Barack Obama

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      in US Politics

      'Defund the police' slogan risks turning voters away, says Obama – video

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      Former US president Barack Obama has criticised Democratic political candidates for using ‘snappy’ slogans such as ‘defund the police’, arguing they could turn voters away and defeat the original objective. In an interview with Good Luck America, a political show on social media platform Snapchat, Obama said the slogans can isolate potential voters. ‘You lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done,’ he said. ‘The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?’
      Barack Obama criticizes ‘Defund the Police’ slogan but faces backlash More

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      in US Politics

      Barack Obama criticizes 'Defund the Police' slogan but faces backlash

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      [embedded content]
      Barack Obama chastised Democratic political candidates for using “snappy” slogans like “defund the police” that he argued could turn voters away, in an interview released this week.
      “You lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done,” the former president told show host Peter Hamby in an interview with Good Luck America, a Snapchat political show.
      “The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?” Obama added.
      However, Obama also defended the place of young progressives as important “new blood” in the Democratic party, singling out Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – who has spoken out strongly on the phrase and the essence of defunding police departments to boost social spending.
      Former Obama campaign operative Ben LaBolt shared part of the president’s interview with Hamby online on Tuesday before the full interview went live on Snapchat on Wednesday.

      Ben LaBolt
      (@BenLaBolt)
      President Obama, about the best message architect there is, suggests a thoughtful alternative to “Defund.” Via @PeterHamby. https://t.co/ai64FDPgTI pic.twitter.com/UABXL5yLmr

      December 2, 2020

      The remarks drew immediate backlash from notable, Black progressive Democrats – including the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who stressed “defund the police” was not about mere words but a “demand for equitable investments and budgets for communities across the country”.

      Ilhan Omar
      (@IlhanMN)
      We lose people in the hands of police. It’s not a slogan but a policy demand. And centering the demand for equitable investments and budgets for communities across the country gets us progress and safety. https://t.co/Vu6inw4ms7

      December 2, 2020

      “We didn’t lose Breonna because of a ‘slogan’,” said Kentucky state representative Charles Booker, referencing Breonna Taylor, the Black, Louisville woman who was shot dead in her own apartment by police in March during a botched raid.
      Booker broke barriers in 2018 when he became the youngest Black lawmaker elected to the Kentucky state legislature in nearly a century. And he ran a close contest for the Democratic nomination to challenge – ultimately unsuccessfully – the Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s seat in the November election.

      Charles Booker
      (@Booker4KY)
      We didn’t lose Breonna because of a slogan. Instead of conceding this narrative, let’s shape our own. It’s time we listen to the people, organize and build coalitions around our own message, and cast a vision that inspires us all to lead for change at the ballot box and beyond. https://t.co/mBg7wanaR6

      December 2, 2020

      Cori Bush, who made history last month by becoming the first Black woman elected to represent Missouri in Congress shot back at Obama that “Defund the Police” was “not a slogan. It’s a mandate for keeping [Black] people alive.”
      “With all due respect, Mr President – let’s talk about losing people,” she said. “We lost Michael Brown Jr. We lost Breonna Taylor. We’re losing our loved ones to police violence.”
      The Black Lives Matter movement member’s rise in politics stemmed from her work as a community activist during protests against the shooting death of Mike Brown in Ferguson in 2014.
      Bush is also the only candidate to formally run on a platform of defunding the police – a point many analysts say make criticism of the movement unwarranted.
      Defund the Police has been a widely used phrase and policy initiative that gained traction over the summer as racial justice and anti-policing protests erupted in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May.
      As a policy initiative, defunding police departments involves the reallocation of local and state resources away from law enforcement into public services, designed to address issues of poverty, inequality and mental health – factors that contribute to crime.
      The former president’s comments echoed other moderate Democrats who have taken issue and consider the phrase polarizing, prompting criticism of a progressive movement led by what some have called radical messaging.

      Jamaal Bowman
      (@JamaalBowmanNY)
      Damn, Mr. President.Didn’t you say “Trayvon could’ve been my son?” In 2014, #BlackLivesMatter was too much.In 2016, Kaepernick was too much.Today, discussing police budgets is too much.The problem is America’s comfort with Black death — not discomfort with slogans. https://t.co/DJUSZebgW5

      December 2, 2020

      In South Carolina, where the Democratic base is largely composed of Black Americans who skew older and moderate, the Democratic incumbent Joe Cunningham lost his House seat to Republican Nancy Mace in the November election.
      In the days following, the South Carolina congressman and House minority whip James Clyburn, who was regarded as instrumental in turning around Joe Biden’s flagging campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination when the moderate was behind leftist champion Bernie Sanders, told NBC News the slogan hurt some Democratic candidates.
      “If you instead say ‘Let’s reform the police department so that everybody’s being treated fairly,’” Clyburn offered alternatively. “Not just in policing, but in sentencing, how can we divert young people from getting into crime?’”
      While Obama took issue with progressive slogans, he also criticized moderate leadership for failing to recognize the increasingly powerful influence of young, progressives such as Ocasio-Cortez.
      The former president chastised the Democratic National Committee for only briefly featuring such democratic socialists in their opening montage during their national convention in Milwaukee in August.
      “She speaks to a broad section of young people who are interested in what she has to say, even if they don’t agree with everything she says. You give her a platform,” he said, adding that across political ideologies “new blood is always good” for the party. More

