March 20, 2019

Joe Scarborough's opinion piece in WP took me by surprise.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-presidency-will-be-hailed-as-transformative-trumps-will-be-viewed-with-scorn/2019/03/19/c4ba3742-4a7c-11e9-9663-00ac73f49662_story.html?utm_term=.95dac6d6e72d

I disagreed with Obama. But what Trump has done makes those differences insignificant.

The shocking conclusion to the 2016 campaign made millions of Americans, including me, look foolish for believing that Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012 had proved that the United States had emerged from the scourge of racism infecting it for more than four centuries. I remain shocked that this strain of bigotry still fuels the political careers of Trump and his enablers on Capitol Hill.

That’s why any policy differences I had with Obama now seem so insignificant. Americans who still have faith in the upward arc of King’s moral universe should be grateful for Obama’s presidency and the way his election exposed the white racism that is still at large in our land. If changing the Constitution and reelecting Obama two more times would break the fever that now ravages Trump’s Washington, I would cheerfully champion the passage of that constitutional amendment, slap a “Hope and Change” sticker on my shirt, and race to the nearest voting booth to support the man historians will remember as the most significant president since Abraham Lincoln.