Vanity Fair Unwittingly Makes The Best Case Against Obama And Leftism

We’ve likely all seen Jim Acosta’s video of him at the border, pointing out that there doesn’t seem to be a crisis or emergency like Trump is talking about, but failing to realize that he is walking right next to steel slats much like Trump wants to build in much of the Southern Border. That gaffe has been rightly called a self-own.
 
But once in a while, you get a self-own so magnificent, you wonder if the person responsible for it has any idea what he or she has done.
 
While Jim Acosta made a short video about his own opinions on the state of the border, Vanity Fair writer T.A. Frank unwittingly made perhaps one of the best cases I’ve ever seen against Obama and Leftist policies.
 
Now, before you ask: yes, T.A. Frank is, himself, a Democrat.
 
Vanity Fair is one of the most Left-leaning sites out there, and that’s saying a lot. Which is why it’s so surprising to see them write the following piece and publish it on their site.
 
Frank’s article is titled: “Hope vs. Change: Why Some Democrats Are Turning On Obama’s Legacy.”
 
Pretty juicy and interesting title.
 
But it’s what he says next that is even juicier:
 
“Obama was a visionary who gave us the Affordable Care Act, DACA, and the Paris deal, but many of the country’s most ominous trends also proceeded apace under his watch…”
 
That was his subhead.
 
Now, I won’t go over everything in the article. He begins by talking about this difference in Washington between what is considered the establishment, which wishes to maintain the status quo (I would argue somewhat differently, but fine), and the radicals on both the Democrat and Republican parties.
 
Frank says that, while much of Obama’s rhetoric was more on the radical Left of the spectrum, much of his actions were fairly establishmentarian.
 
He argues that when the establishment told Obama to send more troops to Afghanistan, he did just that. When “they told him to keep the records of detainee abuse under Bush concealed,” he “hid them”. When “they said that nationalizing the banks or prosecuting the executives would be too risky”, he “avoided it”. When “they said that our trade agreements enriched the nation”, he “promoted them”. And when they “called him callous when he originally refused to intervene in Libya”, “he toppled its leader”.
 
Basically, Frank argues that Obama was at the beck and call of the Washington Establishment and he would do pretty much whatever they told him to do, even though Frank also argues that Obama was not, himself, an establishment President.
 
Remember the days when the media would not dare attack or challenge Obama in any way whatsoever? They would stick up for him no matter what, so for this guy to be saying these things, even if Obama has not been President for two years, is pretty fascinating and unexpected.
 
Now, the reason Frank argues for saying these sorts of things is that 2020 Democrat candidates have to look at how to tackle Trump, whom he says is a wild card of a candidate. (He also says Trump is failing in countless ways, which I would strongly disagree with, but to each their own).
 
He argues that since Obama was so rooted in establishmentarianism, Dem candidates may want to look at what might be best for them. He says Elizabeth Warren might want people to think she’s a radical and Joe Biden wants people to consider him the establishment choice.
 
As far as Warren goes, I don’t think she has much hope of winning the nomination, if I’m honest. That DNA test result that she stupidly claimed proved her heritage when it did the exact opposite has seriously derailed any chances she may have had at becoming the Dem nominee.
 
Biden, on the other hand, might have the best shot out of anyone to be the Dem candidate, even if he is more of an establishment guy and many other Leftists seek a radical.
 
But here’s the thing: like I said before, Frank makes the best case against Leftism as well.
 
There are two paragraphs I want to point towards, where he makes the best case against Leftist policies, even if he does not outright make any connections between a cause (Leftist policies) and effect (the negative things I am about to share with you).
 
Without further ado, here are the two paragraphs I’m talking about:
 
After talking about the differences between the establishment and the radicals in both parties, he writes: “Where does this leave us (Democrats), and what does it portend for Democrats in 2020? On the one hand, it’s unfair to call Barack Obama an establishment president with all the status-quo overtones of the term. He gave us the Affordable Care Act, the stimulus, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform, an executive action for Dreamers, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, a nuclear deal with Iran, diplomatic relations with Cuba, a climate deal in Paris, a New START treaty, a reform of student-loan programs, and two liberal Supreme Court appointments. On the other hand, many of the country’s most ominous trends proceeded apace under his watch. The financialization of the economy kept increasing (whatever that means). Student debt kept exploding. Trade policy kept its same priorities. Opioid addiction kept spreading. Suicide numbers kept rising. Disparities in life expectancy between rich and poor kept widening. Union membership kept declining. Illegal border-crossers kept coming. Our defense commitments kept growing. In towns like Jasper, Indiana, and Mebane, North Carolina, factory workers – a hundred here, a couple of hundred there – kept losing their middle-class jobs, outcompeted by giant Chinese mills with appalling conditions.”
 
