

Now these are the men who will have to join together to lead the most difficult, and arguably most important, transfer of power America has ever faced. Obama has spent years denigrating Trump in return, and focused on proactively delegitimizing a Trump presidency he never thought was a real possibility. Trump was elected president on the back of the years he spent delegitimizing Obama.

On top of all the other factors, never has there been such raw and clear mutual personal hatred and dismissal between two presidents. Wednesday, according to a statement by his press secretary, he’ll “make a statement at the White House to discuss the election results and what steps we can take as a country to come together after this hard-fought election season.” Obama called Trump to congratulate Trump, and they will meet at the White House on Thursday. “Sobriety about what happened tonight is essential". “Never been as wrong on anything on my life,” tweeted Obama’s 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe, who had been advising Clinton’s campaign throughout. That country is every battleground state Trump swept through, despite not having the sophisticated data and turnout operations, despite not having all of the demographic advantages that many in both parties, the media and everywhere else believed through Tuesday evening might keep Republicans from winning a presidential election unless and until it completed a major reconstruction. But it is more about the reality of a country that not even many of Trump’s aides and supporters appeared to fully grasp. Tuesday’s stunner is about Hillary Clinton’s shortcomings, and in retrospect, about the absurd clearing of the Democratic field for a candidate deeply flawed. Filling that Supreme Court seat would cement it for a generation. A woman following a black man would drive home how there was no turning back to the old ways. Four more years of a Democrat in the White House would make much of how Obama reshaped the government irreversible. The Senate and House results leave no question, as if there could be one.Ī reality has slipped through their fingers. Obama said for months on the campaign trail that he’d consider Donald Trump’s election a personal repudiation.

President Barack Obama and his aides throughout the federal government have 10 weeks to nail anything and everything they can down, a crisis in management they’ll need to handle amid a crisis in politics, faith, the economy and the world order.īut they’ve already lost the chance to lock in Obama’s vision of America, one that is educated and pragmatist, multicultural, cosmopolitan and globalist.
