Barack Obama (Finally) Sees The Game For What It Is

It took a decade and a half, but Barack Obama seems to at long last understand what the fuck is going on around here.

He of gleaming good faith, he of facts and figures and logic, the guy who believes people are rational actors who will make the correct decision if they are given the opportunity, came out this week and endorsed California's Prop 50, the ballot measure that would permit the state's legislature to gerrymander the shit out of its congressional districts and create at least five new Democratic seats.

Probably Obama was able to get behind this effort – holding his nose, maybe holding back vomit – because it's being done in a very Democratic way: By asking California voters if it's cool to counter the absurd mid-decade gerrymanders in Republican-held states designed to keep control of the House for at least a couple more years.

"Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years," Obama said, working under the planet-sized assumption that the god-king, wearing Trump 2028 hats everywhere he goes, will recognize the nation's term limits. "With Prop 50, you can stop Republicans in their tracks."

Steal. Rig. Unchecked power. These are strong words from a guy who is exceedingly careful with his language.

That Obama came out and endorsed Prop 50 so enthusiastically is undeniably good. He's still, somehow, the party's leader nearly a decade after he left office and normies look to him as a staid Voice of Reason in Unreasonable Times. That Obama – the advocate for fairness that he is – is publicly backing a massive gerrymander effort makes me squirm though. It puts a pit in my stomach that I cannot easily dislodge. That could be the chickpeas though.

How bad must things be for this guy, with his West Wing approach to politics untainted by the cynicism and gamesmanship that defines modern politics, to say yes, we should cheat? It's necessary for us to cheat. We have to cheat because the other guys are about to steal an election like they stole the Supreme Court majority and stole the 2000 presidential election and almost stole the 2020 election. Fairness, Obama seems to finally realize, is no longer an option if pro-democracy forces are to preserve enough of the republic to rebuild it after the regime is swept away.

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Perhaps Obama sees the value of a small-d democratic back burn, the strategic destruction of democracy to save democracy from forces who want the United States to look like autocratic Hungary as soon as possible. He sees a handful of red states preparing some of the most egregious gerrymander ratfucks ever seen and maybe he knows this will be enough for Republicans to hang on to a slim House majority in 2027. Maybe Obama knows the opposition seizing the House majority in the midterms means the regime is effectively over, as monarchy enjoyer and JD Vance whispered Curtis Yarvin wrote recently.

Using anti-democracy strategies to wrestle power away from an explicitly anti-democracy movement is a predicament faced by pro-democracy forces anywhere fascist strongmen have come to power. "How do you use the enemy's tactics without mirroring their monstrosity?" said Tad Stoermer, an historian focused on resistance movements. "Is there such thing as a moral high ground when you're fighting for your life? The short answer is I don't know. Every effective resistance movement in history has had to wrestle with that question."

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A rabidly bipartisan former president who was seen by his opponents as a cushy punching bag for his entire eight years in office backing a partisan gerrymander has infuriated folks on the right who have relied on Obama to ensure mainline Democrats that everything is OK, that the Trump regime is like any other administration in American history, that they can be defeated with normal political tactics used in normal times. Obama is supposed to keep us calm, not warn about "unchecked" power in a post-constitutional America. Watch right-wing hacks on cable news – particularly that sneering fascist on CNN, Scott Jennings – as they rage with clenched jaws against Obama's involvement in the nation's gerrymander apocalypse. This isn't supposed to be how it goes, Jennings says without saying it.

Barack Obama is supposed to sit back and take it, Jennings and other right-wing talkers say. He's supposed to let Republicans rig elections and undermine the will of the American people with no pushback whatsoever. Former presidents are supposed to enjoy retirement and let the country burn, in the tradition of war criminal and famed painter George W. Bush. Obama is not supposed to recognize the vile little game we're playing. What ever happened, Jennings seems to say, to the tolerant left?

Jennings and the entire vapid right-wing commentariat understand how significant it is that Obama explicitly endorsed Prop 50. It means their bad-faith game has been exposed. It means they might face real opposition if opponents who understand the situation come to power in the next couple years.

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That Obama sees and acknowledges this Republican game is a decidedly good development. That he's willing to come out and say California voters must step up and save the country is even better. It's also harrowing that a guy who so deeply believes in our better angels and the long arc of history bending toward justice and all that shit would throw his (considerable) support behind a plan to make it impossible for Republicans to win congressional seats in California.

I know liberals have, at best, mixed feelings about Obama. He pitched himself to us as a savior figure and so many millennials, drenched in good faith and guided by a belief that better things were possible after the living nightmare of the Bush years, believed him. I did. It was easier that way. One person storming into power and making the structural changes needed to create a fairer and freer United States was a far more appealing plan than grinding out legislative wins and matching Republican dirty tricks. I suppose this is the same mindset as the Trump backer. That's not easy to write.

Obama today is a relic of a past that never had a future in a country plagued by a radicalized political party that would not be allowed to exist in most developed nations. His brand of politics was never going to survive his opponents' wood chipper style of politics, in which the ends always justifies the means. The man's presidency effectively ended in the 2010 midterm elections; he was a lame duck for six of his eight years in office. Look at Obama's aged face, his snow white hair, and see a man from a bygone era, a man whose vision has been roundly rejected by the country he loves. His presidency might as well have been fifty years ago. The moral high ground on which he stood, shoulders back, chin up, defying the cynicism of the American political class, is all gone. That high ground has washed away.

Obama-style politics have to be wiped from the face of the earth if the US is to properly and effectively oppose people who see no limits on their power. To hear Obama himself acknowledge this is remarkable.

The entire calcified leadership of the Democratic Party is going to have to get onboard with the back burn strategy if the party is going to have anything left with which to work when this tenuous simulation of an authoritarian regime falls apart. Obama saying yes to gerrymandering – to cheating – is a hopeful step in that direction, the only one we have left.

Follow Denny Carter on Bluesky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.