Speaking in the East Room of the White House at a press conference before his last trip to Europe, 55-year-old President Barack suggested that Democratic nominee former Secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton didn’t go after the working class white voters like he did in 2008. Obama masqueraded himself as a “post-partisan” president, selling his political neutrality, despite warnings about his radical leftist agenda. His chief strategist David Axelrod bent over backwards to promote Obama as a new breed of post-partisan politician, assuring voters that race would not be a factor in his presidency. Before Obama took his left hand off the bible Jan. 20, 2009, he was busy promoting high percentages of minorities, especially blacks, to key White House jobs. Finishing his term, Obama hired and promoted more minorities, especially African Americans, than any other president.
Saying that Hillary didn’t go after white voters is an understatement. All through her campaign, Hillary sought the so-called Obama coalition, locking up the black and Hispanic vote. Now Barack says Hillary didn’t pay enough attention to white voters like he did campaigning in 2008. Promising to pick only the most qualified candidates for key White House and judicial posts, Obama instead did everything possible to promote minorities in his administration. When voters saw on TV the composition of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, they couldn’t believe their eyes: Almost exclusively focused on blacks, Latinos and gender-related speakers. Asked in a press conference in Athens, NBC News whether or not he feels responsible for driving voters to Trump, Barack dodged. Before Nov. 8, Hillary’s backers hoped she’d get the benefits of Obama’s 50%-plus approval ratings.
Obama’s approval ratings didn’t help Hillary at all, mired in her own email scandal and growing questions about the Clinton Foundation. “How we organize politically I think is something that we should spend some time thinking about,” Barack told reporters before his European trip. Hillary’s campaign leaked in the days after Nov. 8 that they blamed FBI Director James Comey for killing their momentum before the election. While there’s no question an FBI investigation didn’t help, Hillary’s primary focus on minority voters went so far overboard, she showed little interest in white working class voters. When Trump won Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, it was over for the first woman candidate to represent a major political party. Since the election ended, Hillary’s backers have taken to the streets to protest the 2016 election results.
Instead of mainstream media focused to backing the new Trump administration, they’ve fixated on recently appointed chief strategist Stephen Bannon’s ties to the Alt-Right white supremacy groups. Major news outlets can’t let go of the election, now branding, as Hillary did in the campaign, Trump’s new appointments as racists, without any proof. Liberal news hosts and pundits cite Bannon’s work at the Breitbart news site as proof of his racist ties. Whether white supremacists like Breitbart or not, it doesn’t mean, as Bannon once said, “It’s a platform for the Alt-Right.” Most conservative news sites tend to attract fringe white groups. That doesn’t mean the site prints racist or white supremacist material. Today’s overreaction to Bannon’s pick shows the mainstream media dislike of everything Trump. Trump officials have nothing to apologize about hiring Bannon.
Bannon provided Trump the overriding populist theme appealing to marginalized white voters, especially in normally Democratic Rust Belt states, whose jobs in the North American Free Trade Agreement have flown the coop. Trump’s campaign rallies promised to punish U.S. companies shipping jobs overseas or across the border, winning cheers from audiences. Hillary wants to blame Comey but not herself for getting into the situation where she’d be investigated. Caught up in too much negative publicity, Hillary watched her fortunes go down the tubes. With the mainstream media, including the polls, pushing for her win, none to the pundits and pollsters saw her defeat coming, including ESPN’s popular prognosticator Nate Silver. Silver’s failure to predict the outcome of the Nov. 8 election shows the fallibility of statistical models relying on biases polls.
Since winning the election, Trump’s been hunkered down in New York City at Trump Towers to pick key members of his Cabinet. Picking Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as Chief of Staff, Trump showed he won’t pander to conservatives on Capitol Hill. Trump’s kitchen Cabinet, led by his 35-year-old multimillionaire New York Observer editor son-in-law Jared Kushner, picked camera-ready Priebus over scruffy-looking Bannon for Chief of Staff. Bannon’s perfectly placed behind the scenes like former Bush-43 strategist Karl Rove or Obama’s former wizard David Axelrod. Accusing Bannon of racism plays well with the media but has no relevance for his job as chief strategist. With more key picks pending, the press will no doubt have a field day criticizing Trump. No one really expects the press on Trump’s side anytime soon.