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      Obama didn’t deliver for Africa – can Biden prove that black lives matter everywhere? | Vava Tampa

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      How different is the Biden-Harris administration’s Africa policy going to be from Donald Trump’s, or even Barack Obama’s? Many African people, as well as the continent’s strongman leaders, are now gingerly asking – is Biden going to be Obama 2.0, or Trump-lite?For the sake of black lives mattering everywhere in these turbulent times, I hope Biden will chart a bold new course, diametrically away from not only Trump but also Obama’s Africa policy.I welcomed the Biden presidency with a deep sigh of relief. Yet I am still worried about his Africa strategy. Relations between president-elect Biden and African people will kick off with tensions and apprehensions – understandably so.For the past 60 years, Democrat and Republican presidents have approached Africa primarily for access to, and control of, our extractive industries and, at certain points, for counter-terrorism operations. This approach, under the influence of the cold war, translated into the US supporting Africa’s strongmen, leaving vulnerable people struggling to survive their ruthlessness, while China cheered from the sidelines.The most prominent of these strongmen, including but not limited to Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema, in power since 1979; Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, head of state since 1986; Djibouti’s Ismail Omar Guelleh, in post since 1999; Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, ruling since 1994, and Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki, in power since 1993. The human cost of US support for these men has been jarring for even the most cynical observers.By my calculation Africa’s strongmen have been responsible for more than 22 million deaths on the continent since independence in 1960. That is almost twice as many people as historians say were forcibly transported from Africa during the transatlantic slave trade. Yet it seems no US president has found this troubling.The bloodiestkilling field has been the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where brutal US-backed strongmen killed more than 5.4 million Congolese people over access and control of minerals between 1998 and 2008, and sparked outbreaks of disease, famine and the use of rape as a weapon of war. With Trump out of the picture, our biggest fear is a repeat of Obama’s Africa doctrine – and for many black people this is the single biggest concern about the Biden-Harris administration.As we all know, President Obama promised Africa one thing in Ghana in 2009: to support strong institutions instead of strongmen. That simple pledge – repeated, in one form or another – felt very personal to many of us fighting for peace and change.During the Obama presidency, 11 African strongmen clung to power, killing thousands of their citizensBut Obama delivered almost nothing meaningful; not because of a Russian or Chinese veto at the UN security council but because in the first few years of his presidency some in his team sought to protect people such as Joseph Kabila, former president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose security forces were linked to killings and torture, and Paul Kagame, whose tight grip on the Rwanda presidency has earned him the tag of “benevolent dictator”.The result? Tragic. During the Obama presidency, 11 African strongmen clung to power, killing thousands of their citizens and displacing millions more. Yet almost not a single one of them faced a serious tit-for-tat consequences from the US – and this has been a colossal disaster for democratic forces across the continent.Trump, too, turned a blind eye to atrocities in Africa. During his presidency, President Biya’s troops in Cameroon have killed 4,000 civilians. In Ivory Coast, Allassane Ouattara “won” a third unconstitutional term with 94% of the vote. Many civilians were killed in election-linked violence. The list may very well go on.For the sake of black lives mattering everywhere, will the Biden-Harris administration end the US’s longstanding but shortsighted and destructive support for Africa’s strongmen? How may President Biden respond to #EndSars, a movement against police brutality in Nigeria, or #CongoIsBleeding, a campaign against exploitation in the mines of the DRC? What will he do to de-escalate growing tensions inside Ethiopia or in Eritrea?Many of us are wondering, too, whether or not Biden will refocus US policy and push for peace in Somalia, Libya, Cameroon or Mozambique? Will he support the creation of an international criminal tribunal for Congo to end the continuing killings and use of rape as a weapon of war and, simultaneously, jump-start development in Africa’s great lakes – a region that seems pitifully prone to strongmen and mass killing?Answers to these questions are unclear. But I am hopeful about Biden. His career and some of his pitch-perfect public statements – think of his 1986 statement against apartheid South Africa or his commitment to black lives mattering during the campaign trail – reveal instincts, even a moral commitment, to supporting Africa and black people. More

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      in US Politics

      Obama: Republican portrayal of white men as 'victims' helped Trump win votes – video

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      Barack Obama has said part of the reason more than 73 million Americans voted to re-elect Donald Trump in the election was because of messaging from Republicans that the country was under attack – particularly white men.
      In an interview with the radio show the Breakfast Club on Wednesday to promote his new memoir A Promised Land, Obama said Trump’s administration, which he did not name directly, ‘objectively has failed, miserably, in handling just basic looking after the American people and keeping them safe’, and yet he still secured millions of votes
      Obama: Republicans portraying white men as ‘victims’ helped Trump win votes More

