protests against the “extreme vetting” orders. “The President fundamentally disagrees with the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20,44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4104"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4104"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4108,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4104\/revisions\/4108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}