Former President Barack Obama, speaking at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, reentered the political arena today asking a simple question:
“What happened to the Republican Party?”
Republicans passed a tax bill that exploded the deficit by $1.5 trillion, Obama noted. Anti-communism used to be the rallying cry of the conservative, pro-capitalism movement in America and yet now they seem perfectly comfortable with Putin, a holdover Soviet spy, running Russia. Or they’re at least willing to ignore Trump’s comfort with him.
“It’s supposed to be the party supposedly of fiscal conservatism. Suddenly deficits do not matter. Even though just two years ago when the deficit was lower, they said I couldn’t afford to help working families or seniors on Medicare because the deficit was in existential crisis. What changed? What changed? What happened to the Republican Party? Its central organizing principle in foreign policy was the fight against communism, and now they’re cozying up to the former head of the KGB.”
Obama has largely avoided the spotlight since Trump succeeded him last year. Today’s speech marks the start of a flurry of activity as he hits the campaign trail on behalf of Democratic candidates in critical races.
Obama said the Trump era is about something foundational: Do you believe Nazis are bad?
“How hard can that be? Saying that Nazis are bad?”
The former president had no problem going after Trump, although indirectly.
“A politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment takes hold and demagogues promise simple fixes to complex problems. No promise to fight for the little guy, even as they cater to the wealthiest and most powerful. No promise to clean up corruption and then plunder away. They start undermining norms that ensure accountability and try to change the rules to entrench their power further. They appeal to racial nationalism that’s barely veiled, if veiled at all. Sound familiar?”
Obama didn’t name the recent New York Times op-ed by an anonymous Trump official directly, but his allusion seemed clear as he warned against putting hope in unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats to protect the country from Trump’s worst impulses.
“The claim that everything will turn out okay because there are people inside the White House who secretly aren’t following the president’s orders, that is not a check. That’s not how our democracy’s supposed to work. These people aren’t elected. They’re not accountable. They’re not doing us a service by actively promoting 90 percent of the crazy stuff that’s coming out of this White House, and then saying, don’t worry, we’re preventing the other 10 percent. That’s not how things are supposed to work. This is not normal.”
The former president then called on voters to get involved in the election this November.
“You cannot sit back and wait for a savior. You can’t opt out because you don’t feel sufficiently inspired by this or that particular candidate. This is not a rock concert. This is not Coachella. We don’t need a messiah. All we need are decent, honest, hard-working people who are accountable and who have America’s best interests at heart. And they’ll step up and they’ll join our government, and they will make things better if they have support. One election will not fix everything that needs to be fixed. But it will be a start. And you have to start it. What’s going to fix our democracy is you.”
President Trump said that he watched Obama’s speech but he “fell asleep.”
Democrats need to pick up 23 seats this November in order to take the majority in the House next January.