New Obama Memoir Volume 1

Behind the Scenes, Obama Never Left

Lee Smith

November 17, 2020
 
Commentary

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....

....Whether or not Obama is now able to consolidate his legacy, the fact is that he’s already carved out his singular place in U.S. history—he’s the first president who interfered in the peaceful transfer of power, for four years. And it’s on his behalf that a rolling coup has pushed a nation to the edge of the abyss in order to remake it in his image.

www.theepochtimes.com/behind-the-scenes-obama-never-left_3582665.html