Obama has never mocked Trump so personally. That comes with a big risk

On the election night of November 6, 2012, President Barack Obama clinched his second term by winning Ohio over Republican Mitt Romney. Twenty-four years later, Obama returned to Ohio on the weekend to help the Democratic candidates for governor and senator win their races. He was greyer, sleeves rolled up like a man prepared to get his hands dirty, and with the familiar opener: “Hello Ohio!” Music from U2 and Springsteen energised the air. It felt like the old days. It was how he campaigned.

But throughout this second term of Donald Trump’s presidency, many Democrats were unsettled if not angry at Obama, and at former president Bill Clinton, for being absent and not taking the field to tackle Trump when he was abusing his presidency by violating his oath of office and exercising unprecedented executive power.

The two former presidents did not serve as opposition leaders when Trump dismantled the education department and foreign aid programs, firing hundreds of thousands of government employees in the process. They were barely visible when Trump’s legislation, passed by the Republican-dominated Congress, provided trillion dollar tax cuts for the wealthiest, cut health insurance premiums and Medicaid and food stamps for tens of millions of Americans, gutted clean energy programs, added five trillion dollars to the national debt ... The list is long.

When Trump initiated, together with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, his war of choice against Iran in February – fancifully to destroy a nuclear program that Obama had placed under complete control in 2015 – neither former president told the nation about the profound mistake that was being made.

Until this weekend.

Trump is trapped in a perfect storm, and he cannot escape it. His approval ratings are at a record low: 31 per cent. The economy is punishing households across the country. Inflation is rising. Interest rates are going up. The war in Iran is unpopular and unresolved. Farmers are hurting from tariffs and high diesel prices. Trump is underwater on his management of key issues: health care, trade and tariffs, cost of living, immigration, foreign wars.

There is a wave of discontent across most of the country – even in states that Trump carried by double digits just two years ago. The future is uncertain. Obama told those gathered in Cleveland, “People are so ready for something new, so hungry for something better, so sick and tired of being sick and tired, that everywhere you go it feels like change is in the air.”

Obama argued that everything costs more, from gas to mortgages. And that “Trump is directly responsible for inflation … That he made a series of bad decisions and an unnecessary war no one voted for … This is why the price of everything is up.” And why Trump’s approval rating is down.

But then, on this 643rd day of Trump being in power, Obama took on Trump personally. “Does anybody in the White House think this guy in the White House is spending all this time thinking about these issues?”

Obama then turned to Trump’s “home renovations”. “There’s gold everywhere. What’s up with the gold? He has the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opening a Cheesecake Factory.” Obama drilled down on corruption, which has emerged as a major issue in this election. Trump’s “grifting on your dime. Selling favours.”

Obama has never been so personal with Trump. And if you attack Trump on these terms – even though Trump always attacks everyone he opposes on such terms, from female journalists to foreign leaders in countries allied with the United States – he comes back at you with a vengeance. And it will be more than simply referring to his predecessor as “Barack Hussein Obama.”

In getting personal, did Obama run the risk of mocking not just Trump but his supporters? Was he counterintuitively galvanising Trump’s flock by mocking congregants in the MAGA church? Isn’t the tone of sneering intellectualism from the establishment one of the reasons Trump came to power in the first place?

Scott Jennings is a conservative CNN political contributor and a leading contender to become the next White House press secretary. Moments after Obama left the Ohio stage, Jennings posted that Obama, “Makes speeches for 500k a pop. Hasn’t eaten dinner that costs less than $250 in years. Has never been in a cheesecake factory. Undefeated at condescending to regular folks. Will always be known for a presidency that ushered in the Trump era to begin with”.

Actually, a majority of voters did not go for Trump in 2016. Yes, the economy and the free trade agreements were not delivering enough good paying jobs and economic security for hard-working households. But the fact remains that Hillary Clinton received three million more votes than Trump – but lost the electoral college, including Ohio, which Obama had won by 200,000 votes four years earlier.

Still potent is the Trump team’s focus on the Democrat woke elites – whom he calls radical left socialists and communists – as being out of touch with so many Americans that the Democrats left behind. So Obama lifted his message. “There is a decency that we should expect of our public officials. The standards of behaviour have gotten so low,” and that the occupant of the highest office in the land must not “lie and cheat and bully”. “I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired of being divided.”

Obama concluded: “This election can be a course correction in America’s long journey toward a more perfect union.”

Come next week’s midterms, we will see if Obama’s message hit or missed the target.

Bruce Wolpe is a senior fellow at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. He has served on the Democratic staff in the US Congress and as chief of staff to former prime minister Julia Gillard.

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