December 28, 2016--Boys Will Be Boys

Yesterday's political flap was tripped off by Barack Obama.

In a podcast interview with his former senior advisor, David Axelrod, alpha-male Obama claimed that if the Constitution allowed it, he could have beaten alpha-male Donald Trump and been elected to a third term.

God help us. We don't need any more Syrias, not that Trump and his national security team make me feel nationally secure.

In Obama's somewhat tortured words, he said--

I'm confident that if I--if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could have mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it. I know that in conversations that I've had around the country, even some people who disagree with me, they would say the vision, the direction that you point towards is the right one.

Help me out here with what the meaning of "it" is. But I do get the larger boast--that he could have whopped Trump's ass.

Trump, never one for subtlety but with an unusual touch of class, couldn't resist and with his small hands took up the challenge in a quick tweeted response--

President Obama says that he thinks he would have won against me. He should say that but I say NO WAY!--jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.

But one thing Obama did get right--he acknowledged to Axelrod that Democrats are not effectively addressing the needs of working people. They're not doing a good job of communicating "that we understand why they're frustrated."

We're not there on the ground communicating not only the policy aspects of this, but that we care about these communities, that we're bleeding for these communities. . . . It means caring about local races, state boards or school boards and city councils and state legislative races, and not thinking that somehow a great set of progressive policies, that we present to the New York Times editorial board, will win the day.

I've been attempting to make this point here now for nearly two years but never managed to say it half as well as President Obama.