Obama is right: Democrats' anti-Trump fixation is killing them | Washington Examiner

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

Former President Barack Obama recently pointed out that Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot with their obsession with Donald Trump and the various legal questions surrounding him. They have deluded themselves, as a party, into believing that the rest of the world is as obsessed as they are with Trump, whatever legal battles he faces, and the Jan. 6 committee. In reality, nobody cares about any of this stuff. At all.

Most people don't even know what's happening in that committee. And they certainly don't care about the lawsuits being filed in New York.

GET OVER TRUMP: OBAMA TAKES AIM AT DEMOCRATS OVER TRUMP OBSESSION

"We spend enormous amounts of time and energy and resources pointing out the latest crazy thing he said, or how rude or mean some of the Republican candidates behaved," Obama said on a recent podcast. "That's probably not something that, in the minds of most voters, overrides their basic interests: Can I pay the rent? What are gas prices? How am I dealing with child care?"

Obama is completely right. If Democrats don't listen to him, they are going to be slaughtered in the coming midterm elections.

And fortunately, they will not listen.

Perhaps the most amazing illustration of this is the recent poll showing that New York Attorney General Letitia James could actually lose her reelection battle — mostly because of this exact problem. She is completely out of touch with New Yorkers and completely Trump-obsessed in her work. James has essentially neglected her job of prosecuting the criminals preying upon New Yorkers in order to obsess over Trump and build up her profile with blue-checkmark Twitter. The last poll of her race shows her losing against a no-name opponent.

That doesn't mean she will actually lose, but she is losing, even though she should not be anywhere close to losing. And politicians who are as out of touch with the needs of their constituents as she is deserve to lose.

This is where the Democratic Party finds itself now. The party's activist base is obsessed with Trump to the point of insanity. They cannot give him up, two years after he left office. We hear all this talk of election denialism — it is almost as if they cannot accept that they won the 2020 election.

Obama was obviously off-base when he argued that Democrats could rally around the success of the Biden agenda. "The Biden administration has accomplished a lot," he said. "You've got a historic infrastructure bill that's going to help rebuild America and create jobs all across the country. You've got an inflation control act that is lowered prescription drug prices, has made sure that health care is even more affordable through the ACA, that is looking at lowering energy costs."

Biden's legislative agenda is a joke. It has not reduced inflation, and no one labors under delusions that it has. The new inflation numbers prove how badly he has failed.

Still, Obama was at least right about one thing. Democrats' obsession with Trump is distracting their party from reality. The fatal effects on their election prospects could end up becoming the feel-good story of 2022.

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