“The concise and indispensable new book The Nationalist Revival, by the left-leaning John B. Judis, contains one especially haunting statistic: 3.4 million jobs lost to the growth of trade with China since 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization. For many of these forgotten Americans, Obama’s final State of the Union address lauding a manufacturing surge rang hollow, and so did his vision of making ‘change work for us, always extending America’s promise outward, to the next frontier, to more people.’ They had already heard, many times, that ‘they may have to retool, they may have to re-train.’ It was Bill Clinton, still a canny reader of the public, at times, who had to observe that ‘millions of people look at that pretty picture of America he painted and they cannot find themselves in it.’”
 
That is an awful lot to go through and I cannot possibly go through everything and still keep this article at standard length.
 
One of the main things I want to point out is that, in the first paragraph, as I have stated previously, Frank unwittingly makes the best case against Leftism.
 
He recognizes all the things that Obama was doing. And he also recognizes many of the ominous things that were happening in pace with the things Obama was doing. But he still somehow does not make the connection between the two of them.
 
What Obama was doing was choking the American economy and allowing for other countries to make deals with us where we would be utterly screwed. The Paris deal, as an example, is not something we needed to be a part of at any point. We were spending a ton more money as part of the deal in “fighting” climate change. However, with Trump pulling us out of the deal, we still manage to meet the expectations and requirements of the Paris deal WITHOUT HAVING TO PAY RIDICULOUS AMOUNTS OF MONEY FOR IT!
 
Another thing I want to point out which is interesting to me is one of the negatives he lists in the first paragraph. “Illegal border-crossers kept coming”.
 
Not only am I surprised that he is using the term “illegal” because those who consider themselves to be “woke” would never use that term, but I am also surprised that he sees that as any sort of problem at all.
 
Given the current rhetoric of many on the Left, the idea of an America with open borders is enticing. And yet, Frank notes that this unlawful act is a negative associated with the Obama administration.
 
You don’t see that very often. And, funny enough, it’s yet another reason I cannot believe the guy is not making a connection between the things Obama was doing and the negative things that came along with those things.
 
Notice how many of the negatives he listed are slowly but surely getting resolved now that Trump is President. Trump, as many on the Left will note, is undoing pretty much everything Obama set out to do and actually managed to do.
 
Trade policy is different now than with Obama. Obama made sure other countries got the better end of the deal while the U.S. paid for it. Trump makes sure the opposite is true: we get the better end of the deal.
 
Illegal border-crossing, while that’s still an ongoing thing and continues to escalate, is something Trump has literally based his entire campaign around. He won on the Wall. Even Chuck Schumer said that people voted for the Wall before he caught himself and rephrased it as “some people” voted for the Wall.
 
Trump won on the issue of addressing and fixing illegal immigration. And while Obama was dubbed the “deporter-in-chief”, he hardly helped secure the border all that much more (even though he used to be in favor of building walls).
 
Wherever there is a wall at the southern border, such as San Diego, there is considerably less illegal border-crossing than wherever there are no walls. Jim Acosta himself showed that, as I mentioned in the beginning, where there is a wall, there is no crisis.
 
It’s funny what happens when you get rid of the cause of some effects. The economic policies Obama enacted killed jobs, while the policies Trump has enacted have created them.
 
This is why I say Frank makes the best case against Leftism. Everything Obama did was Leftist policy. All of it. And what was the result? Jobs gone, people suffering, and America declining. Take away all those Leftist policies and what do you get? Jobs returning, people prospering, and America surging.
 
I have gone as far as to bookmark that article on Chrome to make sure to come back to it and point out that even one of the Left’s own journalists has noted Obama’s supposed accomplishments and the things that came with those accomplishments, even if he does not recognize their cause-and-effect relationship. According to the Logical Law of Causality, every effect must have a cause. Obama's policies were the cause. And indebtedness, joblessness, etc. were the effect. By eliminating Obama's policies (cause), you get the opposite results of more jobs, more prosperity, etc. (effect), which is exactly what President Trump is doing.
 
Thank you, Mr. Frank, for the truly great gift you have bestowed upon us. Here’s hoping that if you’re smart enough to recognize the bad things that came along the things Obama did, you will be smart enough to recognize the cause and effect of Leftist policies.
 
Proverbs 18:15
“An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.”
 
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