Former Barack Obama has found himself in the news quite a bit lately and in instances where he probably should not have said anything at all. On Tuesday night, as Rusty Weiss at our sister site of RedState highlighted, Connecticut Public Radio published a piece about Obama's remarks in Hartford. Although the headline focused on how the former president claims to "still" be "the hope guy," the takeaways don't exactly reflect that.
Even the CT Public piece began with a less than hopeful tone, but rather a fearmongering one, as Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media are prone to:
Former U.S. President Barack Obama spoke at The Bushnell Performing Arts Center in Hartford Tuesday evening.
Obama’s appearance came amid political unrest across the country and outrage over actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Speaking to a packed crowd who punctuated his remarks with applause, Obama shared his perspective on the current state of American politics.
The piece goes on to quote Obama's concern about the current state of American politics:
“If you follow regularly what is said by those who are in charge of the federal government right now, there is a weak commitment to what we understood – and not just my generation, at least since World War II – our understanding of how a liberal democracy is supposed to work,” Obama said.
“There has to be a response and pushback from civil society, from various institutions and individuals outside of government, but there also have to be people in government in both parties who say, 'No, you can't do that,’” he said.
“What we're seeing right now… is not consistent with American democracy,” Obama said. “It is consistent with autocracies. It is consistent with Hungary under Orbán. It’s consistent with places that hold elections but do not otherwise observe what we think of as a fair system in which everybody’s voice matters and people have a seat at the table and nobody's above the law. We're not there yet completely, but I think that we are dangerously close to normalizing behavior like that.”
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It's been a nasty habit for Democrats to claim we live in a democracy, especially when they're firing off concerns they have and whipping up a crowd, as was the case with last Saturday's "No Kings Day" protests. We actually have a constitutional republic, though. And, as Matt covered, liberal supporters of Obama wanted him to be a king, as CNN spoke to back in 2012.
There certainly has been "a response and pushback from civil society," including in those protests which took place days before Obama's speech. For all this insistence from liberals and their allies in the mainstream media about how peaceful the protests were, there were some less than peaceful examples. There were instances of protesters holding up violent signs in North Carolina, but also more extreme instances, like a shooting in Salt Lake City and another protester in Pennsylvania who not only brought his gun to the rally, but was discovered to have a pimp bomb at his home as well.
Also on Saturday, two state Democrats in Minnesota were shot. State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed in a targeted attack, and state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife were also shot. The suspect, Vance Boelter, who has since been arrested, had "No Kings" flyers in his car.
Ranting and raving about buzzwords like "autocracies" also seems to be what far-left figures are prone to doing. Now former President Joe Biden, in his closing address from January, similarly warned about "an oligarchy," and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) even have a "Fighting Oligarchy Tour."
Obama spoke even further about elections, specifically when it comes to the 2020 election:
Obama said a major source of conflict is the inability of the electorate and public officials to agree on basic issues of fact.
“In 2020, one person won the election and it wasn’t the guy complaining about it,” Obama said, alluding to President Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud in the contest he lost to President Joe Biden. “And that's just a fact, just like [the fact that] my inauguration had more people. I say that, by the way, not because -- I don’t care, but facts are important.”
“In one of our major political parties, you have a whole bunch of people who know that's not true but will pretend like it is,” Obama said. “And that is dangerous.”
The day before Obama made his speech, as Leah covered, FBI Director Kash Patel released information on how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is alleged to have tried to interfere in the 2020 election.
Further, Obama's fellow Democrats have also acted as election deniers themselves, especially with President Donald Trump's first win in 2016. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) came off as quite the hypocrite when handing Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) his gavel in January of this year and October of 2023 when he ranted about who it was denying elections. Top Democrats, including former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-VA), who served as the DNC chairman at the time, also engaged in quite the election denialism about the 2000 election and President George W. Bush's win, which he continued with even heading into the 2004 election between Bush and Democrat John Kerry.
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