The publication of Barack Obama’s new memoir was timed to carry the news cycle, regardless of the election’s outcome. The opinions expressed in “A Promised Land”—on America, race, Donald Trump, and so on—are more vivid than anything Democratic candidate Joe Biden has said in his last year of campaigning.
And so, even after Biden and the press corps have declared him president-elect, he continues to walk in the shadow of his former boss.
That’s intentional. Obama wants it understood that Biden is an avatar for a third Obama term. Now he can complete the work of “fundamentally transforming America,” as he put it days before the 2008 election. Hillary Clinton was expected to at least protect what she inherited from Obama. But the victory of Trump, who had campaigned on undoing Obama’s domestic and foreign policy initiatives, left the outgoing president with only two options—watch his successor dismantle his legacy or stop him.
The coup is evidence of his choice. The senior U.S. officials, Democratic Party operatives, and media personalities who targeted the Trump circle for four years weren’t simply defending the privileges of the “Deep State.” These are bureaucrats, deputies, and courtiers who wouldn’t dare an attempt that bold unless it was OK’d from above.
The purpose of the coup was to block Trump from destroying Obama’s legacy until he could find an opening for him to return.
In a sense, Obama never left. He was the first president in a century to stay in Washington after the end of his term; Woodrow Wilson had suffered a stroke and couldn’t easily leave the capital. Obama explained that he and the first lady wanted their youngest daughter to graduate from her private high school before they moved on. Their child entered the University of Michigan last fall, but with the 2020 election cycle underway, the de facto leader of the Democratic Party wasn’t going anywhere.
In political circles, it was no secret that Obama had thrown his support behind Kamala Harris. She’s ambitious and appealing and, without any strong ideas or opinions of her own, poses no threat to him. She was Obama’s ideal heir, but primary voters found her fake and unlikeable, and she was out of the race in early December. He’d find a way to restore her, but, in the meantime, needed a horse to ride through the primaries…
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