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      in US Politics

      Obama: Republicans portraying white men as 'victims' helped Trump win votes

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      Barack Obama said part of the reason 73 million Americans voted to re-elect Donald Trump in the election was because of messaging from Republicans that the country, particularly white men, are under attack.In an interview with the radio show the Breakfast Club on Wednesday to promote his new memoir A Promised Land, Obama said Trump’s administration, which he did not name directly, “objectively has failed, miserably, in handling just basic looking after the American people and keeping them safe”, and yet he still secured millions of votes.“What’s always interesting to me is the degree to which you’ve seen created in Republican politics the sense that white males are victims,” Obama said. “They are the ones who are under attack – which obviously doesn’t jive with both history and data and economics. But that’s a sincere belief, that’s been internalized, that’s a story that’s being told and how you unwind that is going to be not something that is done right away.”Later, one of the show’s hosts, DJ Envy, asked Obama how he responds to criticism from Black people and other communities of color who don’t believe he did enough for them as president.“I understand it because when I was elected there was so much excitement and hope, and I also think we generally view the presidency as almost like a monarchy in the sense of once the president’s there, he can just do whatever needs to get done and if he’s not doing it, it must be because he didn’t want to do it,” Obama said.Envy challenged Obama, making the case that Trump has behaved in exactly that way.“Because he breaks laws or disregards the constitution,” Obama said. “The good news for me was I was very confident in what I had done for Black folks because I have the statistics to prove it.”Obama continued to highlight how his policies saw Black people’s incomes rise, poverty drop and access to healthcare increase.“The issue is sometimes we just didn’t go around advertising that because again the goal here is to build coalitions where everybody is getting something so they all feel like they have a stake in it,” Obama said. “But a lot of my policies were targeted towards people most in need. Those folks are disproportionately African American.”Obama also spoke about the role of the public and Congress in making change. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, blocked much of the Obama administration’s efforts in the Republican-controlled Senate in the final years of his presidency.A similar fate could be awaiting President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris, Obama warned. It is unknown which party will control the Senate until the results are in from two runoff elections in Georgia scheduled for 5 January.“If the Republicans win those two seats, then Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will not be able to get any law passed that Mitch McConnell and the other Republicans aren’t going to go along with,” Obama said.That was one of the only mentions Obama made of the incoming president, who sparked controversy on social media in May after an interview with the Breakfast Club where he said: “If you have a problem figuring out if you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”Later that day, Biden apologized: “No one, no one, should have to vote for any party based on their race, their religion, their background.” More

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      'This is not a third Obama term’, says Joe Biden in first sit-down interview – video

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      President-elect Joe Biden says his presidency would not be ‘a third Obama term’ after announcing a slew of cabinet nominees that included many former Obama administration staffers. In his first sit-down interview since the election, Biden said the appointments reflected the spectrum of the American people and the Democratic party. ‘This is not a third Obama term. We face a totally different world than we faced in the Obama-Biden administration,’ he told NBC’s Lester Holt, adding that Donald Trump’s ‘America first’ approach meant ‘America alone’. He also said he would consider appointing a Republican in upcoming appointments.
      President-elect says ‘this is not a third Obama term’ in first sit-down interview More

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      Antony Blinken: Biden's secretary of state nominee is sharp break with Trump era

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      After reports first emerged on Sunday night that Antony Blinken would be US secretary of state in the Biden administration, one particular interview from his past began circulating on social media.It was a September 2016 conversation with Grover, a character from Sesame Street, on the subject of refugees, directed at American children who might have new classmates from faraway countries.“We all have something to learn and gain from one another even when it doesn’t seem at first like we have much in common,” Blinken told the fuzzy blue puppet.After four years of an administration that has separated migrant children from their parents and kept them in cages, Blinken’s arrival at the state department will mark a dramatic change, to say the least.While Mike Pompeo has remained a domestic politician throughout his tenure as secretary of state, giving the lion’s share of his interviews to conservative radio stations in the midwest, for example, Blinken is very much a born internationalist.He went to school in Paris, where he learned to play the guitar and play football (soccer), and harboured dreams of becoming a film-maker. Before entering the White House under Barack Obama, he used to play in a weekly soccer game with US officials, foreign diplomats and journalists, and he has two singles, love songs titled Lip Service and Patience, uploaded on Spotify.All those contacts and the urbane bilingual charm will be targeted at soothing the frayed nerves of western allies, reassuring them that the US is back as a conventional team player. The foreign policy priorities in the first days of a Biden administration will be rejoining treaties and agreements that Donald Trump left.There is little doubt that Blinken will be on the same page as Joe Biden. He has been at the president-elect’s side for nearly two decades. After working in Bill Clinton’s national security council, he became Biden’s chief foreign policy adviser in the Senate in 2002, as staff director on the foreign relations committee, and worked on Biden’s failed presidential bid in 2008.After Obama picked Biden as vice-president, Blinken returned to the White House as his national security adviser. His face can be seen at the back of the room in the famous photograph of Obama officials monitoring the raid that killed Bin Laden. More