This is from a book by the great Obama Whisperer, Ben Rhodes. And when you have a book by an aspiring fiction writer who boasted of his ability to manipulate narratives, read with caution.
Riding in a motorcade in Lima, Peru, shortly after the 2016 election, President Barack Obama was struggling to understand Donald J. Trump’s victory.
“What if we were wrong?” he asked aides riding with him in the armored presidential limousine.
He had read a column asserting that liberals had forgotten how important identity was to people and had promoted an empty cosmopolitan globalism that made many feel left behind. “Maybe we pushed too far,” Mr. Obama said. “Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.”
Obama ought to know.
He launched his original public presence on a post-tribal note. "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America—there's the United States of America."
But there turned out to be some very racially tribal skeletons. And we're still finding them. Take that photo of Obama with Farrakhan.
And in the White House, Obama advanced a narrow racial vision. His DOJ gave voter intimidation by a black racist hate group a pass. It stirred up race riots, harassed police and aided criminals.
By the second campaign, he was urging Latinos to punish our enemies.
Talk about falling back into the tribe.
But Rhodes is a fiction writer. And he tells a convenient fiction that his audience wants to hear. It's the fiction that the regime had been too moderate. Too much liberalism, not enough socialism. Globalism hasn't paid off for enough people. Truly revolutionary and inspirational politics are needed.
It's the same old lies.
We tried to be post-tribal. We tried to rise above.
Except that Obama's idea of post-tribalism was Black Lives Matter, relentless identity politics and defending a racist.
When you pal around with Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton, you don't get to lecture anyone else on racism.