Americans Will Wax Nostalgic And Long For The Obama Years.…

As the United States enters the final nine weeks of its presidential election campaigning, some of the issues front and center are National security , Immigration and the Economy.
Within each of those subject areas are significant debates about how to best improve the lives and security of Americans.

There is much mis­in­for­ma­tion com­ing from the polit­i­cal right with­out the appro­pri­ate lev­els of push­back from Democrats, con­sid­er­ing that it was under President George W Bush and the lead­er­ship of Dick Cheney that America got entan­gled in a war in Iraq many will agree should nev­er have been waged.

Out of that entan­gle­ment arose Al Qaeda and the most recent ter­ror­ist group ISIL.
It bears men­tion­ing that what is being con­sid­ered a colos­sal fail­ure of for­eign pol­i­cy lead­er­ship by the Obama Administration, is relent­less drone war­fare on ISIL the group Obama inher­it­ed , a draw-down of American troops from Iraq, as was agreed to and signed by President George W Bush. Significant sta­bi­liza­tion of Afghanistan as can be expect­ed , and the killing of Osama Bin Laden. 

In addi­tion to that there is the lit­tle issue of no new wars start­ed by this sit­ting pres­i­dent, a fact which seem to get lost in the blan­ket litany of lies and mis­in­for­ma­tion which seem to be the new normal.
This fol­lows what we have seen over the pre­vi­ous two elec­tion cycles , repub­li­cans would adopt talk­ing points which every­one knows are lies and they would flood the air­waves with sur­ro­gates who like robots, repeat the lies, com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous to fact check­ers or jour­nal­ists who push back with the facts.
This is the new Republican par­ty, a par­ty of liars, the par­ty of Donald Trump.
One would have thought that truth and hon­or would be the guid­ing prin­ci­ples which would inspire the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers? Not so if the Republican par­ty gets it way. It’s win at all cost .
This sup­posed peri­od of rel­a­tive calm and lack of out­right con­flict which is being mis­in­ter­pret­ed as a fail­ure will most cer­tain­ly be looked back at with long­ing and a sense of nostalgia.

The Immigration debates are legit­i­mate but must be viewed with­in the con­text of Republican intran­si­gence on the issue, and all oth­er issues. Not just against pres­i­dent Obama but against the last Republican President George W Bush . Republicans refusal to address the issue may have impact­ed the can­di­da­cy of Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and John Kasich for president.
Additionally senior repub­li­can lead­ers like John McCain have been forced to run away from find­ing a fix for immi­gra­tion, even though they are quite aware that it is an issue which needs urgent attention.

Republicans have cor­rect­ly tak­en the posi­tion that ille­gal immi­gra­tion is seri­ous and must be addressed. Unfortunately they have offered no mean­ing­ful solu­tions out­side dra­con­ian break­ing up of fam­i­lies and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al tac­tics which are anti­thet­i­cal to the stat­ed val­ues of America.
They argue that once the south­ern bor­ders are secured, then the ques­tion of the mil­lions of undoc­u­ment­ed peo­ple will be addressed.
In the same breath they say there will be no path to cit­i­zen­ship for these mil­lions of peo­ple. Some have gone even fur­ther, sug­gest­ing that chil­dren born to undoc­u­ment­ed peo­ple should not be afford­ed auto­mat­ic American cit­i­zen­ship, and those who already are, should have their cit­i­zen­ship revoked. !!!

The shock­ing impli­ca­tions of this, were it ever to become real­i­ty is that there would be tens of mil­lions, and an ever increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple who are effec­tive­ly an under­class of sec­ond class serfs who are unable to vote, or active­ly par­tic­i­pate in the only coun­try many of them have ever known.
The unfore­seen impli­ca­tions of those actions are stun­ning, and can only be viewed as reck­less­ly short­sight­ed and dangerous .
One has to look no fur­ther than France and the way North Africans are ghet­toized and mar­gin­al­ized then extrap­o­late from that how America could be neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed should those demands become law.

Which begs the ques­tion . Are the Republicans blind to the con­se­quences of the demands they make?
If not what are the dri­ving forces behind their demands?
Before we delve into the rea­sons it must be under­stood that our cur­rent pres­i­dent has deport­ed more peo­ple than any pres­i­dent in mod­ern history.
It bears men­tion­ing that he has also hired more bor­der guards than any oth­er president.
And prob­a­bly more impor­tant­ly accord­ing to experts, the num­ber of peo­ple seek­ing to come through the nation’s south­ern bor­der is almost negligible.
I high­light­ed the term south­ern bor­der because Republicans have made no men­tion about any­one com­ing into the coun­try ille­gal­ly through the north­ern bor­der with Canada. Neither is there any men­tion of Israelis, Chinese, Russians or any Europeans for that mat­ter who come and sim­ply stay.
In fact some Republicans have open­ly said those are the peo­ple they want.
When those com­ments are jux­ta­posed with their argu­ments that Latino Immigrants vote demo­c­ra­t­ic the dri­ving force behind the heat­ed immi­gra­tion bat­tle becomes clear.
It is polit­i­cal but more than that it goes straight to the brown­ing of America .
It is the heart of Donald Trump’s can­di­da­cy and the rise of the Nativist dog­ma which has dom­i­nat­ed this elec­tion cycle.

My final thought is on the econ­o­my which is still claw­ing it’s way back from the rav­ages of the Bush presidency.
No it’s not perfect !
When was it ever perfect?
Imagine if Republicans had set par­ti­san and Racial atti­tudes aside on the night President Barack Obama was being inau­gu­rat­ed. Imagine if on that very night they gath­ered in that DC Restaurant to dis­cuss sab­o­tag­ing his pres­i­den­cy, they were gath­ered to dis­cuss ways of work­ing with the pres­i­dent for the good of the American people.
Imagine if Mitch McConnell’s sole pur­pose was not ded­i­cat­ed to mak­ing the pres­i­dent a one term president.
Imagine if the America peo­ple liv­ing in some of the most depressed red states had shunned the divi­sive rhetoric of a blovi­at­ing come­di­an who want­ed the pres­i­dent to fail.
When a pres­i­dent fail don’t we all fail? Why would we bet against our­selves for polit­i­cal and racial rea­sons? It makes no sense.
Imagine if Republicans had not ded­i­cat­ed the almost eight years of the Obama Presidency to blan­ket obstructionism.
Imagine if they had passed a Transportation bill which would have cer­tain­ly seen Main street reg­is­ter­ing mon­u­men­tal gains as Wall street has .
Despite all of the sub­ver­sion and obstruc­tion Obama is enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar, more pop­u­lar than Ronald Reagan was at this time in his pres­i­den­cy. History will judge Obama one of the great­est pres­i­dents and he did it with no Republican help.
They talk enor­mous­ly about Reagan , but Tip O’neill worked with Ronald Reagan> Even Newt Gingrich worked with Bill Clinton. What will be John Boehner and Mitch McConnell’s story?